“Don’t do this,” said Erling, nocking another arrow as he descended the ridge on his way toward them.
Sverre put the pistol to Kari’s head.
“I said lower the bow!” he shouted.
Erling continued to approach them.
“Stay back—!”
Before Sverre could finish, Kari kneed him in the crotch and pulled free, diving to the ground. Sverre lunged toward Kari, but Erling drew back on the bowstring and loosed the arrow before he could, hitting Sverre in the throat. Sverre spun and fired wildly at Erling, reaching for his gushing throat with his other hand. He quickly emptied the pistol, missing with every shot. Then he turned and scrambled off toward a nearby ridge, and Erling followed him, drawing another arrow.
Nearby, Moltke watched them from where he lay in the snow. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came, and he gurgled up a mouthful of blood. He tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t move. He looked up again toward the others, but all he saw were a few hazy shapes. The edges of his vision grew blurry, like a clear fire was spreading across the earth. All the pain was draining away, but so was something else. His life force, if there was such a thing. He’d never given much thought to matters of the spirit, though, and it was too terrifying for him to consider them now.
Unwilling to think about it, he struggled to his back and watched the clouds drift by, again recalling the Wolkenatlas from his days at the Kriegsakademie, when his life was still ahead of him. One of the clouds looked like a flexing arm, then swelled and straightened out into the shape of Italy. He’d always wanted to go to Rome, with Elise, and to look at the art in the Capitoline Museums, and to get drunk on cheap Italian wine. Suddenly realizing that he’d never get the chance, he tried again to struggle to his feet, but once again, his legs refused. Then so did his lungs. He started to panic, unable to breathe. I shouldn’t be here, he thought to himself. I should be in Africa with Rommel, leading a column of Panzers against the Allies.
A moment later, everything went black.
Erling trudged up the ridge, following the blood trail in the snow. He held the arrow nocked and ready, but he kept the bowstring slack, hoping he wouldn’t have to use it. In a few places, it looked like Sverre had regained his strength and was making a run for it, as his tracks grew further and further apart. In others, though, it looked like he’d fallen or was running out of steam; his footprints became frantic, the snow packed down and stained with blood.
The trail tightened, and the gaps between the spatter grew shorter and shorter the further he went. Before long, he was following a near continuous line, a messy crimson ellipsis in the snow. After cresting the hill, Erling spotted Sverre in the distance, sitting against a bare and gnarled tree. Sverre had become as pale as the snow around him, and he clutched the side of his neck, trying in vain to suppress the wound.
Erling lowered the bow and slowly approached his old friend. Sverre looked up at Erling and smiled as he came near, as if they were meeting under vastly different circumstances. For some reason, Erling thought back to the time they’d run off as thirteen-year-olds to join the army during the early days of World War I, after a German U-boat had sunk the Ulriken and killed a local who’d been part of her crew. Sverre had been the only other one who hadn’t turned around and gone back home along the way, and they’d made it all the way to Oslo before they’d finally gotten caught.
After a moment, Sverre opened his mouth to speak. Instead of any words coming out, he gurgled up a bright red bubble of blood. He closed his mouth, then opened it again and hesitated for a long moment, as if considering what to say. After another moment, he let out a quick, aching sigh, and then he went still, his vacant eyes fixed on the horizon.
Kari came up over the ridge behind Erling and saw Sverre. A moment later, Lance followed.
“Is he dead?” asked Kari.
Erling nodded.
“I’m sorry—”
He interrupted her.
“We should hide the bodies,” he said.
Lance followed Erling back down the hill to get Moltke’s body. Erling took the pistol from Moltke and stuffed it into his waistband, then reached under Moltke’s armpits while Lance grabbed Moltke by the ankles. They lifted the body and carried it up the ridge, bringing it to a shelf of land just above the trail. Then they carried Sverre’s body there as well.
