It was over almost as soon as it began, apart from the chattering of machine guns up the river as the Waffen-SS unit met its end. But the Hitler Youths put up their hands and were rounded up like sheep into a docile sitting herd.
Hugo and Lucacz looked down at the upturned fresh faces of the teenage boys, and Hugo confided they had a problem. ‘Not all these kids are unwilling conscripts for the greater glory of the Nazi Reich. But how do we tell which are which? Co-opting them into the Resistance would not be any fairer than what the SS was doing. But if we send them all home we’d be letting unrepentant young Nazis loose in Mittenheim.’
‘There might be a way,’ Lucacz mused.
‘Really?’
‘Sure. Germans or not, they still have been brought up in Holy Rothenia. It leaves a mark on your soul. I can sense it. I think you can too if you try.’
‘Er … so?’
‘Call the captain over, and I’ll explain it to him,’ Lucacz waggled his eyebrows and smirked.
‘No interfering with his mind, Dead Boy. Got it?’
‘Just gonna reason with him, that’s all.’
Hugo watched suspiciously as Lucacz had a brief but intense talk with the captain, who went off grinning into the teaching block of the camp and returned with a large picture under his arm, then went with it to the nearest of the accommodation huts, and propped it up against the plank wall. It was a dark brooding portrait of the Führer of the German Reich, in Sturm Abteilung gear as ever.
‘Everyone who’s sixteen, get up! Form a line!’ called Lucacz, and prodded the resulting scrum into order.
‘Okay kids. We want to know who among you is on the side of the Nazis and who is for a free and holy Rothenia. So one at a time when you get to the front of the queue get your dick out and piss on the face of that moustachioed cunt. We know you’re all honest Rothenian kids and a bit different from any other sort, so if you are a loyal Nazi we know your sense of honour will prevent you doing so with any ease. Then we’ll know where we are with you.’
The first boy in the line, a perfect little blond Aryan if ever there was one, grinned as he unbuttoned the fly of his black shorts and sent a stream of pee from his small dick at the Führer’s pursed mouth.
‘Nice healthy Rothenian bladder you have there, kid.’ laughed Hugo, and the grins in the line behind indicated that none of them would have a problem with the act. And indeed not one of the sixteen year olds jibbed at the ideological water sports. They left their discarded swastika brassards in the pool of urine that had formed at the foot of the picture.
The seventeen year olds were called next. In the front was a well-built dark-haired boy his upper lip already sprouting fuzz. He had the black epaulettes of a Scharführer, or squad leader. He looked down at the befouled portrait, raised his right arm and shouted defiantly ‘Heil Hitler!’. An untroubled Lucacz smiled and directed him peaceably to start a second group sitting on the right hand side of the line. By the time the seventeen year olds had finished, there were three more teenagers with him, all of them carrying rank insignia.
The first of the eighteen year olds was the highest-ranking boy in the group, a tall and handsome blond Obergefolgshaftführer. He looked to his left and called to the first boy to pee on the Reichsführer. ‘You bloody little twerp, Willi. Always gotta stick your oar in. You know Mama would never forgive me if I came home without you. But no, you had to get your little dick out and pee us into trouble.’
‘You hate that old Nazi fucker, Ernst! You can’t pretend you don’t. You only took the rank ‘cos of the ration credits they offer.’
‘Gah! I can at least do the family proud with my pee stream. You pissed like a diabetic cat, Willi.’ He got out a very sizable member and much increased the urine puddle, then he turned left and took a seat next to his grinning little brother whom he cuddled affectionately into his lap, despite their hostile banter.
Ernst’s example did seem to influence his peer group and only three eighteen year olds joined the right hand group of Nazi loyalists. The rest were sent to pack up their possessions and get themselves breakfast. Lucacz and Hugo were delegated to mind the problem teenagers. The boys on kitchen duty brought them over eggs and wurst, and they sat sullenly munching.
‘I know what to do with the little bastards,’ grinned Lucacz.
‘Really?’
‘Tell you later. It’s good.’
