The silk faces gathered around Davies, joining a circle with Lohmann’s greying temples, and they began a low, gruelling chant.
* * *
Müller could barely have seen anything more gratifying when his unit reached the edge of the Greek encampment. A sea of gore had washed the sand. The bloodborns were tearing through the Greek troops with terrific speed, shredding skin and muscle from the terrified army as flamethrower units laced the red sky with fire. The German’s pressed rifle shots into the back of the panicked Greeks, a unit of ten SS against thousands of enemies. Such glory. The bloodborn imps tore through Greek offal, the flamethrower fire only able to contain a fraction of the bursting eggs as the Greeks’ composure broke completely and rifle crews routed in the direction of Sarandë, only to dissolve in a withering wave of German MG 34 fire.
Such glory.
Müller turned his boyish joy back to the tavern and the burning roses of the MG 34 muzzles, but perplexity clouded his happiness as crackling lightning bristled the tavern’s roof. His unit was under no threat from the Greeks. He swapped the magazine on his pistol as he charged back across the sand towards the tavern, careful to avoid being mistaken for a Greek deserter by the German machine gunners.
* * *
“What’s happening?”
“Shut up and target the canisters on the backs of the flamethrowers,” ordered the communist commander. The sniper looked sideways at him over his scope.
“I will not.”
Zachariadis seized the collar of his donkey jacket.
“Do it, or there will be none of them left to save and the Italians will be able to walk into Greece. Use your eyes, man. The Germans are using some devilry. We must burn it.”
The sniper looked at the commander’s calloused fingers on his collar, paused, then returned his eye to the rifle’s scope. The first shot missed. Zachariadis soothed him with words of encouragement. The second round tore through the base of one of the Greek flamethrower tanks. The explosion thudded over the relentless gunfire and emitted wheeling, burning Greek men. Like some satanic Zeppelin, the bloodborn cloud began to burn in the air. A second explosion of cooking gas canisters engulfed a patch of tents large enough to house several hundred men: innumerable bloodborn flashed into nothingness.
Zachariadis grabbed the sniper again and pointed down to Müller’s rifle unit on the edge of the camp. The sniper didn’t hesitate this time, smashing a round into the ear of one of the SS soldiers. The commander frantically signalled the rest of his communists, some twenty men, to open fire on the Germans while they struggled to rework cover to guard their flank. Zachariadis grinned as more of the Greek army made good their escape. The Germans’ situation switched in seconds from dominance to certain death as the bloodborns screeched in the flames and the Greeks began to regroup.
* * *
While Lohmann had judged Müller nothing but an idiot, this was only partially true. The SS squad leader had been diligent when assigned to shepherding the Black Sun unit deep into enemy territory, and had immersed himself in several weeks of research before the team left Germany. He was well aware of Lohmann’s status as the most powerful sorcerer in the Black Sun order, second only to founder Reinhardt Weissler himself, and was under no illusion as to the severity of the situation when he halted at the smashed tavern door. The machine guns hadn’t fired for some minutes and now Müller saw why: the gunners, despite wearing protective rings, had been replaced with a pool of gore and some twisted metal. White light fizzed all about the group of floating sorcerers, a rotating black mass around Lohmann and something Müller assumed used to be Davies. The Greek diver had transformed into a bubbling slug-like creature with a purple, gelatinous skirt. His antenna wept a fluid not dissimilar to molten ice cream onto Lohmann’s juddering hands as the sorcerers chanted the rites of a spell Müller recognised instantly as the Dread Equinox, or at least some darker chaotic variant of it. While the details of the incantation itself were kept secret from those outside the Black Sun and it was only the most powerful groups able to cast it or even have intimate knowledge of its working, Müller had read several accounts of it being put into practice on the battlefield by Black Sun operatives. The white lightning and hovering circle of Canons left the SS officer with no alternative: if he didn’t interrupt the casting he’d be consumed with everything else in the immediate vicinity as the Black Sun peeked out from its loathsome forbidden valley.
