Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

"Thanks," Hasso said.

"Oh, I didn't do it for you," the Bucovinan replied. "I just want to make sure you're in one piece when I deliver you, so they can get the answers they need."

You're nothing to me but an interesting piece of meat. That was daunting. But if Hasso weren't an interesting piece of meat, Rautat would have slit his throat and gone on to the next one in the pit.

"Well, thanks anyhow," Hasso said.

Rautat gave him a long look. "You've got nerve, anyway," he said grudgingly.

Hasso shrugged. "Big deal."

"You talk like a soldier," the native remarked.

"I am — I was — a soldier before I came here, in a bigger war than this world ever saw," Hasso answered. "The tools of the trade were different. The life isn't, not very much."

Outside a tavern, a drunk in ragged clothes sprawled in the street snoring, a jug clutched tight to his chest. Hasso could have seen — hell, he had seen — the like in any number of Russian villages… and, yes, in some German ones as well. People were people, in his own world or here, Lenelli or Grenye. Rautat scowled at the sot and rode a little faster to get by him. Hasso hid a smile. The native was self-conscious about his folk's shortcomings, as almost anyone from any folk would have been.

They rode past a brothel, too, with a couple of naked women displaying themselves in second-story windows. Hasso thought they were more likely to catch pneumonia than customers. They gaped at him, for a moment startled out of their cocked-hip, bosom-thrusting poses.

One of them called something to Rautat. He laughed and shook his head. Turning to Hasso, he said, "She wants to know if you're really big."

Hasso was made… like a man. He said, "But you think all Lenelli are big pricks." The joke worked in Lenello the same as it did in German. Odds were it worked in most languages.

Rautat laughed and laughed. "You're a funny fellow, all right. Pretty soon, you'll find out whether it does you any good."

"Ja." Hasso didn't like the sound of that.

In Drammen, the Lenello nobles had their fine houses in the center of town, near the royal palace. Broad lawns separated those mansions from the streets and from the lesser dwellings of hoi polloi. Again, the Bucovinans imitated the newcomers… to a point. Their prominent people did have large houses. Sometimes the buildings even had stone ground floors. But the second story was invariably timber or wattle and daub, and almost all the roofs were thatched. Only a handful had tiles like the palace.

Almost all of them, though, had a garden rather than a lawn — or if they did have grass, a cow or a couple of sheep grazed on it under a herdsman's watchful eyes. The idea of bare ground for the sake of decoration or swank didn't seem to have got here from the west.

A plump man in a tunic with extra-fancy embroidery took a chicken from someone who looked poorer than he was. He wrung the chicken's neck and cast the carcass onto a brazier heaped high with glowing charcoal. '"What's he doing?" Hasso asked.

"He's a priest making a thanks-offering or a sin-offering for that fellow." Rautat gave him a curious look. "Don't your priests do that?"

Hasso thought of the last Wehrmacht chaplain he'd talked to, a dour Lutheran who didn't even smoke (and, once again, the longing for a cigarette sneaked up and bit him in the ass). He tried to imagine Klaus Frisch sacrificing a chicken to propitiate an angry Jehovah. "Well," he said, "no."

"How do you know your gods pay any attention to you, then?" Rautat persisted.

"Good question," Hasso said, and then, counterattacking, "How do you know your gods do? Why don't you follow the goddess?"

Even riding through the streets of his own capital with the Wehrmacht officer a helpless prisoner, Rautat looked scared shitless. "The goddess hears Lenelli first," he said. "She wouldn't listen to the likes of me."

From what Hasso had seen, that might well be true. And yet… "Plenty of Grenye in King Bottero's realm worship her."

The most scornful majordomo in two worlds couldn't have let out a sniffier sniff than Rautat's. "There are Grenye who want to be Lenelli," he said."I don't, thank you very much."

He spoke fluent Lenello. He wore Lenello-style armor. His city had Lenello-style fortifications grafted onto its older works. His sovereign's palace even had Lenello-style roof tiles. And he said he didn't want to be a Lenello?

Well, maybe he didn't. The Japanese wore Western-style clothes. They had Western-style industries, and a Western-style military, too. But did they want to turn into Americans or Englishmen or Germans? Hasso didn't think so. They used Western techniques to let them stay what they already were: Japanese. Maybe the Bucovinans could pull off the same stunt here.

But, if they couldn't work magic and the Lenelli damn well could, the odds were against them.

Still affronted, Rautat went on, "Besides, who knows what mongrel clans those Grenye come from? We're better people than that, we are."

Once more, Hasso carefully didn't smile. Had the plains Indians looked down their noses like that at the coastal Indians who quickly succumbed to the English colonizers? They probably had… till it was their turn.

When Hasso got a close look at Lord Zgomot's palace, he decided he wouldn't want to try to take it without heavy artillery. Yes, maybe Bottero was lucky he didn't make it to Falticeni. He might have thrown away a lot more men here than he did in the lost battle.

Or the goddess might have manifested herself through Velona and knocked the capital of Bucovin flat. If you had magic, if the gods really did take part in what happened on earth, maybe you didn't need 105s and 155s. After all, Joshua knocked down Jericho's walls without them.

Every time Hasso thought about anybody from the Old Testament, he started to look around nervously. No, dummy, he thought. Nobody from the Gestapo's going to haul you away, not here. You can let a Jew cross your mind every now and then.

Rautat shouted to the sentries in their own language. They yelled back. Hasso couldn't understand a word of it. His mind went back to wandering. If the goddess could come through here, why didn't she do it a long time ago? The land fights for them. Velona wasn't the only one who'd said it. What did it mean? It wasn't magic — the Lenelli insisted on that. But it was something.

One of the guards yelled some more, and gestured. Rautat and the other Bucovinan soldiers dismounted. A moment later, Hasso did the same. Grooms came out to take charge of the horses. Hasso's captors escorted him into the palace.

The palace was gloomy. It was drafty. It didn't smell very good. Of course, you could have said the same things about King Bottero's establishment. Everything here, though, seemed just a little worse, a little sloppier, than it had back in Drammen.

And Hasso found one danger here that he hadn't had to worry about there: doorways. Lots of Lenelli were taller than he was. Their lintels were high. The Bucovinans, on the other hand, mostly came up to his chin. And he banged his forehead twice in quick succession before realizing he had to watch — and duck — every goddamn time.

Getting one — no, two — right above the eyes did nothing for the headaches that still plagued him. He wished his head would come off. Inconsiderate thing that it was, it stayed attached and hurt.

Rautat spoke with a court official whose spiffy embroidery probably meant he was a big wheel. The fellow with the gaudy tunic looked Hasso over. Him? his glance said. Well, Hasso didn't think he cut a very fancy figure just then, either. The palace functionary asked Rautat a couple of questions. Hasso's captor answered with emphasis, jabbing a forefinger at the other man's chest.

With a sigh, the official yielded. He said something to Hasso in Bucovinan. "I am sorry. I do not speak your language," Hasso answered in Lenello.