Land of Hidden Fires

by Kirk Kjeldsen

  “They got sick,” said the girl. “Tuberkulose.”

  The farmer continued to rail at them in Norwegian, tears streaming down his reddening cheeks. Moltke turned away and looked toward the mountains, his thudding heart finally slowing down in his chest, though his stomach was once again beginning to roil.

  A light snow fell in the late morning. It lasted just minutes, and it left little more than a dusting atop the previous snowfall. Still, it felt like the clouds were somehow trying to remind them of their authority, and they remained firmly overhead, a swollen grey belly fixed to the bottom of the sky.

  Moltke and his men rode the half-tracks toward another farm in the Stjørdalen Valley. Along the way, he looked to his notebook again and checked the information the Gestapo had given him. According to the notes, a man named Birger Tørrisen lived at the next farm with his wife and two teenage daughters. His wife was a cousin of the Quisling mayor of Trondheim who the Germans had put into power in 1941; Birger had been flagged for being part of the Trøndelag Teater when he was a student at the Norwegian College of Teaching in the early 1920s, but he’d done nothing suspicious since then, and he wasn’t being monitored. The outdated information that Moltke had gotten on the Lorck family had been an exception; aside from that, the Gestapo’s information on the residents of the valley had been thorough and up-to-date, thanks to their network of spies and Quisling informers.

  Moltke put away his notebook and took out his flask, but when he went to drink from it, he realized it was empty. He inwardly cursed himself for finishing it so quickly, wishing he’d brought more, or had at least better paced himself. His mouth was as dry as cotton, and his headache had slowly transitioned from a dull to a throbbing pain, punctuated by every bump in the road or loud noise. He knew that Goetz carried a flask of korn with him, but he couldn’t stand the smell of the cheap liquor much less the idea of drinking from the same bottle as Goetz. He refilled his flask with water instead and kept to his cigarettes, smoking one after another despite the raw feeling they left in his throat.

  They soon turned onto a road covered with unspoiled snow and followed it toward a large red farmhouse. Before they’d even pulled to a stop, Moltke could tell that no one had been there in days; the snow around the house and barn was untouched, and no smoke rose from the farmhouse’s chimney. Perhaps the Tørrisens were in Trondheim, he assumed, visiting family; according to the Gestapo’s information, Birger’s brother was a civil servant there, and their mother resided at a sanatorium.

  They pulled the half-tracks to a stop and got out, and Moltke turned to his men.

  “Check the house and the barn,” he said. Then he lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and closed his eyes. He imagined his grandfather, seated atop his cavalry horse, leading his men during the Austro-Prussian War’s decisive Battle of Königgrätz. Then he pictured his father, saber in hand, turning away an Allied charge on Çanak Bayırı at Gallipoli. He imagined the embarrassed and ashamed expressions on their faces, if they could see him now, going from farm to farm in rural Norway, looking for a downed and probably unarmed pilot. He envisioned his overweight wife Gertrud and their spoiled daughters Ursula and Frauke, whom he hadn’t seen in eight months but who didn’t seem to miss him, only sending a few perfunctory letters during that time. He shook their disappointed faces from his mind and thought of Elise instead, lying naked on the divan in her uncle’s Berlin apartment, her hands clasped behind her head and a look in her eyes that was both confident and unashamed. If only I could go back to that moment and do things differently, he thought to himself.

  Before long, Blücher’s oafish voice broke Moltke’s reverie.

  “Herr Oberleutnant.”

  Moltke opened his eyes and spotted a skinny, bearded man in an overcoat approaching on a rusty bicycle, pedaling like a maniac and slipping and sliding through the snow.

  “Was zum Teufel . . . ?” said Goetz.

  Moltke turned to Schweitzer, who raised his rifle and aimed it at the man on the bicycle.

  “Fire a warning shot,” said Moltke.

  Schweitzer raised the rifle a few centimeters, then squeezed the trigger and fired a shot over the man’s head. The man swerved off the road and crashed his bicycle into a snowdrift, going over his handlebars. After landing face-first in the snow, he scrambled to his feet and came running toward them with his hands in the air.