Lohmann flitted under the whirling Canons, pushing his thumbs through the glue at the top of the slug’s antennae. His teeth dripped slime.
“You were shown the Sun as a child and you were touched.” The Black Sun leader’s voice cracked and halted, breaking syllables. “You are the key. Your innocence shall free the ebony globe from its valley. You will purge this disgusting planet for good!”
Ephemeral spheres of electric light shifted over the spell’s central figures. Müller lurched into the bar and aimed a shot at Lohmann’s head. The round singed the edge of the sorcery’s glimmering energies and bent upwards away from its target and out into the night sky. The light flickered and two of the Canons fell to the floor. Lohmann broke from the ruined spell and leapt at Müller as the slug tilted upwards and beginning to revolve inside the wobbling gyroscope of yelling Canons. He knocked the SS officer to the ground before a second shot could be fired from the jammed pistol. Wells of blood splashed the flagstones as he forced a dagger into Müller’s throat. Leaving him to die, Lohmann burst for the door.
The disrupted spell spiralled out of the control. Fingers of black light crawled up the Canons’ feet, rupturing their toes and exploding their bones. The sorcerers’ screams bounced from tornadoes of lightning as the Black Sun sucked the flags downwards. Lohmann’s legs pumped against the night, his head making subconscious calculations about distance. His muscles tore under his uniform, the hate for Müller offset for the time being by his need to escape the spell’s radius and live for another chance to complete his mission and free his god.
The Dread Equinox activated.
A globe of black light rumbled from the stone floor, dark fingers bursting the slug, showering the dry walls in a thick, infected mucus streaked with blood and snot. Skin peeled away from the whirling Canon’s faces. They cursed Lohmann to a man as they died, the spell crashing to disaster. The Black Sun escaped its prison for a fraction of a second before the spell’s failure relocked the gate to humankind’s dimension. A vortex of hate expanded with hurricane speed out over the tavern walls and the sand surrounding them, the black and purple sphere consuming Greeks and Germans … bloodborns and Norns … smashed faces and triple arms … fields of eyes turning in the black light likes corpses in a tarry river.
It blinked and vanished.
A crater smoked in the sand. The final bloodborns burned away in the cooling desert air and the Greeks skidded to a stop as officers fired shots into the air and yelled orders to halt or be executed. Lohmann crouched in an olive grove. Streams of dribble fell from his nose and mouth onto his bare chest as he hurriedly dressed in the uniform of a dead Greek soldier.
Zachariadis touched the sniper’s shoulder, and then patted him on the back of the neck when he saw tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Come on,” he said. The communists, shaking and silent, their thoughts laced with black fingers and warped bones, skidded from the dunes and melted into the olive forest.
* * *
“Müller was a traitor, Mein Führer. He was a Greek spy. He murdered the covering gunners and blew our munitions. I was lucky to escape with my life.”
The man sitting at the desk stared out of the window at the Bavarian spring. The Black Sun’s audacious plan had failed. The Greeks remained a force at Sarandë and the Italians would never be able to break through alone. He had already signed the orders for a German invasion of Greece. He couldn’t afford to leave an enemy on his flank as he pushed east, and that idiot Mussolini couldn’t be trusted. The Wehrmacht would solve the Greek problem.
He touched his moustache as he considered the fate of the wizard occupying his office. He could wait for the invasion of Russia: he only hoped the Russian winter would oblige and wait with him.
DER ALBTRAUM
By JE Bryant
TO Christian’s left there was nothing but chaos. An incomprehensible kaleidoscope of outlandish colours seething within the cage that he had helped construct. Oberst Eckhart was silhouetted against this stomach churning display of pyrotechnics, his discarded monocle bouncing and glinting in the ferocious, unnatural wind. He held one hand aloft in an approximation of a Nazi salute but the fingers were held in an odd formation. His other hand lay flat against his breast, almost as if protecting his heart, his face upraised, his eyes closed in… Rapture.
