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.”
Jochen figured this was the Americans’ last move in casting a web of lies around he and his men. Jochen gave no such order, nor did anyone above him. The interrogator knew this, of course, but Lieutenant Perl was appealing to the responsibilities which a Prussian officer had toward his subordinates. Perl must have figured that Jochen would not shrink from this responsibility. And Perl would be right. Jochen finally looked right back at Perl and nodded.
“I will agree to this… But only on the condition that you promise that all the soldiers in my regiment be let go.”
Perl’s face lit up with hate as he began to laugh. “Your compromise is refused, and I’ll even tell you why. Even if you now committed suicide in your cell and left a declaration that you gave the order to shoot those men, I would contest this in court and testify that you had nothing to do with the shooting. You see? The Fuehrer’s loyal Leibstandarte isn’t going to get away that easily.”
It was not hard to see what was coming. Jochen prepared himself to be executed in cold blood.
He was thrown back into the dark cellar and later received word that he would be transferred permanently to an interrogation center in the American-occupied sector. What else the Americans could possibly plan to do with him, Jochen had no idea.
The Breadhouse
Hans walked away from foxen country for at least an hour. He no longer felt comfortable in open, broad daylight. Marching further from foxen country he saw no one, and avoided the odd country home that spotted the horizon. This side of the woods felt like the French countryside on a sunny day.