Erling found a large, flat rock and began to dig into the ground. The earth was frozen solid and difficult to dig into, and they took turns until they’d dug a pit deep enough to bury the bodies. Erling went through Moltke’s pockets and took out everything that could identify him. Then he went through Sverre’s pockets. He found two coins, a dried rusk of brown bread, and a child’s jackknife. In Sverre’s coat, he found a creased and faded photograph of a girl that looked like it had been taken when they were young. Erling recognized the girl, but he couldn’t remember her name. Was it Solveig, or Sofie? he wondered. He wasn’t sure, but he knew she’d married a schoolteacher from Lånke and moved out west decades before. He’d never known that Sverre had been fond of her, though the picture had clearly been taken during the time that he and Sverre had been close. It made him wonder about all the other things he hadn’t known about Sverre, and about everyone else, too, for that matter, and what they didn’t know about him. People seemed to be full of hidden fires, invisible to one another and often even invisible to oneself.
Erling slipped the photograph into his pocket along with the rest of Sverre’s things. Then he rolled the bodies into the shallow grave, one after the other.
CHAPTER 24
The night cold thickened the highlands, stiffening the grass and putting hoarfrost on the trees. Its winds made an icy music as they swept down from the mountaintop, rattling branches and scraping across the hardening ground.
They drove the half-track west, back in the direction it had come. They took a meandering route, crossing and recrossing the earlier tracks in case the Germans came looking for Moltke. Luckily for them, it began to snow again, and the winds soon raged. Before long, it became difficult to tell which tracks were the most recent, and soon after that, which were even tracks at all.
Erling stopped when they approached Tjønnmorya, where they found Torden milling about in an open meadow, favoring his right side. Kari and Lance got out of the half-track and approached him while Erling continued on, driving the half-track up a hill overlooking the Mikkelstjønnan lakes. At the top of the hill, Erling turned the half-track around and pointed it toward one of the lakes. Then he got out of the half-track and looked for a heavy stone. Once he found one, he took the can of gas, a rifle, and some ammunition from the back of the half-track. Then he wedged the stone against the half-track’s gas pedal and shifted it into gear.
The half-track lurched over the crest of the hill and began hurtling toward the lake, picking up speed as it barreled down the hill. It rumbled out onto the ice and broke through the surface, churning forward through the freezing water. It began to lose speed as the water rose up over its wheels, and then its doors, and then flooded into its seating area. Then it disappeared beneath the surface, and a glut of bubbles rose up, signaling the termination of its engine.
Erling slung the rifle over his shoulder. Then he walked down the hill and out into the meadow, where he joined the others. Torden pulled free from Kari and hobbled over toward Erling, ecstatic to see him. Erling put down the gas can and rubbed Torden’s neck, and the horse nuzzled and licked him, hungry for his touch.
Erling pulled out the rusk of bread he found in Sverre’s pocket and gave it to Torden, who gummed it down. After he massaged Torden’s ears and neck for a moment, Erling bent down and looked over Torden’s hooves. The left front hoof was bleeding, and it looked like he’d walked across a field of jagged rocks. The left rear hoof was even worse, laced with deep slices and nearly cracked in half. Erling cleaned them out as best as he could and patched them with sap. Then he tore the rest of his undershirt in half and fashioned a pair of makeshift bandages for Torden�
��s hooves.
Once he finished taking care of the horse, Erling and the others gathered Moltke’s and Sverre’s things into a pile and dumped gasoline onto it. Then they set it aflame. After watching the fire dwindle down to ashes, they kicked snow over it until they’d buried it. Then they turned and began walking in the direction of Sweden.