  “Don’t shoot!” shouted the man, in clumsy German. “I’m unarmed.”

  CHAPTER 12

  A mizzling sleet began to fall, varnishing the world with another coat of ice. In the distance, the mountaintops disappeared beneath a grey smother of gathering storm clouds. The birds left the darkening sky to hide in their nests or in the evergreens, and the world grew quiet again without their twittering song.

  Erling slept astride the mule. He’d drifted off at some point during the morning after riding all night without rest. He faded in and out of a tenuous sleep, his grasp on time and space wavering as his dreams mingled with reality. One moment, he was riding Loki back at their farm, pulling a plough over a barren field; the next moment, he was back in the present, chasing Kari toward the Swedish border, and the moment after that, he was dreaming again, riding across the Stjørdalen Valley as a young man to see Martha at her grandparents’ farm.

  He shook his head and slapped himself, but it didn’t help. He soon faded off again, dreaming of Njal-marked Fjord horses pulling felled timber to the river, their hooves booming like thunder. Loki clambered onward through the spruce-choked hills, breaking thin plates of ice where the snow had melted and then frozen again. Going down an incline, Erling pitched forward when Loki slipped on some rocks, and he smashed his face against the mule’s neck, bloodying his nose.

  He sawed back hard on the reins, jerking Loki to a stop. Erling dismounted the mule and made his way to a nearby stream, where he dunked his head into the frigid water. It felt like cold fire, but he stayed under as long as he could. Then he surfaced again, gasping for air as the blood rushed to his face.

  Erling bent down and drank as much of the icy water as he could bear, getting rid of the coppery taste in his mouth. Then he made his way back toward the mule, his heart pounding in his chest. He noticed that Loki was favoring his left hind leg, then saw blood speckling their tracks. He knelt down and examined Loki’s hoof, finding a deep crack slicing across it.

  He led Loki to the creek and washed away the dirt and blood from Loki’s injured hoof, whispering old Bånsuller to the skittish mule. Loki recoiled from the frigid water, but the pain of the cold dulled the pain of the injury, and he soon quit resisting. Erling unsheathed his knife and scraped Loki’s hoof clean, then went about lacing the crack. After he finished, he patched it with thick sap from a nearby spruce tree, then cut off a strip of his long underwear and tied a makeshift bandage over the hoof.

  Erling washed the knife in the creek, then plunged his head once more into the icy water. He walked back over to Loki and fed him the rest of the oats he’d bought in Hegra, even though he was starving and would’ve preferred to have eaten them himself. He considered eating the last strip of jerky he had but then decided against it. Then he mounted the mule and rode onward, taking the twisting road east through the spruce-choked forest.

  He crossed through the low country of the valley and rode the crakes and dabchicks up out of the frozen marshes. Then he followed the trail up toward the mountains, past a section of recently cleared forest. The trail branched and broke along a series of low hills, and losing his sense of direction, Erling looked toward the sky for the sun to guide him. When he finally located it overhead, glinting like a piece of topaz beneath ice, he tugged at the reins and nudged the mule onward toward another valley to the southeast.

  Before long, he spotted the remains of the Hegra Bridge, lying in an ice dam choking the Stjørdal River. He pulled up on the reins and brought the mule to a halt, then looked downriver for a narrow point to cross. Finding none, he glanced upriver. He nearly exploded with rag
e when his eyes stopped on a cart submerged in the ice dam—his cart, as he recognized its misshapen tailboard and the splinter bar that he’d fashioned himself. Then he suddenly felt sick, realizing that Kari might be underneath the ice along with it.

  Erling jumped off the mule and ran down to the water. He scrambled out onto the ice, slipping and sliding his way across the craggy mess. The freeze-up strained and cracked as he crossed it, but he ignored the sounds, searching desperately for his daughter. If she were indeed down in that icy black water, he’d never forgive himself for initially thinking of his cart.

  Erling checked the area around the cart, but he found nothing. He widened his search, getting down on his hands and knees and straining to see past the milky crumble. He still saw nothing below, and his heart sank at the prospect of losing Kari. Then he spotted a crooked shape beneath the ice that looked like an arm, or perhaps a leg.