Christian felt himself sinking into a state of shock. Everything in his lithe frame was screaming at him to fight or escape. Instead, he experienced the strangest sensation, as if he were mentally withdrawing from what was occurring around him. He tried to look away but a perverse segment of his mind drew his attention towards the nearest of Eckhart’s elite guards.
The imposing figure was bracing himself, defiant against the fury of the display which played out in front of him. His head wrapped in what looked like a bizarre set of flying goggles, magnetic coils framing the eye pieces and wires stretching down to a belt pack. The guard’s teeth were gritted, not so much against what was happening in the cage, but against the effort he was applying to the chain leash gripped in both hands. Again the perversity of Christian’s gaze followed the line of the leash, but he simply couldn’t register what was at the end of it. The guard’s pose, the chain’s angle all indicated that some kind of canine was straining towards the cage, but Christian’s mind could only find something similar in size to a dog within the translucent morass of folding sinew and bone.
Nausea flooded his chest and throat forcing him to look at the ground, but still he retreated somehow, the conflagration fading towards the edges of his perception. He scanned the scene again, desperate for any sense of familiarity, and found Cosmina standing to one side of the pulsing enclosure, her black tresses flowing behind her like willow branches in a storm. Her eyes, like Eckhart’s, were closed, but on her brown brow were delicate lines of concentration rather than zealous ardour. Her full lips vibrated with the murmured incantation she was repeating, the delicate movements of her chin and throat bizarrely pushing Christian still further away from the maelstrom around him. Back. Back to a time when…
* * *
The sun was already high and the cafe on the outskirts of Hauingen was as quiet as it could be with a small unit of troops stationed at almost every table. An elderly waiter had just delivered the bill to where Christian and his good friend, Ernst Schmitt, sat taking in the morning. They held their own counsel amid the subdued chit chat of the men around them. At first light they had requisitioned every available horse in the area and laden them with the inventory that had been shipped in by rail from Munich overnight. The ragtag herd stood in two loose circles tied to nearby lamp posts.
“What do you think Ernst? Is it me, or is this war getting stranger by the minute?” Christian scratched the back of his close-cropped head and stretched, his eyes watering with the effort of yet another yawn.
Ernst grinned through a collection of pastry crumbs and shrugged. He moved a large hand to indicate the breakfast they had just eaten and reached towards his coffee.
“This, my dear Lieutenant Gruber, is perfectly normal. That, however… “ He thrust a thick thumb over his broad shoulder indicating the horses. “Now that is bizarre. We’re engineers, not cowboys.”
It was Christian’s turn to shrug, “The mission is in the heart of the forest. So how else do you propose we transport the materials?”
Ernst laughed and dropped his share of the bill onto a plate then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “And what of these materials, eh? And the plans? You’ve studied them, yes?”
“Naturally.” Christian tried to sound relaxed, but he already knew where his friend’s questions were heading.
“And?”
“They are strange, I admit. A barbed wire…” Christian struggled to find an adequate description.
“A cage, Christian. But not a cage like any other I’ve ever seen. Even animal enclosures have a certain structure to them. This, with its recesses, those spire-like protrusions…” Ernst laughed again, knowing that he was playing on the concerns Christian had already voiced to Organisation Todt.
“You make fun of me my friend. But it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Exactly. So why waste your time worrying? The sun is shining and there are no Russians shooting at us. Who cares that we’re also carrying enough silk thread to reach to Berlin and back.” Ernst stood with a loud scrape of his chair, the noise and sheer bulk of him galvanising nearby troops into also calling for their bills. Christian held his hands up in mock submission to his friend’s needling. He was right. Who cared how odd the mission was? At this point in the war, it was just good to be back in Germany.
The day had turned by the time Christian and his men left the town. Low, scudding cloud had spirited away the promise of the morning as they traipsed north, the soldiers leading their reluctant beasts of burden behind their lieutenant and feldwebel. Dense residential avenues were replaced by crop-heavy fields as they joined the road that ran adjacent to the river Sorrmattbach. Within an hour the line of the forest loomed in front of them, formidable despite its verdant prospect and there, astride an impressive mount, was Oberst Eckhart.
