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honor is threatened if I challenge a clear lie,” he said. “It will only make you look more foolish when I use the truth spell.”
    “Ah, the truth spell. I forgot about that,” Hasso said. “Yes, go ahead.”
    “You really are a crazy man, outlander. If you want to prove it to the world, if you want to prove it to the woman who has taken a fancy to you ... well, we can do that.” Aderno aimed a long, lean wizardly forefinger at him. “Tell me again how many people live in this town of yours.”
    “About four million,” Hasso answered stolidly.
    The wizard sketched a star in the air between them. It glowed green. Velona clapped her hands together and laughed out loud. Aderno look as if someone had stuck a knife in him. “But it can’t be!” he protested
    - to whom, Hasso wasn’t sure. Most likely to the ghost of his own assumptions.
    “You can apologize now,” Hasso said. Or you can kiss my ass. I don’t much care which. Aderno had the air of a man who’d put out his foot for a step that wasn’t there and fallen five meters. “I think I would rather believe you can fool the truth spell than believe in a city with four thousand thousand people in it,” he muttered.
    “Believe whatever you please,” Hasso said. “You asked me, so I told you. If you don’t like it, it’s no skin off my nose. You wanted to brag about how wonderful Drammen is, and you got a surprise. Shall we ride now?”
    They rode. As they went along, Velona and Aderno got into a screaming row. Every so often, one of them would point Hasso’s way, so he figured they were arguing about him. Velona went on laughing, so he guessed she believed him, whether the wizard did or not. Hasso heard the words four million more than once. Maybe it would have been better if Aderno hadn’t asked him. Too late to worry about that, though.
    Hasso wondered what the ordinary Lenello troopers thought. He couldn’t tell. Those proud faces might have been carved from stone for all they showed. SS recruiting posters with men like that on them would have pulled in twice the volunteers - or maybe none at all, since so many would have despaired of measuring up to that standard.
    Still, men were men, horses were horses, pigs were pigs ... and Aderno’s unicorn was a goddamn unicorn, and his magic was, without a doubt, real, live magic. Hasso didn’t know much about this world, but he knew it was different from his. And his was different from this one, and the people here seemed to have more trouble than he did working that out.
    Drammen lay on the Drammion. Hasso judged the river more impressive than the Spree, which ran through Berlin, but less impressive than the Danube or the Rhine. Barges and sailboats came down the river to the city; sailboats fought their way up to it against the current. No motors anywhere, which didn’t surprise him. He didn’t miss the stink of exhaust.
    And if he had, there were plenty of other stinks to savor. He’d grown intimately familiar with horse manure and unwashed humanity during the war. The wind wafted those odors from Drammen to his nose. And with them came the stench of what might have been every sour privy in the world. He’d seen at the castles that the Lenelli didn’t have much of a notion of plumbing. Now, approaching a city - not a large city, by his standards, but a city even so - he got a real whiff of what that meant. No wonder Aderno hadn’t wanted to imagine the filth from four million Berliners. Catching Velona’s eye, Hasso screwed up his face and held his nose. She laughed and nodded, but then shrugged and spread her hands as if to say, What can you do?
    “Cities always stink,” Aderno said.
    Sure they do, if there’s no running water and horses shit in the streets, Hasso thought. He didn’t want to think about the flies in Drammen. As if to mock him, a big shiny one lit on the back of his hand. He swatted at it - and missed.
    “Stink or no stink, though, have you ever seen finer works than the