They made it a mile, Skjold pacing them in the sky in great looping circles, before Morten’s ATV died.
Another jury-rigged towing system resulted in Anders and Nils pulling Morten, with Oskar towed directly behind him.
Half a mile later Nils’s ATV coughed and quit. As Anders slowed to a stop, his own quad started to make burbling noises.
“We are done,” Val pronounced.
As the others pulled the quads to the side of the road, Val consulted her map.
With the ATVs off the road, Morten began unpacking his camping blankets.
Without looking up from her map, which she had practically memorized, despite not being able to read the labels on it, she spoke to him. “Do not do that, Morten. You will be moving again soon.”
He looked up, not comprehending. “Is there a fuel source nearby?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then what?” Ulrik asked. He looked as defeated as the others.
She stood up straight, her hands dropping to her hips. “Heinrich will come with me, and we will search ahead on foot for more fuel sources.”
Morten threw his blanket down in frustration. “And what are the rest of us supposed to do? Pull these ATVs behind us, as we walk?”
Val walked toward the angered Laplander. She stopped when the rims of her goggles were fogging from his breath. “That...” she said, “...is a very good idea. I will put you in charge of arranging that while we scout ahead for propane. It is good to know I can count on you, Morten the Hammer. Thank you.”
Then she turned her back on him and began walking down the road in the direction they had been traveling. Heinrich hurried to catch up with her, passing by Ulrik, whose shoulders were quivering slightly as he stifled his laughter at Morten.
Behind them, Morten seethed.
33
The Alps loomed ahead, angry white fangs stabbing into the sky. The mountain tops were coated in snow, and the clouds had pulled in around them like a shroud, promising more icy resistance in the days to come. For days, Val and Heinrich ranged ahead of the others, leaving markers when they needed to leave the road to skirt obstacles, but they found no sign of propane gas.
As they moved steadily southwest toward the imposing mountains, they noticed a building on the side of a hill. It stood out like a shining beacon. It was low enough on the mountains that it was still surrounded by greenery and not snow, and as a result, its white coloring made it stand out even more.
“A home of some kind?” Val asked.
Heinrich, despite being German, previously explained his lack of knowledge about his own country. He had not traveled far until those living with him in the northern part of the country perished. The man shrugged.
“Too large,” Val grunted, answering her own question.
“A stronghold, then?”
Val considered, peering at the white structure on the hillside, glowing in the sun. It was too far away to see details, but she could tell it was huge. If they were going to find any supplies—including the propane they needed so badly—this massive structure was their best bet. But one detail stood out, and made her uneasy. The building was clear of vegetation. Someone had been caring for the place.
“We will find out,” she said. “It is now our destination. We are too close to the winter now, I fear. If we find no fuel, perhaps this structure will provide suitable shelter for the winter.”
Val kept her concerns to herself. If the structure was intact, they would probably need to take it by force. They had already lost Stig and Trond, two of their best fighters. And while Erlend had not been the strongest among them, his loss was keenly felt, as well. They needed a break, but the jagged white towers clawing into the sky on the horizon promised only more struggle.
She knelt down and used the pointed tip of her hand-ax to carve a crude drawing of the structure in the distance, and an arrow pointing at it. Their destination would be clear to the others. Although the structure was off their intended route, she thought the diversion would be worth it.
As the afternoon wore on and they passed by a lake, the structure in the hills resolved into the most imposing fortress either of them had ever seen. Consisting of multiple structures spread five hundred feet along a cliff top, the fortress was topped with several towers, pinnacles, statues, sculptures and ornamental turrets. While the stone walls glowed a whitish gray against the pervasive forest behind it, the rooftops and turrets were all a darker slate gray that looked like it had once been a shade of blue, before time and neglect had allowed the magnificent structure to fade under unrelenting rain and snow.
Val had seen pictures in a child’s book, long ago, and the word came to her just before Heinrich spoke the word aloud, “Schloss.” It was the same in German as it was in the language of the North. “It is a castle. I did not think any were left standing. It looks like the church in Ulm.”
