“You had the thunder weapon, yes?” Zgomot said. “You almost killed me with it in the first fight, yes?”

“Yes,” Hasso admitted.

“And you’re the one who came up with the column to strike with, yes?” the Lord of Bucovin persisted.

“Yes,” Hasso said again, wondering if he was cooking his own goose.

“Then you’re dangerous.” Zgomot spoke in tones that brooked no contradiction. He eyed Hasso. “If you’d come here – to this place – in Bucovin instead of where you did, would you have served me as best you could instead of that big pig of a Bottero?”

You wouldn’t have had Velona to persuade me. Persuade! Ha! That’s a word! But if I’d come down by Falticeni, I wouldn’t have known anything about Velona. And what a shame that would have been! The thoughts flickered through Hasso’s mind in a fraction of a second. “I don’t know, Lord. Probably,” he replied aloud. “Unless your people kill me for being a Lenello, I mean.”

“Chance you take when you’re big and blond,” Zgomot observed, his smile thin to the point of starvation. How big an inferiority complex did the Grenye carry? How could you blame them if it was about the size of the dragon whose fang they so proudly displayed? The Lord of Bucovin went on, “Since you are here now, will you serve me the way you served Bottero even though he didn’t deserve you?”

This time, Hasso didn’t answer right away. The easiest thing to do was say yes and then do his best to get away or minimize his contributions. But he remembered again what he thought of Field Marshal Paulus. And he knew what Wehrmacht troops thought of the Russians who fought for the Reich. You might use them – you might use them up – but you’d never, ever trust them.

Slowly, he said, “Lord, I am King Bottero’s sworn man. How can I serve his enemy?” He wondered if he’d just written his own obituary.

“A good many Lenelli have no trouble at all.” Zgomot’s voice was dryer than a sandstorm in the Sahara. “We do keep an eye on them, but they’re mostly so happy to stay alive that they show us whatever they can. We’ve learned a lot from them.”

“Would you let one of them do anything really important?” Hasso asked.

Now the Lord of Bucovin hesitated. “Mm – maybe not,” he said at last.

“Then maybe you understand, sir. King Bottero lets me do those things. You don’t – you won’t – you wouldn’t.”

“Suppose your other choice is the chopper?”

“Suppose it is.” Hasso hoped he sounded more nonchalant and less frightened than he felt. “How do you trust anything you chop out of me?”

“Oh, we have ways.” That wasn’t the Lord of Bucovin. That was Rautat, the practical noncom. He sounded very sure of himself, and probably with good reason. Zgomot said something in Bucovinan. Rautat answered in the same language. Hasso didn’t like it when people hashed out his fate in a tongue he couldn’t understand. Who would have?

“Well, nothing is going to happen right away,” Zgomot said, returning to Lenello. “Maybe we can show you you made a mistake taking service with Bottero. Or maybe, if we decide you’re too dangerous to keep alive, we’ll have to kill you to make sure you don’t go back. We’ll just have to see.”

“Whatever you say, Lord.” At least it’s not the chopper right away!

“Whatever I say?” Zgomot’s laugh was hardly more than a token effort. “Well, stranger, you’ve never ruled, have you?”

Prison. It was about the most Hasso could have expected, but it was nothing to get excited about. He had a room with a window much too narrow to give him any chance to escape through it. He had a cot and a slops bucket. The bucket did boast a cover. For such refinements he was grateful.

The door was too sturdy to break down. The bar was on the outside. Guards always stood in the corridor – he could hear them talking every now and again.

They fed him twice a day. The food wasn’t especially good, but there was plenty of it. He didn’t need to worry about going hungry. And, by the way soldiers with swords and bows glowered at him whenever the door opened to admit the servant with the tray, he didn’t need to worry about escaping, either. He wasn’t going anywhere till Zgomot decided to let him out.

He didn’t have a torch or a lamp. When the sun went down – which it did very early at this time of year – he sat and lay in darkness till at last it rose again.

Grimly, he made the most of the few light hours. He did pushups and situps and other calisthenics. He ran in place. He paced around and around the cell, which was about three meters square. He’d got used to short days and long nights in Russia. This wasn’t as bad as that. They didn’t give him a brazier, but he had plenty of blankets. And it wasn’t as cold here as it had been there – nowhere close.

After he’d been in there for eight days – he thought it was eight, but it could have been seven or nine – the door opened at an unexpected time. Ice ran through him. He knew enough about being a prisoner to suspect any change in routine. Was this the day when they’d sacrifice him to the great god Mumbo-Jumbo, er, Lavtrig?

In walked the usual guards with the usual cutlery. In with them walked someone else. She couldn’t have been much more than a meter and a half tall; she didn’t come up to the top of Hasso’s shoulder. But she carried herself like a queen. No, more like a dancer, with a straight back and long, graceful strides that made her skirt swirl around her ankles as if she belonged to a flamenco troupe.

“You are the man from a far land who took service with Bottero,” she said in a clear contralto. Her accent was much better than Hasso’s. It might even have been better than Lord Zgomot’s; she lacked the fussy precision that informed his speech.

“That’s right.” Hasso nodded. “Who are you?”

“My name is Drepteaza.” She made four syllables of it. She waited. Hasso repeated the name. She corrected him. He tried again. She nodded. “That’s close enough,” she said. “I am here to teach you to talk like a human being.” That was how it came out in Lenello.

In spite of everything, Hasso smiled. “What am I doing now?”

“Talking like a western wolf,” Drepteaza answered seriously. The Bucovinans loved the Lenelli no more than the Lenelli cared for them. Up till now, Hasso hadn’t had to worry about that, any more than he’d worried about what Jews felt about Germans. That would only have mattered to him if he’d got captured by a band of Jewish partisans. Now, in effect, he had been. And what the natives felt about the Lenelli and about one Hasso Pemsel could literally be a matter of life and death.

He bowed to Drepteaza. “I am at your service, my lady. You are a prettier teacher than Rautat would be, that’s for sure.” And so she was. She was probably somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, with strong cheekbones, fine dark eyes, and an elegant blade of a nose. He would have bet she had a nice shape under that baggy tunic and skirt, though maybe her elegant gait was what made him think so.

She looked at him with as much warmth as if he’d got poured out of the slops bucket. So much for flattery, Hasso thought. One of the guards turned out to understand Lenello. Hefting his sword, he growled, “Watch your mouth with the holy priestess.”

“Sorry,” Hasso said. Maybe ninety seconds after meeting a goddess, he’d started screwing her brains out. Plainly, the Bucovinans did things differently. Hasso bowed to Drepteaza again, this time in apology. He told her, “Sorry,” too, and hoped she believed he was sincere.

“I suppose you meant no harm,” she said, but Murmansk winter still chilled her voice. “To be sorry in our language is intristare!’ She waited as she had before. He said the word. She corrected him. He tried again. The s was a long hiss, the r closer to a French than a German one, but not quite like that, either. She corrected him once more. At least she didn’t expect him to get it right away. He gave it another try. She nodded, satisfied at last.