Campaign: North Gate

Upon stepping from the town gates, you see the quite beautiful vista made that is the countryside north of Dachau, the road winding up into a low string of hills before descending, just beyond, into the valley of the Danube. To your right, you can see the narrow valley of the Amper, the small stream that flows through Dachau, which will lead down into the valley of the Isar. Not far away, to the left, you can see a grove of apple trees, interplanted with hawthorne and cranberry bushes. The road itself passes through a dry, flat pastureland, where move some seventy cattle tended by a number of herders, townsfolk who bring their animals out of the town in the morning and let them feed before returning them at dusk.

Some hundred yards away you see a stone blockhouse, some twenty feet high and much larger than an ordinary house. There appear to be no windows, nor shutters, only empty cavities where both ought to be. As you approach, you can see a scaffold that has been attached to the front of the structure, from which hangs a man and a woman. You would guess that both have been hanging there for two, perhaps three days. You can see now that the building has been burned out, for charcoal scars, nearly the same color as the stone, score the hard granite above the windows and the entranceway.

There is naught upon the road but a farmer and his wagon, but a quarter full of hay, which is steadily approaching the town from a few hundred yards distant. But a single stile fence runs along the right side of the road for a hundred feet past the town’s gate, and you see three young boys, not yet ten, sitting there. For a moment, you remember what it was like to be a boy.