Not getting scragged by the Bucovinans was more interesting. Hasso was glad he had Rautat along. The underofficer was able to convince his countrymen that the big blond beside him wasn’t a Lenello and was a friend. Hasso might not have had an easy time doing that on his own.

He felt better when he and Rautat caught up with the wagon that held the rest of the gunpowder jars. Dumnez and Peretsh and Gunoiul and the other Bucovinans on his crew were beside themselves with excitement. “It worked!” they shouted, and, “We heard it blow up!” and other things besides. Once they’d said those first two, though, they’d said everything that mattered.

“What now?” Hasso asked

“Now we go back to Falticeni and find out what new orders Lord Zgomot has for us,” Rautat answered.

“We ought to leave the wagon somewhere closer to the front, so even without us it can go into action fast if it has to,” Hasso said.

“Not too close,” Rautat said. “Can’t let it get captured no matter what.”

He would have been right about that in medieval Europe. He was righter here. Hasso still worried about magic. The longer till Aderno and the other Lenello wizards figured out what gunpowder was and how it worked, the better. How much of a spell would you need to ignite it from a distance? “Where do you want to leave it, then?” the Wehrmacht officer asked.

“How about Muresh?” Rautat said. “Even if the big blond bastards do come that far, it can always go back over the Oltet.”

Hasso found himself nodding. “Muresh should do.” He liked the idea of putting such a potent weapon in a town the enemy had ravaged only the autumn before.

In fact, he needed a moment to remember that he’d been part of the army that ravaged Muresh. It seemed a long time ago – and that despite his trying to rejoin that army only a few days before. King Bottero didn’t want him back? Well, long live Lord Zgomot, then!

He really had turned his coat. He shook his head. No, he’d had it turned for him. If the Lenelli wanted him dead – and they damn well did – how could he think he owed them anything but a good kick in the nuts the first chance he got?

It all made good logical sense. Which proved … what, exactly? If Jews had a country of their own, would Germans feel easy about fighting for it? He had a hard time seeing how. Why would Jews want Germans on their side, anyway?

But that one had an answer. Whatever else you said about Germans, they were better at war than damn near anybody else. They’d shown twice now that they weren’t as good as everybody else put together, but that wasn’t the same thing.

So here I am. I’m good at war, by God. I’m even better here than I would be back home. And I’m fighting for the side that looks like a bunch of fucking Jews. And if that ain’t a kick in the ass, what is?

“Why are you laughing?” Rautat asked.

“Am I?” Hasso said. “Maybe because I am starting to pay the Lenelli back for trying to kill me.” And maybe for other reasons, too.

The one he named satisfied Rautat. “Revenge is good,” the native said seriously. “If anyone wrongs you, pay him back a hundredfold. We say that, and you’re doing it.”

“Yes. I’m doing it. How about that?” Hasso loved How about that? Along with Isn’t that interesting?, it was one of the few things you could say that were almost guaranteed not to get you in trouble.

And I’m already in enough trouble, thank you very much.

He ended up in more trouble when they got to Muresh. His name pursued him through his dreams. He knew what that meant: Aderno and Velona were after him again. He tried to wake himself up, but couldn’t do it. And here in the west of Bucovin, magic worked better than it did farther east.

So Aderno caught up with him in the corridors of sleep. “What did you do?” the Lenello wizard demanded.

“I pay you back for trying to kill me, that’s what,” Hasso said savagely. He found he liked Rautat’s proverb. “You try to kill me three times now. You think I kiss you after that?” He told Aderno where the wizard could kiss him.

“And you pay us back by working magic for the savages?” Aderno said. “You don’t know how filthy that is.”

Lying in these dream quarrels wasn’t easy – Hasso remembered that. So he didn’t say anything at all. He just laughed his ass off. Let Aderno make whatever he wanted out of that. And if he thought Hasso’d routed Bottero’s army with spells, he would only have a harder time figuring out what was really going on.

“Why should I worry?” Aderno said. “If we don’t get you, the Grenye are bound to. They don’t trust renegades, you know.”

“They don’t try to murder me,” Hasso answered. “That’s you.”

“Yes, and we’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Velona said, appearing beside Aderno out of thin air – or, more likely, out of thin dreamstuff. “You deserve it. Anyone who goes over to the savages deserves it. And everyone who goes over to the Grenye will get it. The goddess has told me so.”

“Telling things is easy. Backing up what you say is a lot harder.” How many promises did Hitler make? How many did he keep? “Is the goddess really big enough to swallow all of Bucovin?”

“Of course she is.” Velona had no doubts – when did she ever? “This land will be ours – all of it. So even if you showed the barbarians the trick of your thunder weapon, it won’t matter, because the goddess is on our side.”

God wills it! the Crusaders shouted. And sometimes He did, and sometimes He didn’t, and after a while no more Crusaders were left in the Middle East. Velona was smarter than Aderno, though. She’d figured out what the booms were, and he hadn’t.

“We should have killed you the last time,” she went on. “We’ll just have to try again now.”

“This is what I get for loving you?” Hasso asked, though all the while he knew the answer was yes.

“No one who beds Grenye women can truly love the goddess in me,” Velona said. “And if you don’t care about the goddess, then you don’t care about me, either. Now the goddess cares about you, Hasso Pemsel.” She was still beautiful – beautiful and terrible and terrifying. “I warned you long ago that there was more danger to loving me than the chance of a broken heart. Now you begin to see, and now you begin to pay!”

She gestured to Aderno. Hasso didn’t think she would have let him see that if she could have helped it. But the other side evidently had trouble lying in the dreamscape, too. That was something of a relief. And Hasso sorcerously braced himself as well as he could.

The blow wasn’t so strong as the one a few nights earlier. His being farther east likely had something to do with that. He woke with a shriek, yes, but by now he was almost used to doing that. He didn’t heave his guts out or foul himself, so he reckoned the encounter a success.

Rautat was less delighted. “Do you have to make so much noise?” he asked crossly. “You sound like you’re dying, and you scare me to death.”

“Sorry,” Hasso said. “What do you want me to do when a wizard’s after me?”

“Go after him instead. Make him wake up screaming instead. You can do that shit, right? So do it.”

“I wish I could,” Hasso said, but the Bucovinan underofficer wasn’t listening to him anymore. He swore under his breath. He had no idea how to track Aderno through the Lenello wizard’s dreams, or what to do if he caught him. Having the ability and having the knowledge were two different things. Expecting Rautat to understand that was … hopeless.

Not a sword. A shield. Hasso was a mediocre chess player, but he’d learned enough to know defending was easier than putting together a strong attack. If the other guy needed to work hard to beat you, maybe he’d get sick of trying and go away. Maybe.

“What do you people do against sendings of bad dreams?” he inquired.

“Why ask me?” Rautat said. “Whatever we do, it isn’t real magic.” The common Grenye mixture of fear and bitterness edged his voice. Coming up against magic that did work must have been as horrible a shock for the natives here as the Spaniards’ gunpowder was to the Indians.