Beaming, she said, “I think that took care of it. Thank you for giving me a push there.”

“Any time.” Hasso reached out and cupped her left breast in his right hand.

“A push, I said.” Velona tried to sound severe, but didn’t have much luck. “What would happen if your slave walked in here right now?”

“Berbec? He’d be jealous.” Hasso didn’t let go. “And he’d think I was the bravest man in the world, for daring to touch you.”

“I like it when you touch me.” Velona set her hand on his, which made his breath come short. But she went on, “If I didn’t like it and you touched me, then you would be the bravest man in the world. And the stupidest.”

“I believe you,” Hasso said. Men had amused themselves with their enemies’ women since the beginning of time. The Germans had done their share of it in France and in Russia. And now the Ivans were paying the Wehrmacht back with their trousers down around their ankles.

Things in this world were bound to be the same. Not all the halfbreeds here had happened because Grenye women welcomed Lenello men with their legs open. But if anyone tried to force Velona to do anything she didn’t want to do when the goddess was with her… Hasso didn’t know what would happen to a bastard dumb enough to try that. He did know he wouldn’t care to find out.

Instead of drawing him down to the cot with her, she slipped away. “I’d better get dressed,” she said. He must have looked like a man who’d just bitten down hard on a lemon, because she started to laugh. “Not now doesn’t mean never, my dear,” she reminded him, wagging a finger under his nose. “We both have other things to worry about, though. Why don’t you see what the weather’s doing?”

Because I’d rather lay you, he thought grumpily. But, after what he’d been thinking, he couldn’t very well say that. And if a woman decided you only wanted her for her twat, you were in trouble, big trouble. If a woman like Velona decided that…

If that happened, what the two of them had was dead. And if it was dead, Hasso figured his own chances of ending up literally dead got a lot higher. The Lenelli cut him extra slack because he was the goddess’ boyfriend. If anybody picked a fight with him with swords, though, he was in big trouble. He’d got a lot better with a blade since coming here, but he knew enough to understand the difference between better and good.

Since he didn’t want to worry about that, he stepped outside. The rain was gone. A brisk breeze blew the dark clouds across the sky. In the west, the sun poured wet, buttery light across the landscape. A slow smile spread across Hasso’s face. The Lenello wizards had started the rain. Now the goddess had ended it.

And the Bucovinans would have a tough time setting their fields aflame for a while – things would be too wet to catch easily. If the roads dried out enough to keep foot soldiers and horses and wagons from bogging down, King Bottero’s army could press a lot deeper into Bucovin.

Then what? Hasso wondered. The question wouldn’t have occurred to the Lenelli, but the Lenelli had never tried invading the Soviet Union. Hasso looked around their encampment and slowly shook his head. Goddamn lucky bastards.

Bottero’s army did push deeper into the barbarians’ country. A day and a half after Velona and the goddess persuaded the rain to clear out – Hasso had no other explanation for what happened there – Aderno rode up to him and asked, “Have you seen Flegrei?”

“No.” Hasso shook his head, which meant the same thing to the Lenelli as it did in Germany. “Should I see him?”

“Well, I was hoping somebody had.” Aderno didn’t sound happy. “I wanted to ask him something. Nobody’s set eyes on him since not long after we got moving this morning.”

“He’s a wizard. He rides a unicorn. He should be easy to spot,” Hasso said.

“I know,” Aderno answered, and Hasso realized he was working hard not to show how worried he was. “He should be … but he isn’t. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”

“Scheisse” Hasso muttered. He could swear in Lenello to let the people around him know he was pissed off, but he got no satisfaction from it himself. For that, he still needed his native speech. “Do you think the Grenye used to ambush him?” He muttered to himself again – that was the wrong form of the past tense, and he knew it. Now, too late, he knew it.

Aderno was too rattled to sneer, though. “I’m afraid they did. I’m afraid they must have,” the wizard replied. “We need to take enough men down our trail so we can be sure we don’t get bushwhacked looking for him.”

“Scheisse,” Hasso repeated, louder this time. The word wouldn’t mean anything to Aderno unless he had his translating spell working, but the tone was bound to get through. Hasso added a few more choice opinions auf Deutsch. But Aderno was right. They needed to find out what had happened to Flegrei. If the Grenye suddenly had a wizard working for them – maybe with a knife at his throat, but even so – the Lenelli needed to know about that. And if the knife had gone into Flegrei instead, the invaders needed to know that, too.

Hasso had enough clout to pull a troop of horsemen out of the line of march on his own hook and start them back the wrong way. A couple of captains asked him what the demon he thought he was doing. When he told them he was looking for a missing wizard, they did some swearing of their own.

“You shouldn’t let some of those people run loose,” one Lenello opined. “They just get into trouble.”

Aderno looked highly affronted. He might have had more to say to the soldier if traveling in opposite directions hadn’t swept them apart. Later … Hasso shook his head. He’d worry about that later, by God.

“Look for the unicorn,” he told the men with him. “We have a better chance of spotting the animal than we do of spotting the wizard.”

The troopers nodded. Aderno looked surprised, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. Maybe it hadn’t; he didn’t always operate within the restrictive confines of the real world himself. After a moment, he added, “The Grenye may have taken Flegrei away, too. It’s possible that they can get him to do what they want if they hurt him enough. But no Grenye can ride a unicorn. So they’d likely kill it first – they can’t deal with it any other way.”

That made sense to Hasso, who gave the wizard a mental apology. He didn’t waste time on a spoken one. He was too busy trying to look every which way at once. Out away from the Lenello army, he felt the way he had behind the front in the Soviet Union. Every tree, every rock, every bush was liable to be dangerous. And you’d never know which one till too late. How many eyes were watching him and his comrades right now? How many Bucovinan fists tightened on weapons? Hasso couldn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean nobody could see him. Oh, no.

But would the men of Bucovin have enough soldiers back here to take on so many Lenelli? He could hope not, anyhow.

The farther from the security of Bottero’s main force he got, the more he worried, the more his head swiveled back and forth, back and forth. He watched the Lenelli with him. The big blond knights also seemed to be trying to grow eyes in the backs of their heads.

“I wouldn’t want to do this when the sun was going down, not for all the beer in Bari,” one of them said. Several others nodded. Hasso had no idea where Bari was, but he understood the sentiment just fine.

Not far from the road, a farmhouse was charred wreckage. Had the Lenelli torched it, or did the retreating Bucovinans do it themselves? Whatever the answer was, would that matter to the peasants whose home was only a ruin? Hasso had trouble making himself believe it.

Fire had also run through the fields, which inclined him to believe the incendiarism was Bucovinan work. King Bottero’s men would have taken the nearly ripe millet for themselves … if they had the time, and if flames from the burning buildings hadn’t got loose. So hard to be sure about anything you didn’t see for yourself. Too damned often, it was hard to be sure about things you did see.