Erling held Torden’s reins, guiding him over the rough terrain. They walked without speaking, each lost in their own separate worlds. Erling wanted to tell Kari he was glad she was all right, and that he wasn’t angry, but he didn’t know how; he kept thinking of Martha, and how much Kari reminded him of her, of her stubbornness and the way she fought for things she believed in. Kari, on the other hand, wanted to apologize to Erling for the trouble she’d caused, and to tell him that he’d been right, but her pride wouldn’t allow it. Lance burned with his own regrets, and there were so many things he wanted to say to Kari, but he didn’t know where or how to begin. Though they were only an arm’s length away from one another, it felt like they were miles apart, and the longer they went without speaking, the more impenetrable the silence became.
Eventually, the snowfall began to cease, and not long afterward, the storm clouds broke, dissipating in the wind. The waning moon appeared, a smear of jaundiced light in an otherwise colorless sky. The stars soon returned as well. They could see Hrungnir’s huge, odd-shaped heart, and Thjálfi fighting Mökkurkálfi until the end of time, and Freyr’s great boar Gullinbursti, with his long, twisting mane.
They ascended a low ridge and wandered across a frozen bog. The ice was thick with branches and logs, and they slipped and stumbled their way through the mire. After crossing the swamp, they spotted a large, kidney-shaped lake in the distance; the silver reflection of the moon shone upon its surface, dull as an old coin. Erling stopped and looked at the lake, and then at the mountains behind them. After a moment, Kari and Lance stopped as well, turning and looking toward Erling.
“What is it?” asked Kari.
Erling nodded toward the mountains just beyond the lake.
“That’s Sweden,” he said.
“Hot damn,” said Lance.
Erling leaned the rifle against a tree. Then he reached under his sweater and pulled out a gold ring suspended on a chain. He took off the ring and chain and offered them to Kari.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“You’re going to need it,” he said, taking off his own battered wedding ring and offering it to her as well.
“Hold on—”
He interrupted her.
“Norway’s not safe for you anymore,” he said. “You’ve been wanting to leave, anyway. Now you have an excuse.”
“But it’s not safe for you, either,” she said.
“Nobody saw me with him,” said Erling, nodding toward Lance. “Besides, someone’s got to look after the herd.”
“Dad—”
He interrupted her again.
“It’s done,” he said, putting the rings into her palm and closing her fingers over them. “Now get going before I change my mind.”
He lifted her up and put her onto Torden’s back, then turned to Lance, handing him the rifle.
“Get her to an Allied base, and tell them what she did for you,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Lance, climbing up onto the horse behind her.
Erling turned back to Kari, speaking to her in Norwegian.
“Look up your uncle in New Jersey,” he said. “He’ll take you in.”
“Wait,” she began, choking up with tears.
Before she could finish, Erling slapped Torden on the rear end, and the horse trotted off to the east. He watched her go, then turned and walked off into the shadows, heading west back in the direction of the Stjørdalen Valley.
CHAPTER 25
Dawn steeped into the sky, and the mountains emerged from the blue-black night. A halting breeze came to life, kicking up the snow and rousing the birds from their nests. A few of them took flight, heading west and disappearing into the cloudbanks.
Kari and Lance continued their way toward the border. She sat out in front, holding the reins. Lance sat behind her, giving her as much space as he could without falling off the horse. Every time he brushed up against her, she stiffened as if he were probing her with a hot poker. He opened his mouth to speak a few times, but he couldn’t think of anything to say, so he ended up not saying a word.
They rode onward, soon cresting a low ridge and heading down into a valley. Torden stumbled on a patch of rocky ice and slid a few paces before regaining his footing. Lance nearly fell off the horse and grabbed onto Kari’s side for support. Once he steadied himself, she shrugged him off, repelled by his touch.
After a while, Lance finally spoke.
“Listen,” he said, “about what happened—”
She interrupted him before he could finish.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have left you—”
She interrupted him again.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
He opened his mouth to speak again but decided against it, and they continued on in silence. Overhead, the sky became suffused with more and more light until it became a pale shade of violet. The wind faded away, and wet wads of snow began to fall from the boughs of the evergreens. A bird cried in the distance, its lonely song piercing the emptiness.
