There were dead men in the pit, ten of them, all in German uniforms of either gray or black, all moving about—even the one without the head!
Cuza opened his eyes again. In the hellish half-light that suffused the chamber he watched one of the corpses crawl crablike up the side of the pit and throw an armful of dirt over the far edge, then slide back down to the bottom.
Cuza pushed himself away from the wall and staggered to the edge for another look.
They appeared not to need their eyes, for they never looked at their hands as they dug in the cold hard earth. Their dead joints moved stiffly, awkwardly, as if resisting the power that impelled them, yet they worked tirelessly, in utter silence, surprisingly efficient despite their ataxic movements. The scuffling and shuffling of their boots, the scraping of their bare hands on the near-frozen soil as they deepened and widened the excavation ... the noise rose and echoed off the walls and ceiling of the chamber, eerily amplified.
Suddenly, the noise stopped, gone as if it had never been. They had all halted their movements and now stood perfectly still.
Molasar spoke beside him. "My talisman lies buried beneath the last few inches of soil. You must remove it from the earth."
"Can't they—?" Cuza's stomach turned at the thought of going down there.
"They are too clumsy."
Looking pleadingly at Molasar, he asked, "Couldn't you unearth it yourself? I'll take it anywhere you want me to after that."
Molasar's eyes blazed with impatience. "It is part of your task! A simple one! With so much at stake do you balk now at dirtying your hands?"
"No! No, of course not! It's just..." He glanced again at the corpses.
Molasar followed his gaze. Although he said nothing, made no signal, the corpses began to move, turning simultaneously and crawling out of the pit. When they were all out, they stood in a ring along its edge. The rats crawled around and over their feet. Molasar's eyes swung back to Cuza.
Without waiting to be told again, Cuza eased himself over the edge and slid along the damp dirt to the bottom. He balanced the flashlight on a rock and began to scrape away the loose earth at the nadir point of the conical pit. The cold and the filth didn't bother his hands. After the initial revulsion at digging in the same spot as the corpses, he found he actually enjoyed being able to work with his hands again, even at so menial a task as this. And he owed it all to Molasar. It was good to sink his fingers into the earth and feel the soil come away in chunks. It exhilarated him and he increased his pace, working feverishly.
His hands soon contacted something other than dirt. He pulled at it and unearthed a square packet, perhaps a foot long on each side and a few inches thick. And heavy—very heavy. He pulled off the half-rotted cloth wrapper and then unfolded the coarse fabric that made up the inner packing.
Something bright, metallic, and heavy lay within. Cuza caught his breath—at first he thought it was a cross. But that couldn't be. It was an almost-cross, designed along the same eccentric lines as the thousands laid into the walls of the keep. Yet none of those could compare with this one. For here was the original, an inch thick all around, the template on which all the others had been modeled. The upright was rounded, almost cylindrical and, except for a deep slot in its top, appeared to be of solid gold. The crosspiece looked like silver. He studied it briefly through the lower lenses of his bifocals but could find no designs or inscriptions.
Molasar's talisman—the key to his power. It stirred Cuza with awe. There was power in it—he could feel the power surge into his hands as he held it. He lifted it for Molasar to see and thought he detected a glow around it—or was that merely a reflection of the flashlight beam off its bright surface?
"I've found it!"
He could not see Molasar above but noticed the animated corpses backing away as he lifted the crosslike object over his head.
"Molasar! Do you hear me?"
"Yes." The voice seemed to come from somewhere back in the tunnel. "My power now resides in your hands. Guard it carefully until you have hidden it where no one will find it."
Exhilarated, Cuza tightened his grip on the talisman.
"When do I leave? And how?"
"Within the hour—as soon as I have finished with the German interlopers. They must all pay now for invading my keep."
The pounding on the door was accompanied by someone's calling his name. It sounded like Sergeant Oster's voice ... on the verge of hysteria. But Major Kaempffer was taking no chances. As he shook himself out of his bedroll, he grabbed his Luger.
"Who is it?" He let his annoyance show in his tone. This was the second time tonight he had been disturbed. The first for that fruitless sortie across the causeway with the Jew, and now this. He glanced at his watch: almost four o'clock! It would be light soon. What could anyone want at this hour? Unless—someone else had been killed.
"It's Sergeant Oster, sir."
"What is it this time?" Kaempffer said, opening the door. One look at the sergeant's white face and he knew something was terribly wrong. More than just another death.
"It's the captain, sir... Captain Woermann—"
"It got him?" Woermann? Murdered? An officer?
"He killed himself, sir."
Kaempffer stared at the sergeant in mute shock, recovering only with great effort.
"Wait here." Kaempffer closed the door and hurriedly pulled on his trousers, slipped into his boots, and threw his uniform jacket over his undershirt without bothering to button it. Then he returned to the door. "Take me to where you found him."
As he followed Oster through the disassembled portions of the keep, Kaempffer realized that the thought of Klaus Woermann killing himself disturbed him more than if he had been killed like all the rest. It wasn't in Woermann's makeup. People do change, but Kaempffer could not imagine the teenager who had single-handedly sent a company of British soldiers running in the last war to be a man who would take his own life in this war, no matter what the circumstances.
Still ... Woermann was dead. The only man who could point to him and say "Coward!" had been rendered forever mute. That was worth everything Kaempffer had endured since his arrival at this charnel house. And there was a special satisfaction to be gained from the manner of Woermann's death. The final report would hide nothing: Captain Klaus Woermann would go down on record as a suicide. A disgraceful death. Worse than desertion. Kaempffer would give much to see the look on the faces of the wife and the two boys Woermann had been so proud of—what would they think of their father, their hero, when they heard the news?
Instead of leading him across the courtyard to Woermann's quarters, Oster made a sharp right turn that led Kaempffer down the corridor to where he had imprisoned the villagers on the night of his arrival. The area had been partially dismantled during the past few days. They made the final turn and there was Woermann.
He hung by a thick rope, his body swaying gently as if in a breeze; but the air was still. The rope had been thrown over an exposed ceiling beam and tied to it. Kaempffer saw no stool and wondered how Woermann had got himself up there. Perhaps he had stood on one of the piles of stone block here and there...
... the eyes. Woermann's eyes bulged in their sockets. For an instant Kaempffer had the impression that the eyes shifted as he approached, then realized it was just a trick of the light from the bulbs along the ceiling.