The firefight upriver had long died down. Eventually Lieutenant Oskar Franz von Tarlenheim came marching down to the camp with a party of guerillas and what appeared to be several stray Hitler Youths, younger boys. They looked grim.
After a consultation with the captain, Oskar Franz came over to his cousin with the news. The young teenagers they brought had been with the SS unit he said. He rolled his eyes. ‘They were pretty blond boys being used for sex by the men. Those bastards. I don’t think these kids will care to stay on in the Hitler Youth now.’
‘What happened to the men?’
‘They put up a pretty poor fight in the end. None surrendered of course. So most of them are dead, either by our fire or by suicide in a couple of cases. The badly wounded were terminated by our officers with a shot through the brain. No more mercy than they gave the boys of Brentheim, I suppose. We have a few captives. The general is identifying them. He plans to put them on trial for war crimes by a court martial of Rothenian officers. It’ll all be properly documented and they’ll have defence attorneys and all. But Brentheim must never be forgotten, and a trial will help in that by creating a record. Now what about these junior Nazis you’ve identified. Very clever and funny the way you did it. General Henry will be amused and impressed.’
‘We have a sort of plan for the loyalists,’ Hugo said, nodding at Lucacz. ‘But I think that in the end we’ll have no choice but to let them all go back home.’
‘Transporting all these kids back to Mittenheim will take some thought. In the meantime, you and Lucacz get on with processing the Nazi boys. I hope how you do it’s as amusing as your other idea.’
‘More so, lieutenant,’ sniggered Lucacz.
Oskar Franz went off grinning. Hugo turned to his boyfriend, eyebrow raised.
‘Okay Posh Boy, get these Nazi kids out of everyone’s sight. We’re all going on a field trip.’
***
‘Eden! Fucking Eden! You’ve brought us here?’ Hugo was astounded. ‘You really can do that!’ They were in a part of Eden he had seen rendered on Karl Wollherz’s memorial at Medeln Abbey but had not as yet visited. He, Lucacz and the seven Hitler Youths were on the top of a line of bluffs overlooking a huge black lake out of which rose several wooded islands, the tallest of them surmounted by a white tower.
The seventeen-year-old Scharführer who had refused to renounce Adolf Hitler and all his works was the first to rally. ‘Where is this! How the fuck did we get here?’
Lucacz’s grin was all but incandescent. ‘Magic, kid. Magic. It really exists, and this is just the beginning. For we want to introduce you to some friends of ours. And here they come!’
Several pegasuses were beating up from one of the islands. They had riders too, and as they came in for landing Hugo recognised them. The shade of young Sanczu Jankovic leapt off his mount and into Hugo’s arms, hugging him round the neck and kissing him. ‘Hugo!’ he laughed. ‘Bet you thought you’d never see me again!’
Hugo put the kid down. ‘So, you’ve settled into the World Beyond, but I thought you’d be over the Final Sea by now.’
‘We were, but the Council sent us Brentheim Boys back to Eden for special training.’
Hugo stared at the arrivals and apart from an adult male he recognised the others as those he’d helped pass over, Anton and his twin little brothers Mikhel and Jan. They flashed him identical grins. Anton came over and gave him a strong handshake.
‘Hey! The Posh Boy! Bet you don’t know you’re already famous on this side of the veil. And it’s true you were there when those SS bastards who murdered us met justice?’
‘It was my privilege, though Lucacz had more fun. He haunted them first.’
Anton laughed and gripped Lucacz’s shoulder. ‘You are so cool, Dead Boy!’
Lucacz shrugged. ‘Posh Boy and Dead Boy. It’s fame of a sort, like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.’ He had had time in Strelsau to visit picture houses, and was smitten with the Hollywood star system.
‘More like Laurel and Hardy,’ laughed Hugo.
Lucacz swotted him on the back of his head, and continued. ‘We’ve brought some live boys to Eden. They’re convinced Nazis so they need some work to make them see the error of their ways. We thought you and they could hang out, and you can tell them all about what happened at Brentheim. They need to know what evil is and what it is they signed up to. There’s a chance you could retrieve them, for they’re all boys who were born in Rothenia, and you know what that means.’
