But no one hit us if we obeyed, and we’ve always had enough food—not like those poor souls out there.” She pointed towards a window covered with dark paper. “We didn’t like to watch them. It was too sad.”
“Where are the matrons?”
“They fled with the guards. They said that you wanted to rape them and they said that you wanted to rape us too.”
Major Carter stiffened. “We hang men who do that.”
“Good.”
“What did the Nazis do with you here?” Carter asked “Why did they want you?”
“Not what you’re thinking, I should say,” she said, fury in her voice. “We are all virgins here and have remained virgins.”
“No doubt.” The major felt his face flush.
“We were all kidnapped and fattened up and kept here until our turn came.”
“Your turn?”
Her voice faltered. “To be sacrificed.”
“Sacrificed? I don’t understand. Taken somewhere else?”
“Yes, taken somewhere else. To the temple of Odin.”
Carter paused, mentally checking the meaning of the words. Had she really said, “temple of Odin”? Odin, the chief god of the Vikings?
“You were to be offered as sacrifices to Odin? As in—human sacrifices?”
“Yes.” She was completely serious. “I have seen it with my own eyes.”
Yesterday, Carter would not have believed her, but after coming across Dachau that morning, he was able to believe. “How did you come to see this?”
“They took me there once. Along with another girl. Her name was Elena, a pretty blonde from Prague. I think that they had planned to sacrifice us both. I was so scared that I vomited all over myself. For some reason, that made me impure and they only killed her.” She swallowed, her eyes wide and distant. “They made me watch.”
“Could you take me to this temple?”
She slowly nodded, her green eyes wide with trust.
CHAPTER TWO
The Bavarian forest in the full bloom of spring could not erase Dachau from his mind—nothing ever would. One does not forget a train full of corpses stacked like firewood or the haunted looks in the eyes of tens of thousands of prisoners, some so far gone that they couldn’t even feel grateful at their liberation. One does not forget the sight of a man lying on the ground where he fell, his chest heaving as he sucked in air, his eyes vacant.
The light-colored trunks of beech and the grey bark of oak flashed by as Napier drove the jeep along the paved road under a canopy of green. Carter sat in the passenger seat, his hand resting lightly on the .30-caliber machine gun mounted just in front of him. The girl from Ireland sat in the rear seat, a place normally filled with backpacks, duffle bags, and other gear. Napier had left those behind in a neat stack at the company’s bivouac outside the concentration camp.
Aoife spoke in English for the benefit of Napier. “I remember that small house that we just passed. The road is just up here. See it?”
As Napier slowed down, Carter looked behind them. Two trucks followed them, six-by-six Studebakers painted army green, carrying two sections of Rangers of eleven soldiers each. Carter didn’t care for acting as scout. It was bad tactics to have the command element lead, but he feared that the girl would be terrified if he and the sergeant were not with her.
A dirt road snaked off between the trees. Napier drove slower and Carter stood up to get a better look, bracing himself against the machine gun mount. Ideal place for an ambush. Besides the cover from the trees, the rolling ground made the jeep flow up and down along the road like a skiff at sea. The Third Reich might be collapsing, and her soldiers surrendering in droves, but die-hard believers still fought with skill and tenacity. Before an advance party of army soldiers had stumbled on Dachau, the Ranger company had been attached to the 45th Infantry Division, moving in position into attack Munich. That city had not surrendered, and these woods could be crawling with stragglers, deserters, and small units still under discipline.
“Please stop,” Aoife said, laying her hand on Napier’s arm.
The sergeant rolled the jeep to a stop. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The temple is just beyond that rise. I don’t want to see it again.”
“Fair enough,” Carter said. “Turn off the jeep, Sergeant.”
The major leaped down from the jeep and signaled back to the truck driver behind, twisting his thumb and forefinger to indicate turning off the truck engine, and twirling his finger to order the troops to dismount. Soldiers in green piled out, automatically spreading out into the surrounding trees, veteran instincts demanding that they secure the area.
“Miss McLaughlan, I’m going to leave a soldier with you and take the rest of my men forward.”
“I volunteer, sir,” Napier said quickly.
Carter looked at his sergeant. The soldier looked away, a pink flush working its way across his cheeks. Normally Carter wanted the former coal-miner from Utah to be with him at all times. The sergeant was his rock, as close to him as his younger brother back home in Virginia, always reliable, and had saved his life twice, once on D-Day and once in a snowy town in Belgium that Carter could not remember the name of. He decided that the sergeant had earned some leeway and nodded curtly.
“Corporal Finney,” Carter called to one of his section leaders. “You will take two men and scout ahead.”
The young man from New Jersey waved a salute and headed forward with two men in line behind him. Carter arranged for the two sections to advance through the woods, keeping off the road. At least it was spring, with only occasional patches of snow to be found in shaded spots.
Taking his M2 carbine from the jeep, Carter walked up along the edge of the road. Small purple and white flowers grew in clumps next to the dirt ruts, like little presents from the spirits of the forest, and Carter took care to not step on them. It just seemed wrong that anything so pretty should be destroyed. As he topped the rise, he looked back to see Napier engaged in earnest conversation with the girl.
In front of him was a small hollow. The trees had been cut back to make room for a walled enclosure. Stone pillars reached up about fifteen feet, with wooden palisades between the pillars. The corporal and the two scouts stood before a gate—not entering, just looking. Another road joined the first, just before the gate; from the wear on the ground, it looked like it was used as much as the other. Carter followed the second road back with his eyes and saw that it disappeared into a thicket of spruce, heading west. Carter sniffed the air: no smoke or any smells out of place. Some birds twittered in a nearby tree. It all seemed peaceful and safe.
Carter trotted down to join his men. The grass growing between the walls and the forest had been cut so that it was only a couple of inches high, like the lawn that Carter had played on as a child back home.
As he drew closer, he noticed that the wood forming the palisade had geometric shapes inscribed on it, and the gate itself was inlaid with a carving of an elaborate tree. Carter had specialized in Greek and Roman classics, but two classes from Professor Lundgren on Nordic languages had intrigued him enough to enable him to remember much of the content. His mind shifted gears, dusting off old information and finding fresh meaning in what his eyes saw. The geometric shapes were obviously Nordic runes. He didn’t remember what the shapes meant; his talents ran more to the auditory side of languages. The tree on the gate was obviously Yggdrasil, a giant ash called the World Tree, with a small deer at the base nibbling at its branches. This tree connected all nine worlds of Norse cosmology, from the abode of the gods in Asgard to the middle realm of Midgard where humans lived, down to Niflheim, the cold land of mists and ice, where Hel, the daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, ruled.
“Shall