The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 11: The Trouble-Maker

Johann Krause was in love, and he owed it all to the dog.

Krause had spent years in the Wehrmacht. He had joined up shortly after Hitler had ascended to power and had participated in the conquest of France. But Krause was no Nazi. He hated the Nazis. He didn't join the army because he was driven by ideology; he had joined it because he was driven by fear.

Many of Krause' friends had begun to disappear. He had discovered they were being sent to concentration camps. They were sentenced to death, without trial, for the crime of being gay.

Krause was smart enough to realize that soon he would be, too.

But in the army Krause could hide his homosexuality. In the army he could find anonymous safety.

Until the invasions began.

He was almost killed in France. That had been a horrible, bloody war. The French people had put up a terrible and stiff resistance until the panzers finally rolled into Paris. Even a people as proud and courageous as the French couldn't bear to see their beautiful capital burn. Thank goodness that had caused them to finally surrender.

The first months of the invasion of Russia had been easy by comparison. But then winter came, and hunger. Krause had been part of a squad defending a conquered village on the Leningrad Front. He hated that winter, not the least of which was because he hated the men he had been forced to serve beside.

They were all Nazi true believers.

Krause feared he would be forced to endure their company for the entire war.

But then the dog appeared. It was an Alsatian Wolf-Dog, a German shepherd, and therefore everyone assumed it was a German dog; a weapon of the Reich somehow escaped and gone feral. Bored, hungry and cold, it became his squad's obsession to hunt down and capture the hound.

Most of Krause' platoon-mates eventually paid for that obsession with their lives.

Krause soon stopped believing that the dog was a mortal creature. He began to imagine that it must be some sort of spirit guide. The ancient Germans all had spirit guides; it's why a love of animals was such an integral part of German culture. Even the Gods had animal helpers; Odin had his raven. Maybe the dog was really the spirit of Fenrir the Wolf.

Krause never voiced his suspicion to his squad-mates. They would have thought him insane. Worse, it would have revealed him as a traitor. After all, even if the dog was Fenrir, Fenrir was a German God. Everyone believed that German Gods would be on the side of the Nazis.

Krause believed the opposite. He believed Nazism was an anathema to German culture, a disease infecting his people. He believed that if their ancient Gods and ancient ancestors could see what they were doing they would be angry, perhaps even vengeful.

And he had begun to believe that the dog was a spiritual incarnation of that vengeance.

When they hunted the dog, Nazis died.

Later, Krause finally captured the hound. He, alone among all the soldiers, had finally succeeded in securing the creature. His success led him to believe even more strongly that the animal was not of earthly origin. Why else would he have captured it? It must have been like those medieval questing beasts, the fey stags hunted by chivalrous knights. It was never the most powerful knight that captured it, not the best tracker or greatest fighter. It was always the knight who was most spiritually pure.

Among his platoon-mates, that would be Krause. They were all Nazis; he was not.

It was the only explanation Krause could come up with to describe why they had failed, and he had succeeded.