‘I do now,’ Anton said. He pondered a moment, and then called the Hitler Youth group over, introduced himself and the others, including the pegasuses saying finally ‘And this is my particular friend, Blackeyes Whitetailscolt of the Low Moor herd.’
One of the Hitler Youths, entranced at this magical vision, tentatively reached up to stroke Blackeyes’ mane. ‘It’s okay kid, I don’t bite,’ the horse said quite clearly in Rothenian.
Anton continued. ‘We’re in training here with the pegasuses for the Final Battle in Earth’s far future, when the Dead will ride out and defeat the Black Plague of a genocidal horror from the stars even worse than you Nazis. Our horsemaster here is Orestes Ortolan, who lived on Earth long ago, but is not dead like us. He waits on those islands for his time to rise and fulfil his prophesied destiny to be king consort of Rothenia.’
Orestes, a stocky young man, smiled, and said that it was his privilege to school Anton and others like him in the management of the pegasuses and devise strategies for aerial combat when the time came. He added that the pegasuses would not allow anyone to ride them unless they were pure of heart and honourable. ‘They wouldn’t let any of you boys ride them as you are presently,’ he added. Several of the Hitler Youth group looked unhappy at that abrupt and severe judgement.
The Hitler Youth Scharführer sidled up to Hugo later, introduced himself properly as Klaus Sterlinger and asked for a private word with him. He seemed less settled than he had been. He wanted some answers. ‘I’m not dead, but this is the World of the Dead, yes?’
‘It’s a place with many names, but the Dead themselves like to call it Eden. So far as I understand it, it’s not a land of the Dead but a halfway place claimed by a number of supernatural factions. I can tell you for certain that when you do eventually die, you will come first to this place and be processed somehow, because I was recruited to help process the Brentheim Boys, and this is where they went.’
‘Who are you, Hugo.’
‘No one special I thought, apart from the Tarlenheim name of course, but then I met my Lucacz and my whole world changed. I’ve seen amazing things, some of them living people aren’t supposed to see. I even met an archangel. He’s a really nice kid too.’
Klaus grinned. ‘Good thought. Angels are nice, I’d have thought it went with the job. Look, Hugo, what I’ve seen here makes the living world seem grubby and nasty, with its murder squads, concentration camps and stuff. The Hitler Youth seemed to make sense for a while. I liked the parades, the sports, the discipline and the uniforms. But one of those boys the SS men took for sex is someone I fancied myself. He wouldn’t talk to me when he came back after the partisans freed him. That hurt. You’re a homo, so you’ll understand.’
Hugo wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but he made encouraging noises. Klaus continued after a pause. ‘I realise now the Nazi party can’t offer me the Order and Honour that it claims it can. My Rothenian friends aren’t Untermenschen, but funny and sometimes sexy boys, like your boyfriend and these amazing Brentheim Boys. I’ve picked the wrong side. How do I get back?’
Hugo thought a while. ‘You have the wrong heroes, Klaus. In my house we give our admiration and loyalty to King Maxim Elphberg, the greatest man to wear the Crown of Tassilo. He was too great and good for his people in the end. But he sums up all that is better in Rothenia, and now you’re sitting in Eden you see the source of it. For the World Beyond is at work in Rothenia, which is the future of the human race, not any thousand-year Reich or any Paradise of the Proletariat. Those who work for an Elphberg future are the ones who are truly good.’
The boy chuckled. ‘You sound like my Opa, he was a general in King Maxim’s army.’
Hugo made the connection. ‘Oh, that Sterlinger. Your grandad. Go and talk to him. He was one of our best soldiers, him and Voydek. Great men.’
‘Thanks Hugo. You’ve helped.’
‘One thing, Klaus. You and your squad are still wearing your swastika brassards. It seems wrong in this place. Let me get rid of them.’
Klaus shrugged. ‘Go for it, Hugo.’
Hugo once again looked inside for the powers he’d been told he now possessed. He concentrated. There were exclamations as the armbands snapped, fell from arms to the ground, and combusted.’
