The Furred Reich (13 page)

Sleep came quickly, and not long afterward Jochen’s subconscious went to work, spitting back all it had experienced over the years, but until now had no opportunity to talk about. He saw the faces of men he held dearly. He saw the faces of many he had lost. Visions of dead comrades and dead enemies appeared together, and in death there was no distinguishing the two. Poetschke, August Wien, Michael Wittmann, many others. He also saw men he had to leave, men who looked to him for guidance: Micheluzzi, Horst Schumann, Dinse, Paul Zwigart. And others.

But in his dream there was one face that he didn’t recognize. And it kept appearing between those he knew, as if the man had been dropped inside Jochen’s dreams from some place outside his mind.

“Hans.” “Gefreiter Hans Hepner! Roll call!”

“…Hansie?”

Jochen felt himself jolted out of sleep. He rustled around and sat up, noticing shreds of pale moonlight seeping into the barn. Knittel, Rettlinger and Koechlin were all asleep. Guhl was sitting by himself in the far corner. Jochen roused up to his feet and sat next to him, the two of them staring out through the cracks.

“Can’t sleep, sir?”

The two were now of equal rank, yet Guhl still addressed him as a superior. Actually, there were no ranks anymore.

“No…”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yeah. Something like that. All of them keep coming to me in my sleep.”

His former subordinate nodded. “Me too…”

“I miss them already.”

“Yeah…”

There wasn’t much either could do, except just be there. After a moment Guhl glanced over to him.

“Jochen, do you know of a Landser named Hans Hepner?”

Peiper stopped staring out of the barn and whipped around to Guhl. “…Not until I fell asleep tonight. I assume you know of him?”

Guhl shook his head. “No. This Hans guy appeared in my dream, but for the life of me I’ve never seen or heard of the man.”

“It’s funny. I was about to ask you the same question. He also appeared in my dream. I’ll ask Teddy Wisch about it when I’m able to.”

After some two weeks of walking through the Alps on back roads, Peiper and his comrades crossed into Bavaria. He was finally home.

Through much of their journey the five of them marched in silence, and this gave Jochen plenty of time to think about the life that awaited him. It was impossible to know what lay ahead, and that unnerved him. His young wife, son and daughters were in for a surprise! And until his four comrades could find their way home, the Peiper house would be entertaining some guests, too. That thought made him chuckle to himself.

“What are you thinking about?” The tall, bald-headed Knittel asked, shuffling up from the back.

“Oh, not much. Just looking forward to having four house guests for awhile.”

“We… Er… I won’t burden you for too long sir.”

“I almost wish you would.”

Peiper smiled. Springtime in Bavaria made one forget even the darkest of worries.

“FREEZE!”

Jochen had heard English spoken in the past, but not of this kind. It sounded obnoxious, chummy and irritating all at the same time. About twelve American soldiers surrounded them on a tennis court. There was no point in even trying to run.

The Americans searched all five of them, but seemed more interested in the two officers. In a few minutes an American army truck showed up, a Studebaker, from what Jochen could see.

“You two,” the captain said, pointing to Peiper and Guhl, “come with us onto the truck.”

The Americans separated the officers from the other three and loaded them into the back. Jochen looked out between the wooden bars at Koechlin, Knittel and Roettlinger, who were receding into the distance forever.

Gott Mit Uns

Food was running out, yet Asril and the others had made it to the lands bordering Ahuran. Desert sands shifted into deep chasms of russet mountains and cliffs. To Asril, this place looked mythical, a place of stories that never reached the ears of anyone in Aolom. Hex told them that this land had several names to different peoples.

“Once we cross the Surobi River we’ll be there.” He told the three cats one night. “Last time I was here there were roving gangs scouring the lands, and I don’t see a reason for things to be any better these days.”

The next morning Tari distributed the few scraps of food that remained. Although the situation seemed dire, Hex wasn’t worried, and that held everyone together.

While they scaled one of the many steep hills, the Kitsune pulled something out of his brown bag. It was a paw-held cannon of some kind. Asril squinted. She’d never seen anything like it before. It looked like a shiny tube attached to a curved, wooden handle. Hex stuck the paw cannon into a hilt attached to a belt he was now wearing. A belt with a funny crown on the buckle. Tanjung must have noticed it, too.

