Assault Regiment Wotan, the elite band of men whom Kuno von Dodenburg had led so often to victory, had been mercilessly cut down in the forests of the Ardennes. Only Sergeant-Major Schulze remained to lead the battered, war weary survivors of Hitler's famed SS through the secret pass over the snow-locked Vertes Mountains, in the Fuhrer's desperate plan to save Budapest from the Soviet armies. Every single one of them knew that it was the plan of a madman, and every man knew that whatever the cost it had to succeed.