Lucacz called over. ‘Nice one, Posh Boy!’
***
‘Time is weird here, it’ll be okay,’ Lucacz said.
‘It’s still a long hike up the river,’ Hugo cautioned.
‘These kids are all fit and experienced hikers. They wear shorts! Look at those bronzed thighs and calves. The hike will consolidate them anew as the first troop of Elphbergerjugend!’
With hugs and good wishes from the Brentheim lads, the brown-shirted live boys formed up and followed Lucacz and Hugo as they marched along the top of the bluffs and down to the inflow of the River of Life into the lake.
‘You’re serious about an Elphbergerjugendverband?’ Hugo asked as they marched.
Lucacz grinned. ‘I talked to Orestes, and he thought it wasn’t such a bad idea. When he was a boy he had a wonderful upbringing in the Strelsau Fenizenhaus, where he was taught the principles we think these ex-Hitlerjugend kids ought to have. Let’s see what your hunky uncle, General Henry, thinks.’
‘Hmm. A cadet branch of the Rothenian Army of Resistance. Why not? It certainly fits the needs of confused kids like Klaus Sterlinger. Though I think Klaus is planning now to join up with the adult Underground as soon as he can.’
They reached the river and turned upriver in the direction Hugo arbitrarily decided was north. It was undemanding terrain, short springy grass on low hills along the bank. It was as they were marching steadily on that Hugo recalled an observation Lucacz had made about Eden, that it was guarded by spirits he called Elementals.
‘Yeah,’ Lucacaz replied. ‘they’re nasty and slimy, not evil exactly but hostile to human life. They’re no match for the likes of Karl Wollherz and Jonas Niemand, or even me nowadays I suppose. But they’d certainly not like our lads. Fortunately, they’re not that fond of this river and avoid its banks so I don’t see a problem. But I’m glad you mentioned them, because you reminded me of something.’
‘Yeah, dead boy?’
‘You remember that man Harries?’
‘You said he was some sort of traitor.’
‘Right, I did. When he was in the back of the car with me, I sensed something bad about him, that he was involved with treachery and murder. But since we’ve come here I remember where I’d first sensed that particular aura he was giving off. It was here.’
Hugo frowned. ‘Are you saying that Harries is involved with Elementals?’
Lucacz nodded decidedly. ‘And one Elemental in particular, the one called Mammon the Insatiable.’
‘Tell me more, dead boy.’
‘Mammon has a history with humanity. He was exiled to Eden from the living world many centuries ago. He was the elemental who frustrated your ancestor Count Oskar when he tried to reach the springs of eternal youth way back at the time when I was alive. Mammon turned him into stone. I know this because our mate Karl Wollherz went with Jonas and found what was left of him. Karl did battle with Mammon twice, once here in Eden but strangely on the second occasion it was in Rothenia. Mammon had been summoned into the living world by a wizard, a master of treachery called Robert Dudley Bard. Karl was there and he worsted Mammon and sent him screaming back into the void.’
‘And here he ended up again, but what’s his link with the living? How’s he got to know Harries?’
Lucacz scratched his head. ‘That’s the big question. But he’s a greedy entity, and more interested in the living than most elementals, apart from Lust of course. Seems to me that if Dudley could entice him into the world for his purposes, another arrogant wizard must have tried it. But who was he? And how successful was he?’
Hugo pondered this. ‘I need to talk to Martin about this. He knows a few things about the magical history of Rothenia, especially the nasty things a cell in the KRB got up to. And now I think about it, there was an English wizard who was caught up in their schemes.’
‘Hmm,’ Lucacz mused. ‘I can see a possible avenue of investigation. Well done Posh Boy. I’ve always wanted to see England. Here’s my excuse.’
‘What? But how?’
‘Tell you later. In the meantime, let’s get these lads to the Unlikely Forest.’
***
Henry von Tarlenheim was duly astonished at the transformation that Lucacz and Hugo had worked on the Hitler Youth company. ‘You think they’re safe to let loose on Mittenheim?’