Christian had no idea why the commander had decided to join the unit here rather than in the more sociable environs of the town but, upon inspection of the figure stationed before them, he sensed that Eckhart wasn’t the type to go drinking with his men.
He was an experienced horseman, that much was self-evident from the attentive behaviour of the chestnut stallion and the way he held himself in the saddle. Proud, naturally familiar with authority and probably as mentally sharp as the cut of his black uniform.
As the unit neared, Christian was able to make out finer details; the strong jaw line, the small duelling scar next to one of his keen blue eyes, the cultivated look of general disinterest. There was a strange Black Sun insignia on his left shoulder and, in his gloved left hand, Eckhart held an additional rein.
The supple leather looped away to the far side of mount, seeming to lead to another, smaller creature. Christian puzzled over this, wondering if this was why Eckhart had chosen to meet them here rather than in town.
He looked to the stallion’s fetlocks and saw that two human legs were stationed beyond, the hemline of a plain skirt giving an indication of the owner’s sex. It seemed that Eckhart’s contribution to mission personnel was a woman on a tether. Christian groaned to himself. Ernst was going to have a field-day with this latest addition to the growing strangeness of the operation.
Calling the unit to a halt, Christian saluted to the oberst. He did his best to concentrate on what was effectively his commanding officer, but the half-hearted acknowledgement by his superior did little to detract from the odd beauty of the now fully visible woman who stood next to his mount.
“Gruber.” Eckhart leant forward in his saddle and passed the trailing rein to Christian. “Do your best to look after Fräulein Stafie. Her skills are vital to the mission.”
“Absolutely. About the mission sir…”
Eckhart glanced at Christian briefly and then addressed his response to the treeline as he surveyed it.
“You have all the necessary supplies?”
“We do. It took some time…”
Eckhart cut him off. “The chainsaws? The lifting gear?”
“Yes oberst, everything.”
“Plus all the necessary materials for the enclosure?”
“Everything sir. But the plans for the structure, they…”
“What of them? You have them? You have the skill to build it to the specifications?”
<
br /> “I do. But…”
“Good. Ensure that no harm comes to Fräulein Stafie.” Urging the horse forward, Eckhart moved to the front of the column of troops and indicated that they should move out. Ernst shot Christian a look, half rolled his eyes and then barked an order to the men. They diligently fell into single file and began to follow their newly appointed leader up the trail and into the forest.
Christian, under the impression that he now had some measure of Eckhart, turned his attention to the lady standing next to him and noticed that she seemed distant and unfocused. Her head was tipped slightly to one side, a bronzed hand darting to tuck dark hair away from her ear.
With some embarrassment Christian looked down at the rein he held and saw that Fräulein Stafie wasn’t actually bound as a prisoner might be, rather a large loop of leather hung loosely around the wrist not occupied with managing her hair. He also registered that her clothing was careworn and drab, an unfashionable blouse tucked neatly behind a shapeless pinafore dress. She also wore some kind of cloth satchel slung over one shoulder and a pair of sturdy but scuffed shoes.
Christian turned to look at the end of the troop and horse line that was rapidly approaching, and decided not to delay things any longer.
“This way Fräulein, if you please,” he indicated the track, and was surprised when the woman looked directly towards him but still failed to make eye contact. Immediately he realised his blunder.
“Cosmina please, though you’ll have to lead, Lieutenant Gruber. That is your name, isn’t it? Your commander is such a taciturn man. I have to concentrate very closely on what little he says. Quite a novel solution to avoid riding with one of the lesser races, don’t you think?” She indicated the rein she clutched. “But it’s safer and quicker to hold than the shoulder of a guide.”
Christian stared at the searching of her sightless eyes, the deep hazel shot through with flashes of yellow, her pupils wide in perpetual dilation. Small white freckles appeared at the corner of each eye compelling his attention, or perhaps that was just a by-product of the fact that she could not return his gaze.
Dark Tales From the Secret War Page 4
