Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

"A pot full of this could smash real people and real wagons the same way, yes?" Lord Zgomot asked.

"Yes, Lord. That's the idea," Hasso said. That was one of the ideas, anyway. The Bucovinans had catapults — they'd borrowed the idea from the Lenelli. Catapults could fling pots full of gunpowder at charging Lenello knights. The big blonds wouldn't like that. Neither would their horses, or their wizards' unicorns.

Wizards… Wizards went on worrying Hasso. What could they do to gunpowder? How soon would they figure it out?

And how soon would he have to go into the cannon-founding business? Cannon could easily outrange catapults. But he didn't know how to make them. Oh, he had an idea. You needed a hollow tube with a touch-hole at the end opposite the muzzle. But how thick did it have to be? If it blew up instead of sending a cannonball at the enemy, he wouldn't make himself popular in Bucovin. What kind of carriage should it have? Sure, one with wheels. That covered a lot of ground, though, ground he knew nothing about. One firecracker was a tiny start, no more.

No, this wouldn't be easy. Lord Zgomot wanted weapons to sweep away the Lenelli. Who could blame him? Hasso couldn't give him those weapons with a snap of the fingers. It wasn't that easy. And who'll blame me because I can't?

He knew the answer to that. Everybody.

Hasso didn't trust the Bucovinans to make gunpowder, not yet. They didn't know enough to be careful. After they watched him for a while, they probably would — after they watched him and after they saw some explosions. You had to respect the stuff or you had no business working with it.

At Drepteaza's suggestion, Rautat started learning the craft from him. The veteran underofficer had seen what firearms could do. If he didn't respect gunpowder, what Bucovinan would?

Hasso needed a while to realize that question had two possible answers. The one he wanted was that the Bucovinans would do fine after they got the hang of things. But the other one was also there. Maybe they wouldn't get the hang of it at all. Maybe they were too primitive. The Lenelli were somewhere close to the level where Europeans had been when they started making guns. The Bucovinans…

The Bucovinans were trying to pull themselves up to that level by their own bootstraps. How far below it had their several-times-great-grandparents been when the Lenelli first landed on these shores? A thousand years below? Two thousand years? Something like that. They'd started working iron, and they'd had kingdoms of sorts. The Lenelli had smashed a lot of them to confetti.

Bucovin survived. Because it lay farther east, it had had more time to absorb what the Lenelli brought with them before they actually bumped up against its borders. And, for whatever reason, magic didn't work so well near Falticeni. Hasso scratched his head. He wondered why that was so.

But he had more urgent things to worry about. "This isn't just like the thunder weapon you had before," Rautat remarked.

"It sure isn't," Hasso agreed. With a couple of dozen Schmeissers and enough ammo, he could have gone through all the Lenello kingdoms and Bucovin without breaking a sweat. But he didn't have them, so no point getting wistful about it.

"I know you say you can't make anything like that," Rautat said. Hasso nodded. The Bucovinan went on, "Well, how close can you come?"

"Not very." With a lot of work, Hasso figured he could eventually make a smoothbore matchlock musket. That wouldn't happen soon. It also wouldn't be that much more deadly than a bow and arrow, though it would be a lot easier to learn.

"Too bad," the underofficer said, and then, "You'd better not be holding out on us."

"I'm not, curse it!" Hasso said. "Why would I show you this much and not the rest, if I could do the rest? It makes no sense."

Rautat fingered the graying tendrils of his beard. "I guess so," he said, but he didn't sound a hundred percent convinced.

Wonderful. Just what I need, Hasso thought. Even the guys who work closest with me don't trust me. But he'd had that unhappy thought before. Nobody trusted someone who changed sides. You got what you could from a turncoat, but trust him? He'd already thrown away one loyalty. Why would he worry about another?

And Hasso knew he would go back to Bottero's kingdom in a flash if he got the chance. The Bucovinans had to know it, too, because they made sure he never got a chance. They didn't go into the garderobe with him when he needed to take a leak — not usually, anyhow — but that was about the only time he wasn't watched except when he was alone in his room. Lord Zgomot didn't get watched over the way Hasso did.

Well, why should he? Zgomot had no reason to light out for the tall timber. Hasso damn well did.

Would Velona take him back? He could hope so, anyhow. And even if she decided he was a racial traitor, Bottero would still think he was useful, wouldn't he? Sure he would.

Hasso found himself grinding his teeth, which wasn't the smartest thing he could do in a country where the dentists had never heard of laughing gas. Yeah, Bottero would think he was useful. But the Lenello king wouldn't fully trust him anymore, either. He'd worked for Bucovin, for the contemptible Grenye.

He was screwed any way you looked at it.

A couple of evenings later, he told Leneshul not to bother coming back any more. "All right," she said, and left with no more ceremony than that. She'd given him what he wanted, but she hadn't wanted anything from him. To her, he was just a job. Now she could go do something else.

The next morning, Drepteaza said, "Shall I find another woman for you?"

"In a while, maybe. Not right now," Hasso answered.

She frowned. "Even if you get no more bad dreams, it's not healthy for a man to go without a woman too long. You'll get grumpy and grouchy."

"If I have a woman I don't care about, it's not much better than no woman at all," Hasso said.

"I'm sorry Leneshul didn't please you as much as I hoped she would," Drepteaza said. "But I don't know what to do about that."

"You could — " Hasso broke off.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's nothing." Hasso buried his nose in a mug of beer. Me and my goddamn big mouth, he thought.

"What is it?" Drepteaza persisted. "If it is anything reasonable, we will do it for you. You do seem to be helping us. We pay our debts."

Reasonable? That was funny, or would have been if only he were laughing. He took another pull at the beer. Even in wartime Germany, it would have been pretty bad. By local standards, it was pretty good. If only I knew something about brewing. If only I knew something about anything. "Nothing," Hasso said again.

Drepteaza looked severe. "You say it is nothing. Then you will get angry because we can't guess what it is and deliver it to you without being asked. We know how these things go — we've seen them before."

She wasn't going to leave him alone. He could see that coming like a rash — or like a salvo of Katyusha rockets from a Stalin Organ. Well, maybe the truth would shut her up. She couldn't get too mad — he hoped — not when she'd asked for it. "If I wanted any woman in my bed, it would be you." Any Bucovinan woman. Yes, he had to make the reservation even after Velona tried to kill him. If that didn't say he had it bad, what would?

He didn't shock the priestess. To his immense relief, he saw that right away. He saw no answering spark flash, though. Damn! "It is a compliment. I ought to thank you for it. I do thank you for it," she said slowly.

"But." Hasso packed a world — two worlds — of bitterness into one word.

"Yes. But." Drepteaza did him the courtesy of not misunderstanding, and of not beating around the bush the way he had. "I am very sorry, Hasso Pemsel, but when I look at you I see a Lenello. I don't know what else to say. I don't think anything else needs saying — do you?"