“What’s that? ‘Gott Mit Uns?’ What does that mean?”

“Actually, I’m not sure what it means. This was a parting gift. From a friend of the family. It might come in handy. Now let’s go.”

By the next day, Asril was beginning to feel light-headed. She wasn’t sure where the border was, only that it was close, and that she wouldn’t be able to make it much farther before her body just gave out. This world was much bigger than she had imagined. Fleeing through deserts and gorges on an empty stomach introduced her to new depths of exhaustion.

“There it is,” Tanjung called out from ahead. “Down there!”

Down there was right. The greenish blue Surobi meandered beneath them as the four of them stared down. It was hard to believe that Ahuran was the gorge on the other side. For so long, Ahuran was just an idea planted in her mind. Now the idea was the reddish crag on the other side of the river, same as the reddish crag they stood upon.

Hex broke the silence. “We just have to find a flat surface. A border crossing will likely be there. If worse comes to worst we can just swim it.”

That sounded like a terrible idea.

“There should be one up this way.”

There was. Sure enough, in the distance Asril could see a boat parked on the misty, red embankment on the other side.

“Aaagh!”

It was Tanjung. An arrow flew out from behind a cropping of rocks, and gouged into his ribs. Two feline-looking bandits jumped out at Tanjung.

“Get back!” he screamed to the girls behind him. The attackers sprinted at Tanjung, but the air soon cracked, and one of the attackers flew back to the sound of Hex’s cannonball and landed with a thud. The other bandit froze in place. Tanjung gutted him and made the assailant pay for his hesitation.

The bandit’s scream was broken by the woosh of another arrow, this one gored through the young cat’s thigh. Tanjung fell to the dust in silence.

Hex’s keen sight returned the favor, though, and Asril heard another cannonball roar up from the ground. It cut through the thicket and thumped into the fur and flesh hidden inside. Another scream came from there. An arrow grazed over Hex and two burly men emerged. They had clubs crowned with nails.

“Nice job fox…” One called out from just a few paces away.

“Give us the two girls and we’ll let you go right on through. If not… a couple more of us die and we get what we want anyway…”

Asril shrieked silently and waited for the Kitsune prince to fire another round. He didn’t. Instead, she saw him stand up and raise his hands. Hex was…

“Get the fuck out of here here, pretty boy. Before we change our minds.”

No! He was just walking off… Hex disappeared behind the thieves and made for the river. The nailbat brutes approached Asril’s thicket. Tari sobbed quietly, unable to control the fear anymore.

“Shh, shhh. We should have never trusted Hex, you hear me?!” Asril hissed.

“Just shut up! Get yourself together – we’re gonna get over to that side yet, understand?!” She continued.

Tari looked to Asril with tear-filled eyes.

“We wait for them to come close, grab us. Then you stick the dagger in. There’s only two of them left. If we both do it there’s only the archer. Aim for the thigh. Right here, OK?” Asril pointed to the inner part of her leg.

“Just one hit. That’s all you need.”

The footsteps approached and Tari’s breathy cries gave the two cats away.

“Well-look-at-this… Fresh meat…”

One of the thugs yanked Tari by the hair and pulled her like a ragdoll. Asril felt another hand grasp her by the scalp, too.

Yes. Stupid men.

Asril flicked out the dagger and jammed it through the armor into the furre’s thigh.

“Ugh! You… Bitch!”

The gurgling came from the other man. Asril’s heart leaped. Tari had done it, too!

Asril hissed at her dying assailant, who was now splurting blood from his artery. She grabbed Tari and scurried off as low to the ground as she could.

“Hey! What the fuck’s going on?” The lone remaining archer called out as he strode to the scene.

An arrow hit him and went clear through his body. Then another. Soon the sky began to rain arrows; arrows coming from the other side of the river. Asril grabbed onto Tari and ran for a nearby tree. The two cowered in fear as flocks of arrows fell down on the dying assailants, and on Tanjung too.

“Come out!” A voice came from across the river. “Come out or we’ll rain more down on you!”

Asril stood and put her paws up. She gave up. There was no way that she and Tari could survive alone on this side of the river. Not without Tanjung.

