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his heavy white robe. "William, take ten men and go with Pageau. The rest of you,
secure the castle." Then, turning to the two men nearest the body, he added. "Take
this one to the great hall."
"Shall we prepare him for burial?" One of them asked.
"No, not until William returns with the leader of the Steel Helmets."
Outside, a full moon reflected off the snow, making it easy for the white-
mantled men to make their way from the castle to the edge of the wood several
hundred yards away. Following the footprints made by the man returning with the
corpse, the lightly armored men continued on into the wood and had no difficulty
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finding the pile of fresh corpses Pageau had reported. As they cautiously
approached the small clearing, two black-clad men with a stretcher added another
victim to the pile and turned back in the direction from which they had come.
Crouching low, the knights followed along behind, drifting invisibly in and
out of the shadows, their white cloaks enabling them to blend in with the crusty
snow on the ground.
Another twenty yards beyond the small clearing was a larger one, the scene
of much activity. A field generator chugged away at the near side, providing
electricity for two outside work lights as well as a small field hospital set up in a
tent not far away. From the far side of the clearing came a slow but steady stream
of stretcher bearers bringing wounded men under the work lights, where a medical
triage team inspected the wounded, directed some to the hospital tent, and treated
those they could. Those men too badly wounded or who were already dead
were sent to a sideless shelter at the edge of the clearing nearest the generator.
Here the bearers stripped the uniforms off the dead and dying and placed
them naked on a crude table. A bored-looking medical orderly then inserted a large
needle into an artery in the arm or, if the arms were too badly mangled, in the
leg and attached it by rubber tubing to a small vacuum pump. Another tube ran
from the pump to a rack of glass bottles, and the medical orderly would attach this
tube to a new bottle before starting to turn the hand crank on the pump. The blood
thus drained from the dying or dead soldiers could be used for immediate
transfusion in the field hospital just a few yards away.
To avoid any possible error in typing, each soldier had his blood-group
tattooed under his left arm, as well as stamped into the metal disc worn around his
neck on a string, and it was the job of one of the stretcher bearers who brought each
man in to copy this information onto an appropriate number of adhesive strips used
to label the bottles, before returning with his partner to pick up more wounded men.
In shock, or delirious from the pain of their wounds, most of the dying only
moaned softly as they were slowly bled to death by the medical orderly who
methodically turned the handle on the pump, pausing only to change bottles when
they filled. A few, however, realized what was happening to them, and had to be
held by the stretcher bearers for the first few minutes, while they screamed and
wept and pleaded for their lives to be spared. That was why the table was located
near the generator; its unmuffled chugging drowned out the cries of those men still
clinging to the hope of life.
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The figures in the white robes stood transfixed, unable to comprehend the
technological efficiency of the slaughter they were watching. Nor did they grasp
the difference between the khaki-green uniform of one of the stretcher bearers,
staring in horror at the spectacle under the work lights, and the black uniform with
twin lightning bolts as worn by the medical orderly.
On a given signal, the knights silently fanned out along the edge of the
clearing, their swords at the ready. The orderly removed his needles and tubes from
the dead man before him and labeled the last bottle of morbid blood. Two more
stretcher bearers brought up another dying soldier, lifting the body of the dead man
clear of the table before hoisting up the next to give his all for the fatherland. The
young man in the khaki-green uniform fell to his knees beside the dying man on the
table, pulling a strip of purple ribbon from the pocket of his battle-dress jacket, and
was about to make the sign of the cross on the man's forehead when the knights
attacked.
With a shout of "Deus Veult!" the knights crashed into the clearing behind
the hospital tent, hacking and slashing at the German soldiers. Father Francis
Freise, Chaplain, 3rd US Army, still on his knees beside the dying soldier, watched
in frozen horror as the knights cut down those medics who tried to defend
themselves with their blunt-pointed medical daggers, throwing up empty hands and
offering no resistance when one of the knights roughly jerked him to his feet and
marched him off at sword point. Within the space of less than a minute, the knights
had captured Father Freise and three of the Germans as well, pummeling two of
them into silence with sword hilts before hurrying all of them into the woods.
Torches blazed in their sockets in the great hall, casting more than enough
light on the body lying partially under a blanket on the long table in the center of
the room. De Beq and another knight stood over the body, deep in conversation.
"What do you think, Henri? Is it the broucolaque?"
"I'm not sure, Hano. The blood is gone, look." De Beq took a dagger from his
belt and made a deep incision on the arm of the corpse. "No blood. None. I've never
known a broucolaque to take so much."
The other knight leaned closer. "Perhaps it was drained out by the wounds?"
"I think not. Have you ever known any wound that would take all of the
blood from a body?"
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