The Saxon Uprising-ARC

Chapter 40


Dresden, capital of Saxony

Eric and Tata found Gretchen Richter standing in the tallest tower of the Residenzschloss, looking out over the city walls toward the Swedish camp fires. They’d gone in search of her to discover what preparations she wanted made, now that they knew the Third Division was coming.

Night had fallen and it was quite dark in the tower, with only one small lamp to provide light. So it took them a while before they realized that Gretchen had been crying. No longer—but the tear-tracks were still quite visible.

Krenz was dumbfounded. He’d never once imagined Richter with tears in her eyes.

Tata went to her side. Gretchen was gripping the rail with both hands. Tata placed a hand over hers and gave it a little squeeze. “It’s nice when people don’t disappoint you.”

“I wondered,” Eric heard Gretchen whisper. “For years, I wondered.”

It took Krenz perhaps a minute before he figured it out. At which point he was even more dumbfounded.

She’d wondered about the general?

Dear God in Heaven.

One of the letters Eric had gotten from Thorsten Engler after he was wounded at Zwenkau described the execution of twenty soldiers who’d been caught committing atrocities after the Third Division took the Polish town of Świebodzin. Thorsten’s volley gun battery had been given that assignment.

Till the day I die, I’ll never forget seeing those men tied to a fence being torn apart by a hail of bullets, Thorsten had written him. But that’s not what I have nightmares about, Eric. It was the look on the general’s face when he gave the order. A cold, pitiless rage that seemed to have no bottom at all.

Gretchen wiped her nose with a sleeve. “Always I wondered,” she whispered again.

Eric looked out over the Swedish campfires.

Banér was dead. He was already f*cking dead. He just didn’t know it yet.