“They tell you everything?” Hasso asked. “Back in Drammen, they tell you everything?”
“All kinds of crap goes on under Bottero’s big, pointy beak,” said Scanno, who had a big, pointy beak himself. “A little harder to slip away than it used to be – I bet that’s your fault, huh?”
“I suppose so.” Hasso hadn’t had time to do a really good job of training the Lenelli in security and counterespionage. If the likes of Scanno could beat his setup … He knew what that meant. Bottero’s men hadn’t had time to figure it all out and make it their own yet. They were doing it because he’d told them to, not because they saw all the benefits and ins and outs for themselves. Hasso made himself ask, “How is the king?”
Scanno laughed, a big, booming laugh that made the Bucovinan guards stare. “Well, it’s not like he invites me to the palace for roast duck and wine with sugar in it,” the Lenello renegade said. “If he knows who I am at all, he figures I’m that drunken stumblebum who’d sooner slum it with the Grenye than stick to my own kind. And he’s right, too.”
He said that even as the same thought formed in Hasso’s mind. If Scanno could see himself so clearly, the rest of what he said carried more weight.
“But anyway, Bottero’s not happy right now. I don’t need to eat his duck and drink his sugarwine to know that,” Scanno went on. “Any time one of the kings loses to Bucovin, he’s ready to spit nails. It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is. And he’s got to worry that his loving neighbors will jump on his back. He took a real licking this time. You took a licking. What’s this strike column I heard about?” Briefly, Hasso explained. Scanno grunted. “That’s pretty sly, all right. But it didn’t work this time.”
“No, it didn’t,” Hasso agreed. “So why do you throw in with the Grenye and not your own folk?”
“I like ‘em better,” Scanno answered. “I mean, pussy’s pussy – who cares if the hair on it’s yellow or brown? And the Grenye, they don’t brag and strut and carry on all the stinking time. They’re people you can get along with. Besides, isn’t it about time somebody gave the poor sorry cocksuckers a fair shake?”
Scanno bragged and strutted and carried on as much as any Lenello Hasso had ever known. Maybe he didn’t know himself so well as the German had thought he did. Or maybe his size and his noise – and his yellow hair – made him stand out more among the natives than he ever would among his own people. Maybe he liked that. If he did, well, so what? What did it mean? That he was human. Who wasn’t?
But that question had another answer, one it wouldn’t have had in Hasso’s old world. Scanno, plainly, had never gone to bed with Velona or anybody like her. True, the difference wasn’t that she was a blonde, not a brunette. The difference was the goddess.
Yes, and the other difference is that she wants you dead now, Hasso reminded himself. Details, details.
“Here – I’ve got another question for you,” Scanno said. “Were you at that place called – what the demon was the name of it? Muresh, that was it. The one where Bottero’s boys went hog wild?”
“Yes, I was there.”
“Did you play their games?”
“No.” Hasso didn’t say he’d seen such things before in Russia. He’d played those games then – the Ivans were enemies he hated, unlike the Bucovinans, who were foes merely in a professional sense. And the Russians had taken their revenge once the Red Army crossed the Reich’s borders. Oh, hadn’t they just?
Scanno grunted again. “Didn’t think so. Bucovin doesn’t massacre for the fun of it, either.” Bucovin isn’t strong enough to, Hasso thought. The guys chasing Velona sure weren’t out to play skat with her. Scanno went on, “Why don’t you throw in with the Bucovinans? They’re a better mob than the ones out west.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of Drammen.
That … might or might not be true. Hasso sighed. He really didn’t have an answer, not one Scanno would get. They look like a bunch of filthy kikes, dammit. He sighed again. “I don’t know. Why don’t I?”
XVII
Scanno seemed to be an important fellow in Falticeni. The Bucovinans respected him even if his own folk didn’t. When he told Lord Zgomot that Hasso might play along, Zgomot summoned the Wehrmacht officer in nothing flat.
Hasso bowed to the dark little man. From some things the natives had said, a lot of Lenelli, even renegades, had trouble bringing themselves to do that. Hasso didn’t – why should he? Hitler was a dark little man, too, even if he did have blue eyes. And plenty of Germans these days were bowing down before Stalin, who by all accounts was even smaller and darker than Zgomot.
Among the Lord of Bucovin’s courtiers stood Scanno and Drepteaza and Rautat. They all looked expectant. Scanno also looked almost indecently pleased with himself. He was a rogue – no doubt about it. But he likely did Bucovin more good than half a dozen more staid fellows would have.
Zgomot came straight to the point, asking in Lenello, “So you will show us what you know?”
“I try to show you some of it, yes, Lord.” Hasso picked his words with care. He wasn’t sure he could make gunpowder. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure it would work in this world. And even if it did, he was a long way from sure he wanted it to work for the Bucovinans.
“If you do what we hope you can do, you will not lack for anything we can give you,” Zgomot said. “If things turn out otherwise … If things turn out otherwise, we will treat you the way you deserve. Do you understand me?”
“I do, Lord,” Hasso answered. If he performed, he would get anything he wanted – except Velona. If he didn’t, he would get the chopper. That seemed fair enough … to someone whose neck wasn’t on the line. Hasso had to fight the impulse to rub at his nape.
Zgomot’s eyes might be dark and pouchy, but they were also uncommonly shrewd. “I understand that you do not love us, Hasso Pemsel. This is not a bargain about love. We have treated you well when we did not need to. We hope you will repay us for our kindness.”
“I hope you do, too, Lord.” Hasso had to fight even harder to keep that hand away from the back of his neck.
He hoped this would be it, and he could see if he could get his hands on saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur. If he couldn’t, he was, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed. But the Lord of Bucovin wasn’t quite done with him yet. “The holy priestess” – he pointed toward Drepteaza with his chin – “tells me you have somewhat of the wizards’ blood in you.”
Hasso nodded to Zgomot. “So it would seem, Lord, though I am not trained in magic.”
“I will give you a piece of advice some Lenelli” – Zgomot didn’t say some other Lenelli, which was a kindness of sorts – “would have done well to heed. We have no magic. You know that. But if you use it against us here in Falticeni, it will do you less good than you think. Do you hear me?”
“Some Lenelli tell me the same thing, Lord,” Hasso answered. Even Velona’s goddess-given powers had weakened, though they hadn’t failed, as she neared the capital of Bucovin. She didn’t know why but she knew it was so.
“The Lenelli don’t like it when we have a wizard in our midst. They think he makes us more dangerous to them,” Zgomot said. “But we don’t always like it, either, because a wizard in our midst is dangerous to us. So far, though, no Lenello wizard has managed to hold on to Bucovin longer than a month or so. Even wizards, we find, can’t watch everyone all the time.”
He was small and swarthy and dumpy. He was also clever and cynical, and probably made a damn good king. If he was considerate enough to warn Hasso, the German decided he ought to take that as a compliment. Bowing, he said, “I understand, Lord. I never want to be a king – or even a lord – myself.”