The archer hit by Hex’s cannon also stood up to surrender. He was chopped down by at least five arrows as soon as he got to his feet. No arrows came for Asril.

“Hey! How many of you are there?”

“Tw-three!”

“We’re coming over!”

A craft cast off from the other side. Asril sprinted over to where Tanjung was laying.

He’d been hit in the chest, and it looked like the arrow pierced his heart. Asril turned him over. Tanjung’s eyes were still open, and it looked like he was trying to smile. For more than a minute she watched Tanjung die. Tari weaned herself out of the shock that left her a quivering mess and came over.

About half-a-dozen soldiers stepped off the raft, their armor shining in the waning sunlight. The lead soldier, and the first Ahurani Asril had ever seen, lifted the visor off his close helmet. He was also a feline. Of some kind.

“Your friend. Will you bury him on our side?” He asked.

“Yes… please…” Asril sniffed and looked down.

The ‘knight’ nodded. Asril and Tari carried their stricken friend onto the ferry, and Tanjung finally reached the land he knew was safe.

Pearls and Swine

“Joachim Peiper, is the most hated man in America…”

It seemed even Jochen’s plans for tomorrow, plans of just being with his family and lending a room to his comrades, were over. He found himself seated before First Lieutenant William Perl of the United States Army. From across the desk, Perl grinned at him in a thinly-concealed snarl.

Weeks-long solitary confinement had preceded the meeting with Perl. Solitary confinement was a curious thing. No matter the intensity, no combat could prepare anyone for being locked in a cell by oneself for so long. It was a trial of its own. Maybe not as stressful a trial as combat, but a different one. As days went by his mind recalled memories from various times: Some from the war, but some also episodes from childhood otherwise long forgotten.

“Stand up!”

Jochen’s solitude was interrupted and a black hood was drown over his head. The hood reminded him something of the Ku Klux Klan, which he’d only seen in films. The inside was smeared with fresh blood and the stench made his stomach churn. Though he couldn’t see anything, he could tell that he was being taken back and forth through the prison. When the hood came off he was in another cell. He could hear sobs and screams of his comrades, and the curses of interrogation officers. If the Americans were supposed to be different from those descendants of Genghis Khan that called themselves Soviets, Jochen couldn’t tell by how the former treated prisoners.

That day an American officer badgered Jochen to remember everything about the Ardennes Offensive of late 1944. Jochen figured this grilling was all about his commander, Sepp Dietrich, for whom the western Allies were rummaging all through occupied Germany.

Unfortunately, Jochen, the Leibstandarte, and even the Fuehrer himself were just as in the dark as the Americans were about Dietrich. He had mysteriously gone missing since December, and even if Jochen knew where Dietrich was, he wouldn’t tell the these people.

But when the Americans transferred him yet again, Jochen soon realized that this was about far more than just his former commander.

“The ‘incident’ at Malmedy Crossroads can no longer be ignored,” Lieutenant Perl scowled at him.

In the captivity of Perl, Jochen quickly came to understand that he was a fixation to the Americans due to an incident where American prisoners were shot by soldiers under his command. Killing prisoners was not the Leibstandarte’s policy, but both sides sometimes did so after the landing at Normandy, depending on combat circumstances.

Perl himself looked far less sharp than did the American military uniform which he wore, not least because of a five-o-clock shadow that seemed to crop permanently around his soft jawline. The interrogator looked at Jochen with looming, dark eyes a thick, pouty lips. Perl spoke German with an Austrian accent, he certainly didn’t look German, and that could only mean one thing. It was clear to Jochen that the ‘Malmedy Commission’ was only about revenge.

“Even if you were an extraordinary soldier, you mustn’t forget today’s realities,” Perl wheezed out with a grin.

“Your time is gone and will never come back. And look at things from our perspective. You’ll see it’s all just business. People listen to you, don’t they? Your men deify you. Surely you must see how dangerous this makes you to the occupying forces, am I right?”

Jochen deadpanned.

“Don’t wish to speak? No matter… You know, individual guilt was never something I cared for. Your only real crime is that you lost the war. But I give you my word that you will never again see the light of day. We’re going to eliminate the lot of you. And this trial will be the basis on which we declare the entire SS a criminal organization. So, why not just reconcile yourself to the inevitable? Confess that you gave the order as their commanding officer.”