  He pounded against the ice with his fist, but it wouldn’t break. He stood up and stomped on it, and it creaked a bit but still held. Erling looked toward the shore and saw a large rock jutting up from the snow. He ran over toward the riverbank and pried the rock free, then carried it back onto the ice.

  He raised the rock over his head and smashed it down onto the ice as hard as he could. The impact sounded like a thunderclap, but it barely made a dent. He raised the rock and smashed it down again and again, putting everything he had into it. The ice finally began to break up, and the whacks grew slushy as the freed water seeped up from beneath.

  He tossed aside the rock and plunged his arm into the icy water. It was so cold that it took his breath away, but he ignored the pain and moved his arm around, searching for the limb. His arm thickened in the freezing water, growing numb and slow, so he pulled it out and reached down with the other arm. His fingertips soon found something soft and giving, and he tugged at it, but it came loose. He reached again and grabbed the object, but before he even pulled it to the surface, he knew by its weight and feel that it was only a log.

  Erling scoured the ice again for signs of Kari, but he found nothing. Then he looked toward the bank on the other side of the river, and he saw a violent scrawl of hoof prints leading up onto solid ground. He scrambled to his feet and hurried over to the riverbank, searching the snowdrifts for tracks. He soon found a large pair of boot prints leading off into the wilderness.

  Not far away from them and heading in the same direction was a smaller set of footprints, which appeared to be Kari’s size.

  CHAPTER 13

  The temperature dropped as the day progressed, and the sleet transformed to snow. It came down fine at first, falling like powdered sugar. Then it fell thick and heavy, burying the world once again in silence.

  Kari and Lance rode all morning and into the early afternoon. She sat out in front, holding the reins; he sat in back, clinging to her whenever the trail became rough. Some time after they’d crossed the Trøbekken stream, he’d fallen asleep, leaning forward and burying his face into her shoulder. She could feel his breath against her neck and his stubble against her skin, and it sent warm shivers up her spine.

  She carefully steered the horse around the ditches and ice patches in their path, hoping to prolong the time he spent sleeping upon her shoulder. After a while, she peered over and saw the side of his head, noticing a small scar on his scalp, just behind his left ear. She wondered what it had been from—was it from shrapnel or a crash, or was it from his childhood, falling off a bicycle or getting into a fight? She closed her eyes and breathed in the rich, beeswax scent of his Brylcreem, imagining lying next to him on a reindeer hide in front of a warm fire.

  The sound of the wind shaking the trees roused Kari from her daydream, and after a few moments, Lance woke as well, licking his dry lips as he glanced around and got his bearings. They rode Torden up a knuckled ridge and then down into a valley, where they soon picked up the old logging road. Kari snapped at the reins, and Torden picked up his speed, cutting a broken path through the virgin snow.

  They continued along the buried road, not seeing a single mark of mankind all day other than the faint outline of the road they followed. Mists moved all around them like fleeing deer; above the treetops, the mountains to the north looked distant and blurry in the wet air, like smudges of purple and blue paint, and the light from the sky fell milky and grey, lingering on the afternoon.

  After a while, they saw a set of tire tracks in the road before them, spinning out in a sloppy arc and heading back in the direction they’d come from. At first, it had seemed like a mistake, but then they saw a second set of tracks, and then a third, wider set that looked like it belonged to a half-track or even an armored tank. Before long, the road was crisscrossed with tracks, multiplying and becoming fresher the further they went. It reminded Kari of the spider webs she used to find in their barn, all zigzagging patchworks of angles and lines.

  They left the road and tied Torden to a tree. Then they continued on through the forest on foot, avoiding open spaces and moving as quietly as possible. The snow was crusty underfoot, and the cold air had a cruel bite. They slowly made their way through the thick forest, then up another ridge and around a tangle of hedges blocking their way.

  They eventually emerged from the forest and spotted the village of Meråker in the distance, at the bottom of a valley. The first thing Kari saw was the crucifix-shaped wind vane atop the old Meråker Church. Then she saw the long, red railway station, and just beyond it, a few dozen houses carved into the sloping hillside.