She understood that he meant it was similar in the fact that it stood, while most of the villages they had seen had been reduced to piles of cracked masonry. The castle before them was far more magnificent than the church had been. She guessed that the building was a military stronghold, designed to take a beating. The builders had done a good job. She supposed many of the upper structures—gables, dormers, tiny windows and balconies—were all more for show than for combat. While she couldn’t yet see the building’s base, it would need to be massive and thick to support the battlements’ weight.
Nearing the castle, trees sometimes obscured their view of the building’s magnificence. Along the twisting road they found destroyed and battle-scarred buildings—some showing the charred remains of fire damage. The road wound past large open stretches that were once for parking vehicles, and which were now being swallowed by green, like everywhere else in the world. When they glimpsed the castle, it was apparent that the designers had chosen their spot well—it would be virtually impossible to attack the place from any direction other than from the front.
At the end of the road, the winding path stopped at a gate, guarded on either side by two cylindrical stone towers. Arching over the gate was a huge red brick building. The gate stood ajar. Beyond it they could see the castle’s courtyard. Piles of stone and wood debris rose up on either side of the doorway.
“Remains of past battles,” Val suggested.
Heinrich peered at the pile to their left, going down the hillside. “The grass has grown up over it in places.”
“Long past battles,” Val agreed. It was unsurprising to her that people had been able to successfully fend off invaders from this fortress. The only question was, How long ago? She nodded her head at the interior courtyard, and Heinrich followed her in.
Past the arched entryway, which framed the main part of the castle, a thirty-foot wall stood before them. They walked around the large courtyard, looking back at the gatehouse. It was a shade of tan-orange, with a clock on top of it. There were well barricaded doors and stairwells in all directions except for one—the main stairwell stretching to the top of the wall, and leading to the next courtyard and the main building. They took the steps up to the next level, amazed at the scope and breadth of the place. The next courtyard was rectangular and pointed directly to a stairwell leading to the second story of the main building. All the lower level windows were heavily secured with wood and crossed iron grills.
Although there were tufts of grass poking up from the cobblestoned floor of the courtyard, Val noted that the vegetation was short—just an inch in length. As if it had been cut back recently.
They took five tentative steps toward the main building when a wooden door on a fifth-floor balcony opened, and a silhouette of a man could be seen.
“Guten tag,” he called. He sounded old, or perhaps his voice had not been used for a long time. His vowels creaked.
Heinrich immediately replied in German, returning the man’s greeting of Good day.
They exchanged a few words in German, and then the man’s voice brightened slightly. He went back in and
closed the door.
Val turned to Heinrich for an explanation.
“He asked if we were here to take the castle from him. I told him no and that we actually needed help. He said we should wait.”
34
After a few minutes, they heard loud clunks from the other side of the second story door. It opened to reveal a small, frail, old man. He was probably in his eighties, with wispy thin hair on a liver-spotted head. He walked folded over, nearly into a right angle, and held up by a gnarled, polished wooden cane.
“Willkommen in Neuschwanstein,” the man said in the same creaky voice Val had heard from the balcony.
Heinrich began to translate, and the old man interrupted them, speaking in the northern dialect of Val’s people.
“Apologies. Welcome to the New Swan Stone Castle.” He smiled a gap-toothed grin at them.
“You speak my language very well,” Val said, surprised.
“It is very similar to the Norwegian my grandmother spoke,” he said, dismissing the linguistic feat with a wave of his hand. “Come in, come in. It has been a very long time since I have entertained guests here in the castle.” He turned and hobbled back through the door.
“You are here with your family?” Val asked, following the man through the doorway.
“No, no. All gone now, aren’t they?” the man said, hobbling into a hall. The walls were adorned with paintings and tapestries, the ceiling hung with long disused chandeliers now covered in cobwebs. “Oh, this place is a beauty, isn’t she?”
Val thought the man’s form of speaking in questions was peculiar, and she soon realized the reason. “Are you here all by yourself, sir?”
He turned with a simple grin and nodded. “Yes, miss. Just me, Jan Werther. Last of my people. We repelled a lot of invaders when I was younger, and then they stopped coming. Well, when Frauke died—that was my sister, don’t you know? Well, it was just me here. She was the last of them to go.”
“I am very sorry, sir,” Val said.
“Oh, aren’t you a sweetie? What was your name?”
