The Bavarian Gate By John Dalmas

Compared to those they’d conquered, the Voitusotar were not a numerous people, despite intrinsically long lifespans and an indisposition to illness. For they were not very fertile, even among themselves, and they culled their offspring. But they were shrewd and ruthless warriors and potent sorcerers, whose hive mind enabled them to plan and coordinate in battle to a degree inconceivable to humans.

She also began to teach him the language of the land, Hithmearcisc. It was not, she said, the language the Voitusotar had brought with them, but in time it became the one they used. Voitik was used primarily for naming and spells.

He found himself recognizing occasional words he’d learned in Yuulith. Hithmearcisc and Yuultal seemed to be of the same world, sister tongues, apparently with an ocean somehow in between. This sparked his interest, and as he began to develop an ear for Hithmearcish, he recognized more and more cognates.

He avoided mentioning Yuultal, and Rillissa commented on how rapidly he learned. Probably she mentioned it to Kurqosz as well.

Just after daybreak on the fifth day, the barges came to a city known as Voitazosz, gray with old and dirty snow, and murky with drizzle. By that time, to Rillissa’s annoyance, her sexual demands had debilitated Macurdy. Fortunately he’d gotten her pregnant; that was clear to him from her aura. And to her from the hive mind: The embryo was already plugged into it, so to speak, a minute and primitive animal presence that shared life force with all her father’s race, and with some mixed-bloods like herself.

The only person Macurdy wanted to sire children on was Mary, who was in another world. Meanwhile, Rillissa’s pregnancy had taken the pressure off him.

At Voitazosz, the River Quarm flowed into the Rovenstarn, and their steersmen turned up it. Two miles above the city was the imperial palace, extensive as a town-mighty fortress walls with towers and domes looming above them. As a farmboy from Washington County, Indiana, warlord of Yuulith’s Rude Lands, undersheriff of Nehtaka County, and an American G.I. in England, nothing he’d ever seen had struck him as so impressive or so foreign.

There were stone docks outside the walls, and a slip for landing important people. It was there they tied up and disembarked. Human dockers handled the lines and unloaded the baggage. Without being conspicuous about it, they eyed Macurdy curiously, a human of seeming consequence in the Crown Prince’s entourage.

He discovered that inside the walls, buildings occupied less than half the ground. As a group they were not attractive. Individually some were, but they went together poorly, like Tudor and Bauhaus. Not that Macurdy analyzed the situation, but he sensed it. Of the ground unbuilt upon, much was paved with flagstone, while such gardens and lawns as there were, were drab with winter. The overall impact was aesthetically poor, as if the Voitusotar, or at least the imperial family, were imperceptive or didn’t care.

The interiors were far better, with statuary, precious metals, stained glass, tiles, parquet, richly figured woods, paintings, tapestries, and gems. And quality construction. The designs were seldom inspired, but neither were they hodgepodges. And the buildings were centrally heated, their fireplaces supplemental or simply decorative. The small bedroom assigned to Macurdy-not shared with Rillissa-had a warm-air vent in one comer, while a closet contained a snug-lidded commode, emptied twice a day by some luckless servant, through a back panel that opened into a utility space. , All in all, Macurdy was impressed.

A Voitu named Zhilnasz was his trainer, and for a time the emphasis was not on monsters, but on creating and casting plasmas, and occasionally Kurgosz tested his “German” protege. This casting of plasmas did not go well, partly because Macurdy deliberately withheld himself; he’d done better years before in Yuulith. It seemed to him that if he succeeded, Kurqosz might keep him in Hithmearc. For why would the Nazis be interested in someone who could cast a two or three-inch plasma a hundred meters-or even a few hundred meterl-when they had thousands on thousands of 88mm artillery eces and assorted larger guns, each with far greater power Nor had he forgotten Arbel’s warning on the personal dangers in creating large magicks, dangers to which it seemed the Voitusotar were immune.

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