The Milkweed Triptych 01 - Bitter Seeds (38 page)

F
rozen earth meant shallow graves. Shallow graves meant easy picking. r And so the ravens of Albion gathered along parapets and treetops while the men from the island quietly buried their dead.

Twenty-six holes, dug in neat little rows for bodies that weren’t so tidy.

Some were sooty black things, curled tightly upon themselves; preternatural fire had charred these men to the core. This flesh, the ravens knew, wasn’t worth the effort. Heat had seared away its nutrients; it was little better than eating charcoal.

Others had been crushed, their every bone pulped. These retained their man-shapes solely by virtue of their skin. Better than the scorched dead, but still too much effort. Meat mixed with bone dust and bile. Bitter, and difficult to digest.

A number of dead had succumbed to more familiar injuries, ones the ravens had seen time and again. Their bodies were perforated with holes both large and small, some that still contained metal. Bodies like these were strewn across the continent: the detritus of war.

But the best meat came from that handful of men who had died without apparent injury. These were the men who had traveled through places the ravens could never visit, whose souls and sanity had been lost in transit. Perfect, unblemished, lifeless bodies.

The ravens waited until the holes had been filled, until the men with shovels and spades left the valiant dead to their peace. Then, as one, they descended.

They picked at mounds of freshly turned soil while their cousins to the east, upon the Continent, did much the same in the field behind a ruined farmhouse.

Many years had passed since new burials had drawn the ravens to this farm. There had been a time when it was littered with tiny graves, each no larger than a sack of grain. But new burials had come less and less frequently, until they ceased altogether.

Thus with great interest did the ravens watch as bodies were pulled from the wreckage. Several had died in the farmhouse, but only one evoked tears and anguish. The ravens recognized this bald little man; his experiments had fed them well in bygone years.

His body did not join the others in the cold, hard earth. The mourners cremated him upon a hellish pyre that crumbled his bones to ash. Winter wind sent his remains aloft, beyond where the ravens circled, and farther still.

To the east, to the far edge of the Continent, where his ashes mingled with snow and fell in large gray flakes upon the armies converging there. Erstwhile partners in invasion now assessed each other warily, like lonely revelers eyeing each other across an empty dance floor. They watched for feints and missteps, waiting for new music, for a new dance to begin.

The ravens of Eastern Europe had watched this impasse take shape. Now they waited hungrily for the spring thaw that would rouse these forces into motion.

But the farmhouse and the events there had become a pivot, the fulcrum upon which politics and aggression hinged: twin levers that could move whole armies in new directions. Winter hadn’t yet diminished when the would-be aggressors lost their appetite for eastern conquests. Instead, they reevaluated. Consolidated.

The would-be defenders watched. And waited.

Spring came fitfully. The changing seasons were punctuated with savage, unnatural cold snaps.

Ravens everywhere huddled in their nests, to ride out the ice.

21 April 1941

15 kilometers east of Stuttgart, Germany

T
he supply truck toppled over, accompanied by the groan of creaking axles and the smashing of unsecured crates. Mud fountained up where the truck crashed in the ditch. The swath of cotton duck stretched over the cargo bed created a spray of slush when it hit the earth.

“God damn you, idiot.” Hauptsturmführer Spalcke, Buhler’s replacement, yanked on Kammler’s leash with both fists, hard enough to make the big man stumble. “You stupid, shit-eating retard! I despise you.”

“T-t-t-” Kammler looked back and forth between the truck, now sprawled alongside the winding road to Stuttgart, and Spalcke. He moved awkwardly. A round from a British sidearm had shattered his clavicle in December. Ostensibly it had healed—the doctors said he no longer needed to wear the sling—but Klaus suspected poor Kammler would suffer an aching collarbone for the rest of his life. Especially
when the weather fluctuated so wildly; the stumps of Klaus’s fingers ached.

“S-s-s-s . . .” Kammler’s face turned red.

“S-s-s-stupid,” said Spalcke. He savaged Kammler’s leash again. “S-s-s-pathetic.”

Kammler’s wide confused eyes flicked back and forth. His face was turning purple.

Klaus stepped in. “You’re hurting him,” he said. “He doesn’t understand.”

“Of course he doesn’t understand! He’s a worthless turd of a human being.”

“You’re making it worse. Give me the leash,” Klaus said. His tone turned the suggestion into a de facto order, though the hauptsturmführer technically outranked him.

Spalcke wheeled on Klaus, still enraged. “Have you forgotten your place?”

Klaus let his overcoat fall open, so that Spalcke could see clearly the wire plugged into his battery harness.

“No. You have.”

The two men faced each other for a long moment. Spalcke looked away. He dropped the leash and stomped back to the second supply truck.

He passed Reinhardt, who watched the proceedings from a stand of cherry trees a little farther up the road. The previous day’s storm had glazed the white blossoms with ice, freezing trees in midbloom. The ice on the boughs above Reinhardt melted, dripping water that flashed into steam when it fell on him. Behind him sparkled the terraced vineyards of the Rems Valley.

Klaus loosened the choke collar squeezing Kammler’s throat. Quietly, so that Spalcke and Reinhardt couldn’t hear, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

Kammler rocked back and forth. He looked at Klaus. Normal coloration returned to his face. “B-buh-b-b—”

“He’s gone, Kammler. You need to understand that.” Klaus kept his
grip on the leash, but didn’t pull on it. “Now. Can you help me move that truck?”

