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in front of him on point. As he drew even with the still-rolling head, he
leaned out of the saddle and drove the point of his sword into the head,
with a sweep of his arm bringing it up above him with a flourish.
Reining in hard in a cloud of boiling dust, Baumann slid his horse to a
stop in front of the awe-struck postulant.
"Now, you miserable piece of pig shit, until you can do that, your horse
does not shy! Verstehen?" Baumann shook the grisly trophy off his saber.
"Set up the next target! Next man, get ready!" he shouted to the postulants
at the far end of the field.
From an upper floor of the hunting lodge, Kluge watched Baumann's
demonstration with pride. Baumann was the best horseman he had ever
known, and it gave Kluge deep satisfaction to watch him train their young
knights in the ancient skills of the mounted warrior. In this place that the
world had become, they were not the specific skills that would be needed
in the war Kluge proposed to renew, but the skills taught discipline. That
was essential. Kluge watched with approval as Baumann trotted in and
out among the young knights, bullying them into becoming cavalry
soldiers who could perform any feat on horseback and would obey every
command.
Turning from the window, Kluge closed his eyes and conjured up a
memory of the first time he had seen Baumann on a horse, galloping
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through the trees and later, scattering a Soviet patrol in the forests above
Telavi.
It had been late April, and a light snow was falling as Kluge and the
other prisoners were herded toward the kitchen by their guards. Out in the
woods, far beyond the barbed wire fence, Kluge thought he saw
movement somewhere in the trees. Trying not to look as if he cared, he
caught a glimpse of horsemen galloping along the perimeter of the forest.
As he watched, the horsemen moved back into the woods, out of sight of
the prison.
One of the guards hit Kluge in the back.
"Get moving, Nazi swine," he said, shoving Kluge in the direction of
the kitchen.
Stumbling forward, his chains dragging at his ankles, Kluge wondered
if the riders were Cossacks or merely a band of nomads moving from
Turkey to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. It was not until much later that
he learned that Baumann was among them, and had tracked him down at
last&
Sitting motionless on one of the tough, wiry horses that the Cossacks
favored, Baumann surveyed the hospital camp with a pair of binoculars,
watching men move from one building to another. Some of them were
camp personnel, others prisoners. He still had not yet determined if Kluge
was among them, or if he was even still alive, but this was the best lead he
had yet uncovered.
"So," he said to the man beside him, still watching the prisoners.
"These men are Germans?"
"Da. Prisoners." The Cossack sat easily on his mount, absently flicking
the lash of his knoud against his soft leather boots.
"And this is where your man said the wampyr is?" Baumann looked
directly at the hetman.
"Da. Hier. Wampyr. Hier." The Cossack chief nodded vigorously up
and down, punctuating the word hier with a downward jab of his knoud.
Baumann swung his leg over the neck of his horse and dropped onto
the thick loam of the woodland floor. Walking away from the small group
of Cossacks, he partially sheltered behind a tree and gazed out across the
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long expanse of snow-silent meadow to the prison hospital in the valley.
If Kluge was here, and Baumann could free him&
It was good to be free. Baumann himself had escaped from a Soviet
prison hospital in the Crimea nearly four years earlier, when the camp
was being closed down and the prisoners were being transferred. It had
been snowing then, too, and Baumann had used the confusion created by
the loading of the prisoners on trucks to make his escape.
Like most successful plans, it was simplicity in itself. For one brief
moment Baumann had found himself alone and, almost without thinking
about it, had stepped behind a huge oak tree. Incredibly, no one missed
him. After eight years, the Russian guards no longer bothered to count
their prisoners, figuring that all initiative to escape had long since been
beaten out of them.
Baumann waited behind the tree until long after the sound of the last
truckload of prisoners had faded into the distance, biding his time,
considering the growing number of options open to him, as more time
passed and no one came back to look for him. One task that was not
optional remained paramount, as night finally fell and he cautiously made
his way back to the camp.
Very little had been left behind, but Baumann wasn't interested in the
discards of his fellow prisoners or the guards who had climbed on the last
truck and headed east. What he was interested in were the two guards left
behind to secure the buildings. Slipping back into his old dormitory,
Baumann quietly lay down on his old bunk to wait.
It was nearly midnight when Baumann heard the door of the guards'
barracks slam shut and the sound of unsteady footsteps clumping along
the wooden porch toward the privy. Rising quickly from his bunk,
Baumann crossed soundlessly to the door and stepped out into the snow.
Moving across the blackened parade ground like a shadow, he came up
behind the guards' privy and circled around to the door in front.
Baumann knew what the interior of the privy was like from countless
work details spent in the small cement-block building. There was a
concrete gutter against one of the walls that was used as a urinal by the
guards. Against the opposite wall was a wide plank with four holes cut
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