"How could you…? Oh. The sun." Hasso felt foolish. He was used to wrist-watches and clocks and always knowing just what time it was. Getting accustomed to slower, more approximate timekeeping hadn't been easy.
Scanno nodded. "That's right. I woke up with a demon of a headache, and with a goose's egg right between my eyes. If I was going a little bit faster, I bet I would've broken my stupid head. I got up — that took some doing, too — and I found what I'd run into."
"What about the buck?" Hasso asked.
"Gone," Scanno said mournfully. "I lost the blood trail the other side of those bushes hiding the skeleton. The headache I had, I lost my appetite, too, but I knew that would come back sooner or later. I didn't quite starve, or I wouldn't be here now, right?"
"Right," Hasso said. "It's a good story."
"But you don't believe a word of it."
"I didn't say that."
"Like you needed to." Scanno drew out something on a thong from under his tunic. Lots of Lenelli and Grenye wore amulets of one kind or another. Scanno's was plainer than most: a fragment of what looked like bone, drilled through so it would take the leather thong. "This is dragon skull. I worried it off with my knife. Hard like anything — I had to hone the blade afterwards."
"All right." For all Hasso knew, the bit of bone came from a donkey. He didn't want to argue with Scanno, though. What was the use? He couldn't prove the Lenello renegade was lying.
Or maybe he could, if he could master the truth spell Aderno had used. Would it work here in Falticeni? Most magic seemed to falter here. And Aderno's spell, for that matter, had faltered against Scanno back in Drammen.
Instead of experimenting with sorcery, Hasso asked, "Do you want to throw me around for a while?"
"Sure!" Scanno said eagerly, and he did.
Hasso used the baths in the palace almost every day. Scanno laughed at him for that; the Lenelli were a less cleanly folk than the Bucovinans. Hasso took the ribbing and ignored it. He'd been clean and he'd been dirty, and he liked clean better. Besides, even with the drafts, the bathhouse had to be the warmest room in the palace.
Rautat noticed his habits, too. "One more thing that says you really aren't one of those people, even if you look like them," the veteran underofficer remarked as he scrubbed in a hot pool of an afternoon. His scars weren't puckered craters like Hasso's; they were long, pale lines on his dark skin.
"I'm me, that's all," Hasso answered. They were both using Bucovinan. Hasso had got to the point where he could follow it pretty well. He spoke more hesitantly.
"Yeah, well, you aren't so bad." Rautat ducked his head under the water and came up blowing like a porpoise.
"Thanks." Hasso submerged, too.
When he came up, a couple of women were walking past, heading for another pool. They chatted idly, paying Rautat no attention and Hasso hardly any; people in the palace were used to him by now. Neither of them wore any more than she'd been born with. The Bucovinans were easy in their skins, easier than the Lenelli and much easier than any Germans except a few resolute naturists.
Back in Germany, Hasso had always thought those people were nuts. When he landed in a country where everybody took nudity in stride, he had to think again. He'd been doing nothing but thinking again since he landed in this world. What was one more time?
He did notice that, just as he tried not to bathe while Drepteaza was in there, she also found ways not to come in while he was. If she was already washing when he came in, she hurried to get out. If he got there before her, she would wait till he finished.
She didn't seem angry at him, not when they met for language lessons or to talk about gunpowder and other things he knew and the natives didn't. Maybe she thought he wasn't just seeing her nude — he was seeing her naked. If that was what was going on — he didn't want to come right out and ask her — he admired her tact. He also admired her for understanding that foreigners had different ways of looking at things, whether literally or metaphorically.
And, if that was what she thought, she was dead right.
He wished she were interested. Laying Grenye women who gave themselves to him because they were supposed to was better than not laying anybody. But he remembered Velona too well. After going to bed with her, the natives didn't seem like anything special. And, except as convenient bodies, he didn't care much about Leneshul or Gishte.
Drepteaza would be different — he was sure of that. It wasn't just that she was prettier than they were. She was smarter and livelier and…
And she wasn't interested in him.
You can't have too much of what you don't want. Somebody'd said that where Hasso could hear it, and he thought it was true. Screwing the Grenye women gave him physical relief, yes indeed. But it wasn't what he wanted, so every time he did it he felt emptier inside.
Yeah, Drepteaza would be different. He was sure she would… except he was what she didn't want. He wasn't a Lenello. No matter what he was, he looked like one. For the priestess, the way he looked was plenty.
Not wanting somebody because of how he looked — wasn't that surprising, not really. Hasso had judged plenty of people by their looks — Frenchmen (and — women), Jews, Ivans, Poles. It was much less enjoyable when other people judged him.
"You worked in Drammen, you say," he said to Rautat, there in the baths. Anything was better than brooding about all the reasons Drepteaza wanted nothing to do with him.
"That's right." Rautat nodded, water dripping off his chin and the end of his nose. "Wanted to pick up the lingo, wanted to learn things the Lenelli know and we don't. Did it, too, and came home."
"What do you think of Lenelli, then?" Hasso asked.
"Bunch of big blond pricks," Rautat said promptly. "No offense."
"Yeah, sure," Hasso said. They both grinned.
"Well, it's the truth. They treat Grenye like donkey turds in the street," Rautat said. "And the Grenye there, some of them are so beaten down, they feel like they deserve to get treated that way, poor sorry bastards. If they try to stand up, they get knocked down. Is it any wonder so many of 'em stay plastered all the time? I guess it doesn't get to you so much that way."
"What about Lenello women?" No, Hasso couldn't stay away from the sore spot.
"Big blond cows," Rautat replied. "Who wants a gal taller than he is?"
Velona was damn near as tall as Hasso. He thought he would have wanted her if she were three meters tall. Whether she would have wanted him then, of course, was a different story. And Queen Pola was almost as tall as he was, too, and he didn't want her for beans. If she were fifteen or twenty centimeters taller than he was, she would have made him want to run away.
"Maybe you have something there," he said.
"You better believe it." Like any good underofficer, Rautat was sure of himself. "I guess Lenello women are all right for you, 'cause you're a big blond guy yourself." He didn't say big blond prick again, which was something. "But me, I pick on somebody my own size." Hasso thought that was what the idiom meant, anyhow; it might have been bawdier.
He didn't want to leave the baths. Before long, it would be spring, and then summer. Bucovin would warm up. But it wasn't warm now, even if Velona had been right: it didn't get as cold as Russia.
Dammit, he couldn't get her out of his head. He didn't want to be one of those men who spent years mooning after a lost lover and never did get on with their lives. He didn't want to, no, but he didn't know what he could do about it. He'd really and truly fallen in love with her.
She'd warned him not to. How were you supposed to listen to a warning like that, though? If you were a male human being, how could you help falling hard for a gorgeous, sexy woman who screwed like there was no tomorrow?