  They pushed forward toward the edge of the tree line to get a better view. Once they reached it, Kari could see a number of German vehicles parked outside the train station, painted in Wehrmacht dunkelgrau and blending into the landscape. She could also see eight more Waffen-SS, anonymous beneath their black, scuttle-shaped helmets.

  “Why are there so many Krauts here?” asked Lance.

  “I don’t know,” said Kari.

  They watched as another half-track pulled up to the station. After it stopped, six more soldiers got out and joined the others. Kari turned back to Lance.

  “I’ll go find out what’s going on,” she said, starting for the village.

  Lance grabbed her arm.

  “Wait,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “If they see you, they’ll kill you.”

  Lance hesitated, knowing that she had a point. He pulled out his pistol and offered it to her.

  “Take this,” he said.

  “Keep it.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  “They’re not looking for me,” she said, then turned and set out. She could feel his eyes on her as she walked off through the forest. She wanted to turn around and smile, but she didn’t want him to see how nervous she was, so she continued on without looking back.

  Kari walked through the forest and down into the vale, slipping and sliding along an uneven decline. She tripped a few times along the way, barking her shins and stubbing her pinky toes. At the bottom of the hill, the terrain leveled again, and the forest thinned out. She hid behind the trees as long as she could, and when there was no more forest to shelter her, she went out into the open and made her way toward a dirt road.

  She followed the road past a sod-covered house and slowed her pace as she approached the outskirts of the village. She’d been to Meråker a few times as a girl, on her way to Sweden; it was larger than Hegra, and the houses were larger, too, and nicer than the ones in the Stjørdalen Valley, with slate roofs and fresh coats of paint, thanks to the money from the local mining industry.

  Kari passed the elementary school, which had already closed for the day. Then she approached the center of town. The village’s utility poles had been painted with white bands, presumably for blackouts; the few street lamps had been painted black, too, except for a thin slit. There weren’t many locals out, and the few that were minded their own business, avoiding eye contact. After she passed Meråker Handelsforening, the large market an
d center of the town, Kari noticed someone watching her from the second-story window of a house. Unnerved, she lowered her head and continued on her way.

  She soon spotted a poster affixed to a pole, written in German, the words in bold red lettering. Achtung!, it began. Reisende Wehrmachtangehörige! Der Fiend ist überall! Her German wasn’t perfect, but she understood the gist of it. Attention! German military travelers! The enemy is everywhere! Was it legitimate, she wondered, or was it the work of the Norwegian resistance? It was impossible to tell.

  She continued her way through the village. Before long, she spotted the church, atop a cleared hill. A few dozen black crosses stood half-buried in the snow, sticking up like cloves in an Easter ham, and a light burned inside one of the windows.

  Kari turned and set out for the church, then hesitated. She’d occasionally attended services as a child, sitting impatiently on the hard wooden pews while the preachers gave sermons about vague subjects like submission and mercy. She’d gone to Sunday school with the other girls from the valley, and she’d mastered Luther’s Small Catechism and all the important hymns. She’d never felt anything from religion, though, and after God hadn’t answered her prayers to save her dying mother, she’d stopped making an effort.

  She decided against seeking help there and continued on her way. After rounding a bend in the road, Kari spotted a young man behind the tavern, smoking a cigarette. She slowed her pace and considered asking him about the German presence, then hesitated, unsure. Perhaps it was the way he seemed so at ease while everyone else seemed on edge, or the way his probing glance bored through her when their eyes met. She decided to avoid him as well, continuing on and heading toward the other side of town.

  After reaching an intersection, she turned onto a one-lane road running alongside the Stjørdal River. Then she noticed a sign for the Meråker smelting plant. She suddenly realized that the Germans must be there to protect it. In February, she’d heard on a classmate’s contraband radio about the sabotage at the heavy water plant in Vemork. The Germans must have been increasing security as a result of that, she assumed, which meant they were probably protecting the rest of the plants, dams, and train stations between there and the Swedish border as well.