Panzerfaust

Chapter 49 - Shards

'Megsérült, Grófnő?' Edmund Veesenmayer asks her after he sat her down in the balcony, away from the frantic mass. 'Véres a ruhája.'

'It happens sometimes.' Only then does Sophia Edelsheim realizes the stinging pain on her palm, cut open by the sharp shard, falling to the ground with slippery blood from her grip.

The Reichsführer of Hungary fishes a handkerchief out of his pocket, binding it around the cut. The blue forgetmenots embroidered in the style of Kalocsa soak up the bleed as she watches it with mesmerized curiousity, too numb to think about anything else.

'Gyönyörű munka.'

'Köszönöm. A lányom hímezte nekem.'

'Your daughter?'

'Yes. Even a man like me has a family.' The man tells her with a small smile as she nods, looking back to the building. 

'What just happened inside?' Sophie asks at last, tries to put the pieces together in her mind. Did I just killed Mussolini? Nonsense,  she dismisses the thought quickly. Nobody dies from a stab to their leg, unless I hit an artery...

'What just happened is that your husband mistook the character of an Italian with a Hungarian, Frau Skorzeny.'

'And Jürgen Diehl had to pay the price.'

'Who? Your shield? Yes, very sad, my condelences. Did you knew him well?'

'Not at all.' 

'The Führer is unscratched. Furious, but unscratched. They're still counting the... fallen.'  

Reichsführer Karl Hanke says as he and Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper stops by them to puff on a smoke after the fright, watching the crowd mill around as dozen of Gestapo officers clear the place.

'The sniper was lucky somebody stabbed Mussollini in the foot with something, distracting his insane shooting.'

All three man look at the shards at her feet with a pointed look, without a word.

'You binded her hand?' Peiper asks in disbelief, dropping his cigarette to the ground to grab her hand to unwrap the fabric from her palm in a hurry. 'You just pushed the glass shards in it even deeper.'

Veesenmayer spreads his arms in cluelessness.

'I am an economist, Oberst Peiper, not a medic; I have limited knowledge regarding the damage of glass penetrating skin.'

'You used a lot of words for being useless.'

'Hey, hey, hey, everyone remain calm. We're all friends here, no?' Hanke butts in, putting his body between the other two man, preventing from tensions soaring higher. 'Let's focus on our wounded here.'

Fresh blood oozes from her palm in Peiper's hand as the Panzerkommander speaks up to the man on his right.

'Karl, get a bottle of booze, I need to disinfect the wound.'

Hanke returns with a bottle of vodka, drenching the kerchief embroidered by Veseenmayer's daughter in it, then casting an apologetic look at her - waiting till Peiper decides her wound is clean enough to be wrapped again.

'Give her a taste first, it'll help.' Jochen says, not taking his eyes off her bloody palm, satisfied with its de-glassed state.

Without further question Hanke puts the bottle to Sophia's lips, raising it, leaving her no choice but to swallow, the alcohol burning through her insides with fire matching the dripping cloth on her palm.