They made their way across the uneven landscape, fording frozen creeks and trudging up shelves of icy rock.
After a while, Lance began to sing.
“You’re the cream in my coffee,
You’re the salt in my stew,
You’ll always be my necessity,
I’d be lost without you . . .”
This time, Kari didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile, or soften, or have any reaction at all. Lance no longer seemed like Clark Gable to her, or Cary Grant, or even the stars of the B-movies they used to put on the lower halves of the double features at the Rosendal. He was just like Håkon and Jan Petter and the others, or even worse in that he’d pretended to be something more.
They rode onward. The sun continued to rise and swell, fighting its way through the wall of clouds. Ribbons of low fog broke up and dissipated in the easterly wind, and mixed flocks of wheatears and starlings pecked at the softening snow.
They soon climbed another rise and picked their way across a rutted meadow. The frozen bushes and shrubs crunched loudly beneath Torden’s hooves. They entered a forest of old birch and spruce trees, and after the trees thinned out, they rode toward the crest of another hill. At its peak, Kari saw a cluster of houses in a valley to the northeast. Thin columns of smoke rose from a few chimneys and flattened out in the breeze.
They continued on, down the hill and through another forest. At the forest’s edge, they dismounted and tied Torden to a tree. Then they went forward and looked out toward the village. They watched it for almost an hour, and they didn’t see a single soldier or any other sign of the Germans.
They eventually spotted a middle-aged man making his way toward an old wood-frame church. They waited a few more minutes, then left their weapons by Torden and ventured out toward the church. Halfway there, they saw another man coming up the road from the other side of the village, riding a horse-drawn cart. They slowed, expecting the worst, but the man continued past on his cart, paying them no mind.
As soon as the man was gone, Kari and Lance approached the church and went inside. It was quiet and dark, and there didn’t appear to be anyone there. They wandered past the wooden pews lining the nave and approached the modest altar. Before they reached it, a woman emerged from the sacristy, carrying a stack of worn hymnals. She nearly dropped them, startled by their presence.
“May I help you?” she said, speaking in Swedish, which was similar enough to Norwegian for Kari to understand.
“This man is an American pilot,” said Kari, in English.
“Oh my,” said the woman, putting
down the stack of hymnals. “Wait here. I’ll get the reverend.”
Lance looked to Kari as the woman hurried off, concerned.
“Don’t worry,” she said.
They waited, and after a moment, the woman returned from the back of the church followed by the middle-aged man they’d seen before. His thick coat was off, revealing a shirt with a clerical collar, and he addressed them in a thick and halting English.
“Welcome,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Pastor Lundqvist.”
“Major Lance Mahurin of the 56th,” said Lance, shaking the pastor’s hand.
“We can help you,” said the pastor.
He led Lance toward a hallway, and the woman followed them. Kari hesitated, remaining behind. She looked toward the altar, which was dressed for a service, then looked back to the hallway, where Lance and the others disappeared into a room. She thought about America, and her Uncle Agnar, and everything she’d seen in the movies. Then she thought about her father and their farm back in the Stjørdalen Valley.
After a long moment, she turned and headed toward the door.
CHAPTER 26
Kari made her way back across the village, walking as quickly as possible. A part of her wanted to run, but she kept her speed in check, not wanting to draw any attention. Rounding a corner, she approached a man shoveling snow outside his store. The man looked up and nodded to her as she passed by, and she nodded back as she continued on her way.
She soon left the village and approached the forest. Torden nickered when he saw her, tugging at his reins and shifting excitedly from side to side. She went over to him and stroked him under his jaw, talking into his ear in a low and steady voice. He nuzzled into her, grateful for her touch.
Kari picked up the rifle. Then she hesitated, uncertain. It seemed like more trouble than it was worth; there’d be no way to explain to the Germans why she had it, if they found her with it, and she couldn’t think of many situations where having it might actually make a difference.
Land of Hidden Fires Page 13