Hugo grinned. ‘I think you’ll find that they’re Elphberg loyalists now, sir.’
‘Then I’d better get them home to their families somehow. And one of them is old General Sterlinger’s grandson? How in God’s name did a lad from that background get mixed up in the Hitler Youth?’
‘Yes sir, his name is Klaus. He’s got natural ability as a leader. You might think of using him to form an Elphberg resistance cell in Mittenheim. He’s smart and tough. Seems to me that the duchy has not warmed to the Nazi Reich, and Hitler’s done us a favour. The Mittenheimers won’t be separatists ever again if they rejoin Rothenia.’
The general nodded and smiled. ‘You two have opened up a new front for us. You’d better get back to Strelzen. Martin is screaming for you. Here’s my report for transmission to London. You know that it mustn’t fall into German hands, even though I’ve encoded it. I’m keeping young Mackenna in the field for a while. He’s a promising lad, and not duped by Harries and his propaganda.’
The pair recovered their car and set off for Medeln, as Hugo decided that his sister might have something to offer on the Harries question. Oskar Franz hitched a lift, once he knew their destination. He said he wanted to see his grandmother at Templerstadt, but Hugo thought that he also had his sister in view.
Euphemia von Tarlenheim continued to occupy the prioress’s lodging in the empty abbey, though she had abandoned her religious garb for a twin set in neutral blue. There was no sign of the skull brooch on her person, but Lucacz reckoned it was close by.
She sniffed at her brother. ‘Returned to the scene of the crime, eh?’
‘Let’s not re-fight that one, Feemy,’ Hugo replied. ‘There’s a new problem. It’s to do with what happened here back in 1931 when a KRB cell raided the abbey, aiming to find the Crown of Tassilo.’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Only that Martin Tofts and Prince Leo were here and witnessed how Abbess Maria Nativitata thwarted them, using the power of the Icon.’
‘Then you know as much as I do. I was not a novice at the time. You might seek out Abbess Katherine at Festenberh priory for better information.’
‘Amongst the raiding party was an English occultist and so-called wizard, a man called Aleister Crowley. What happened to him?’
‘I can answer that much. The effect of the Icon on him was more profound than on the others. He ended up confined to our infirmary for longer than we liked. But the fact was that he was a very sick man, a heroin addict and plagued beside with sexual infections. So we took the role of the Good Samaritan, and nursed him back to health. I think he was sent on to a nursing home at Hastings in England.’
‘Interesting,’ Hugo commented. ‘We have reason to think that his hermetic foolery in that place had consequences he had not planned on.’
Euphemia glared at Lucacz. ‘What have you to do with this, revenant?’
‘Me, Feemy?’ Lucacz grinned cheekily. ‘Why are you so down on me, a poor harmless shade.’
‘You intend to take my little brother out of the world, don’t deny it.’
‘That’s not my choice, lady. That’s prophecy. I love your brother and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. You’d do better to help our mission for his sake. His name is already great in the World Beyond; you shouldn’t stand in his way. You Medeln nuns always grab the wrong end of the stick.’
Hugo moved quickly to head off his angry lover. ‘We have reason to think that his enchantments on that day brought on him the attention of an elemental spirit in the World Beyond, who attached itself to him in some way.’
‘Which spirit?’ his sister asked.
‘The one called Mammon the Insatiable.’
Euphemia seemed struck by that information. ‘Ah … that one. He drank the blood of Oskar the Great and ever afterwards he wanted to cross the portal here to find more.’
‘So maybe Crowley helped him unintentionally,’ Hugo observed
‘You think he may have been possessed?’ Euphemia asked, unhappily.
Lucacz responded. ‘If he’d been sucked into this world through the portal he’d have been weak, and further weakened by the nearby Icon. So he might have lurked for cover in Crowley, and when he left for England, he’d have travelled with him. Right, Posh Boy, hold my hand. We’re going on our travels.’
Hugo took Lucacz’s hand, and was ready for the flash of light and the sudden disorientation as the boy made his leap … to where?
Posted 11 January 2025