Читать книгу Seeking Valhalla - Eric G. Swedin - Страница 8

CHAPTER FOUR

Aoife cried out in dismay, scrambling across the driver’s seat of the jeep and onto the ground next to the soldier. She buried her hands and face into his chest. She heard his heart beating, steady and strong, so reassuring. His uniform smelled sweaty and musty, as if it hadn’t been laundered for weeks, but she liked the scent of this man. As her initial alarm subsided, she heard the German officer order one of his men to get her.

Her father had always said that she was a quick-thinking lass. He did not always mean it as a compliment, especially when she got in trouble, but he was proud of her good marks in school. Aoife slipped a bracelet off her wrist and slid it onto the American’s wrist, whispering an enchantment that her mother had taught her, binding his imagination to the bracelet and to her. It was a most curious piece of jewelry, made of three intertwined golden hairs, and so fine and flexible that it was lost in the arm hairs of even a fair-haired girl like herself. Her mother had given it to her after she had become a woman.

Rough hands pulled her up. She looked into the German’s blue eyes and saw only hard evil. He pawed at her breast as he stood her on her feet.

“None of that,” the officer barked. “She’s to remain a virgin.”

As they dragged her through the forest, away from the jeep, she stubbed her toe on a rock and cried out. Slippers were better than bare feet, but not by much. The soldier yanked her arm to keep her moving.

After only a couple of hundred meters, they came upon another road. A group of German soldiers, wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying short, stubby weapons, waited for them. She counted nineteen of them. The officer stopped to give them orders while the first two soldiers dragged Aoife further down the road.

Her mother had always told her to pay attention, whether when baking a pie, listening to her teacher, or just watching the sea come in and out on the rocky headland near her home. A good rule of life, she always thought. Life was full of surprises when you paid attention.

To her surprise, she realized that the two soldiers were twins, or at least brothers who looked identical. They were big men, well-proportioned, with blond hair and blue eyes. The matrons at the camp had enthused enough about Aryan ideology for Aoife to see that the twins fit the bill. It had probably kept them out of fighting on the front, assigned to the temple.

They reached two trucks parked on the road. One of the men found a piece of rope and tied her hands together in front of her, being unexpectedly gentle to make sure that the rope was not too tight. She figured that she could get out of the bonds if she had five minutes or so to work on them.

The officer came striding up the road. As he approached, Aoife paid attention. Before, the officer had been defined by his black uniform in her mind, but now she looked at his face and realized that she had seen him before. In a different uniform.

As the priest who had sacrificed her friend Elena.