The mud in the ditch was exceptionally thick. All across central Europe, winter and spring were engaged in a battle of their own, vying for supremacy. The seasons were not turning so much as brawling. Just as soon as the earth thawed and new buds sprouted on the trees, an ice storm or blizzard would come howling out of nowhere. But then the temperature shot up thirty degrees, the landscape erupted with new greenery, and the cycle began anew.

But the weather wasn’t the worst thing about this trip.

After several tries, murmuring a constant stream of monosyllabic encouragements into Kammler’s ear, Klaus eventually managed to get the truck out of the ditch, turned upright, and set back on the road. It wasn’t so difficult, with a bit of patience. That much was obvious to Klaus, who had watched Buhler and Kammler for years. He wondered how Spalcke had been chosen for the job.

“Good job, Kammler,” said Klaus. “Well done.”

He unbuckled the collar around Kammler’s throat and checked the gauge on his battery harness. It was depleted. Klaus cursed to himself. It could have been dangerous, even deadly, had Kammler’s battery died while he was levitating the truck. Lazy Spalcke wasn’t keeping a close eye on his ward’s battery. Klaus called to one of the regular troops in their entourage, an SS-Oberschütze who had trained as a rifleman with the LSSAH prior to his assignment at the REGP. The private jogged over, saluting.

“Tend to his battery,” said Klaus, motioning at Kammler with a nod of his head. “And see that he’s fed.”

He left the rest of the troops assessing damage to the fallen truck. They climbed onto the cargo bed, tying down the crates, and under the carriage, checking for damage to the axles and drive train.

Klaus squelched across the road to join Reinhardt. A low sun cast long shadows down the valley; he had to shade his eyes to see the Aryan salamander.

“We’re behind schedule,” he said. “The demonstrations will have
to wait for tomorrow.” He tried to keep the relief out of his voice as he said it.

Reinhardt snorted. “I shouldn’t worry if I were you. Surely your sister would have
warned
us if it were a problem.” He spoke quietly, as though Gretel were within earshot and he didn’t want her to overhear the venom dripping from his words. Perhaps she
could
hear them; perhaps she’d listened to this conversation long ago.

Gretel could have saved Doctor von Westarp. She’d known all along what was coming, but had refrained from saying anything. The doctor had died simply because she wanted him to. Or because she couldn’t be bothered to care.

The OKW was furious. The Führer had raged for days on end upon receiving the news. Doctor von Westarp’s genius had been the axle about which the Reich spun its plans for further conquests. But now he was gone, his body scattered to the winds, along with his plans for expanding the Reichsbehörde. Deprived of the second-generation Götterelektrongruppe he’d promised, the Reich was scrambling to revamp its entire strategy for the war.

Gretel had put everything on precarious footing. Yet nobody confronted her. Nobody dared.

The simplest questions colored every interaction with the mad seer: Is this what she wants? Am I doing her bidding? Has she seen this moment? Anticipated it?

Will I upset her?

Now everybody feared Gretel the same way Klaus did, though he didn’t hate her as the others did. How could he? She was his sister.

Reinhardt continued, “Anyway, who cares? I don’t. This trip is a farce.”

“We have our orders,” said Klaus. He couldn’t muster the energy to infuse the words with conviction. He hated this recruitment drive as much as Reinhardt did, though for utterly different reasons.
We’re all orphans again. So why does he still hold sway over us?
“We have to finish the doctor’s work.”

“We should be on the front, tearing our enemies apart.”

“Just the three of us? How long do you think we’d last, outnumbered ten thousand to three?”

Reinhardt spat into the mud. “I’m wasted here.”

“This is important work,” said Klaus. “Valuable work.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Klaus. Maybe you’ll start to believe it.”

“The farm will need volunteers once the doctor’s work has been reconstructed.” Klaus shuddered, remembering the new machines. Machines for disposing of failed subjects.

The LSSAH men deemed the toppled supply truck to be in suitable shape for driving. Klaus and Reinhardt rejoined the small convoy as the trucks growled back to life, belching black smoke and diesel exhaust.

As Reinhardt climbed back into the cab of his truck, he said, “We’re all that’s left, Klaus. We’re all there will ever be.”

They entered Stuttgart at sunset. Klaus watched the glow of streetlamps move in a wave across the city as the setting sun plunged the valley into shadow. Handbills advertising the Götterelektrongruppe’s demonstrations had been pinned or pasted to every public notice board their small convoy passed.

The mundane troops joined the local Waffen-SS garrison for the night. Klaus, Reinhardt, Kammler, and Spalcke were hosted by the Lord Mayor of Stuttgart. Birdlike Herr Strogan received them as honored guests, plying them with food, drink, and an atmosphere of strained goodwill. Yet throughout their dinner—roast duck, trout from the nearby Neckar river, white asparagus, and sweet wine from the local vineyards—his eyes wandered to Klaus’s missing fingers, or Reinhardt’s self-igniting cigarettes, or the wine dribbling down Kammler’s chin.

The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes grew tighter, too, as Reinhardt charmed the young Fräulein Strogan. The mayor couldn’t mask the look of impotent despair on his face each time his daughter laughed at one of Reinhardt’s jokes, or gasped at his wildly exaggerated war exploits. Klaus wondered what Lord Mayor Strogan had been told about these strangers from the little-known Götterelektrongruppe.

That night, Klaus and Reinhardt slept in adjacent rooms. Klaus
wrapped a pillow around his head to drown out Reinhardt’s snoring and the fräulein’s weeping.

There had been a time when he’d been accustomed to sleeping while others wept. What had changed? Reinhardt had grown more brazen with his appetites. That was it, Klaus lied to himself. The problem was Reinhardt.