Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

He didn't know why the goddess had brought him here. He didn't even know that the goddess had brought him here. King Bottero had a point, though. Velona knew a lot more about magic than he did. Christ! My horse knows more about magic than I do, he thought. Between her suggestions and his own few feeble ideas, he'd come up with what might be a spell.

It turned dowsing upside down and inside out. He wasn't trying to find water flowing underground — he was looking for unmoving objects concealed beneath running water. If everything went exactly right, the forked stick in his hands would rise when he pointed it at a submerged bridge.

The not-quite-dowsing stick was carved from one of the timbers the Lenelli had torn from the first underwater bridge. Velona said that would give it a mystic affinity with the other bridges… if there were others. The idea seemed reasonable, in an unreasonable kind of way.

Even so, he let his worry show: "If I find no bridges, does that mean there are no bridges? Or does it mean I can't find them? If I am no wizard, casting a spell does not help. Will not help." He remembered how to make the future tense. He didn't need to worry about the future, though. He was tense right now.

"Cast the spell. Then see what happens," Velona said. That also seemed reasonable — if your view of reason included spells in the first place. Hasso's didn't. Or rather, it hadn't.

Fighting not to show his fear, he started to chant. Velona had come up with a lot of the spell. Hasso would never make a poet in Lenello — come to that, he'd made a lousy poet auf Deutsch. What he had to remember here was to get the words right. He understood what the magic ought to do, even if he didn't perfectly follow all the phrases in the charm. Poetry was supposed to be challenging… wasn't it?

Velona gestured. That reminded him to move the not-dowsing rod. He swung it slowly from southwest to northeast, paralleling the course of the Aryesh. All of a sudden, it jerked upwards in his hands. He almost dropped it, he was so surprised. He'd no more thought he could truly work magic than that he could fly.

"There!" Velona said. "Go back, Hasso Pemsel. Go back and get the exact direction, so the artisans can find the hidden bridge."

He did, and damned if the rod didn't rise again. His own rod rose, too. He remembered how she'd called him by his full name when they met, there on the causeway through the swamp. He remembered what they'd done right afterwards, too, and he wanted to do it again.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, for Velona laughed, softly and throatily. "Soon," she promised. But then she tempered that, adding, "But not yet. First we see where the savages can sneak across the river."

"Oh, all right." Hasso knew he sounded like a petulant little boy who couldn't have what he wanted just when he wanted it. (Quite a bit like the Fuhrer, in fact, he thought.) Velona, who knew nothing about Hitler except that he was the man who ruled the country Hasso came from, laughed again, this time with rich amusement in her voice.

Hasso wished he had a compass, to give him a precise bearing on where that bridge lurked under the water. Nobody here had any idea what a compass was. If he could float an iron needle in a bowl of water… But he had too many other things to worry about right now.

Velona marked off the bearing as best she could. Hasso decided it would probably serve; they weren't very far from the Aryesh. "Go on," she urged him. "See if there are any more."

He wished she were urging him on while they were doing something else, but he saw the need for continuing with this. That need might not delight him, but he did see it. And working magic had a fascination, and an astonishment, all its own. He didn't think he'd been so delightfully surprised since the first time he played with himself.

And… "I'll be a son of a bitch!" he muttered. Damned if the rod didn't jerk up in his hand again. Chanting the charm over and over, he fixed the precise direction. Again, Velona marked it.

He found one more bridge after that, or thought he did. Part of him — a good bit of him — still wondered whether this wasn't some kind of delusion. But even in his world dowsers could — or claimed they could — find water. Maybe there was something to it.

Velona had no doubts. As soon as the spell was done, she plastered herself against him tighter than a coat of paint and gave him a kiss that curled his ears and made steam come out of his hair. Before he could sling her over his shoulder and carry her off to their tent — the first thing that occurred to him, even if she didn't weigh that much less than he did — she broke free and called for the artisans. After a moment, regretfully, so did Hasso.

The men came up with astonishing haste. Hasso didn't flatter himself that his shouts had much to do with it. When your goddess yelled for you, you went to her first and then wondered why she wanted you. (Hasso sometimes wondered why Velona still wanted him, but in a much more pleasant way.)

"Follow these bearings to the river, one by one," she said, pointing at the lines she'd laid out. "When you get there, probe under the surface. You'll find hidden bridges in each place. Tear them up."

They saluted, clenched fists over their hearts. "We'll do it!" they said, and hurried off. Hasso hoped they weren't going off for nothing, not least because he would look like a jerk if they were.

They must have found what they were looking for, because that evening King Bottero summoned Hasso to dine with him. He hadn't done that since Hasso's striking column slammed through the Bucovinans in the first — and, so far, only — big battle the two sides had fought. Bottero poured wine for Hasso with his own hand. "You see?" he said expansively. "I told you you could do it."

"Yes, your Majesty," Hasso said, which was an answer as useful here as Jawohl, mein Fuhrer! had been back in the Reich. And it wasn't even a lie this time around. Bottero did say so, and he was right.

"Why did you have any doubts?" the king asked. "If Aderno said you had the power, you did. Aderno may be a pain in the fundament sometimes, but he knows the difference between a snake and its cast skin."

"No magic in the world I come from," Hasso said. "Hard for me to believe anyone has it." He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "Extra hard to believe I have it."

"Well, you do," Bottero said. "Get used to it. The artisans came back all excited about how you knew exactly where to send them. They said you made their work easy. One of them asked why our regular wizards couldn't do so well."

Hasso winced. "They shouldn't say that." He didn't want the regular wizards angry at him. Maybe he could work a little magic, however crazy that seemed. But he wasn't a pro, and he knew it. If somebody who was a pro decided to turn him into a prawn, he didn't know how to defend himself or fight back.

A pretty young Grenye woman brought in a platter of pork ribs and roasted parsnips. The robe she wore was so thin, it wouldn't have kept her warm long outside. The king ran his hand up her leg. Was her smile forced or real? Was she glad to be getting off as easy as this, or did she hate him for groping her — and, no doubt, for taking her, too? Hasso had no way to know, which might have been — surely was — just as well.

He concentrated on the food. After a while, he asked, "How far to Falticeni, your Majesty?"

"We're getting there," Bottero answered. "Pretty soon, the savages will have to fight us again. We'll whip them, and then we'll go on and take the place."

The woman stood by the king, waiting for anything he might want — for anything at all, plainly. "Should you talk with her here?" Hasso asked.

"Why not?" Bottero asked. "She knows how to say, 'Yes,' in Lenello, and that's about it. And she's not going anywhere anyhow. She's hot enough to keep around for a while." He fondled her again, then asked, "You want her to suck you off? She's good."