She introduced them both. “We also have some friends who will be coming this way in a day or two.”
“That’s fine, fine,” he said, leading them deeper into the maze of halls. Val had already lost her way, spending too much time gazing at the opulence around her instead of memorizing the way out. But she felt that she could trust this old man. Heinrich likewise seemed to feel at ease.
The floors were intricate patterned woods, and then flat stone tiles laid out in patterns. The walls were a cavalcade of colors and hues, with sconces, lamps, alcoves and columns. Parts of the castle were clearly original, stemming back who knew how many hundreds of years. Other parts had obviously been renovated with modern, post-cataclysm life in mind. Once-electric lamps had been replaced with thick candles that had dripped wax for so many years that they formed thick stalactites dropping down to mounds on the floor. Under the lamps, the mounds were beginning to form their own stalagmites growing upward.
In other cases, wooden and metal structures had been set up with ladders, allowing people to reach otherwise inaccessible parts of walls or fixtures. For what purposes, Val could not guess.
“Where are my manners? You said you needed help, yes, young Heinrich? What was it you needed?” The man spoke over his shoulder as he led them deeper into the bowels of the castle.
“We were looking for propane, a fuel used in the old days,” Heinrich said. If the old man heard, he gave no indication.
He led them to a small closet and opened it, revealing a room just barely large enough for the three of them to stand in. Along the wall were a twin set of ropes. Once he had ushered them in, he closed the door, sealing the three of them in the tight space.
“I’ve got a small garden in the back. Just enough for a lone man like me, you understand. Then there are the stores of dried goods. Yep, plenty of food here. There are also a few solar panels.”
The man grabbed one of the ropes and gave it a tug, with a surprisingly strong arm. When he did, the floor of the tiny room lurched downward. Then he turned to Heinrich. “Maybe you would be so kind as to propel us, son? My arms do get tired operating the lift.”
“Certainly.” Heinrich stepped around Werther and began hoisting the rope, hand over hand, slowly lowering the elevator car.
“I’ll let you know when we’re there,” Werther said. “So, where was I? Ah, yes. Lots of food. Frozen food. Jars and tins. Plenty to go around. And if you need to, this place is easy to defend. Although it’s been so long since anyone has been this way. From the towers you can see forever on a clear day. I’ve known you were headed this way for the last week. I left the front gate open just for you. I was hoping that those fellows following you were friends of yours and not chasing after you.”
Val smiled. “They are good friends. They have come to protect me on my mission.”
“Good, good,” Werther said, showing no interest in her mission.
As Heinrich lowered them, the open face of the elevator passed several doors, until they had descended deep underground. Heinrich let go of the rope when he could lower them no further.
Werther opened the door into a gray stone hallway, devoid of the upper floors’ charm. He ambled along the hallway, heading for a metal door at its end.
“How is it you have managed on your own for so long, Mr. Werther?” Val asked him, one hand slinking down to the handle of her long ax. The change in the environment had made her suspicious, although she had noticed no change in the old man’s demeanor.
“Oh, it has been lonely at times, but there’s always work to do, isn’t there?”
He reached for the handle on the metal door, and Val stepped ahead, reaching in front of him, grasping the handle. “Allow me,” she said.
The man just bowed slightly.
She flung the door open wide, and it swung inward on oiled hinges, revealing a huge open space. The floor was flat stone. Long tubes along the ceiling glowed white like the sun on a cloudy day. In one corner of the massive room was a strange four-wheeled vehicle with large metal prongs sticking off the front like tusks. Val could tell from its design and huge knobby tires that it was meant to lift heavy loads. She spotted a flat wooden pallet, stacked high with sacks, and guessed the vehicle was meant to lift the entire pallet and all its cargo at once. Along one wall of the room were several large waist-high white metal boxes, big enough for a human being to recline in.
But Werther pointed to a different wall, where there were tall white metal cages. They were adorned with writing in German and pictures of little propane tanks, along with other diagrams and images depicting the need to keep open flames away from the racks. Inside the spaces through the cages, Val could see forty bottles of propane, each one three times the size of the ATV’s extra tanks.
“Those the things you’re needing then?”
35
Even with winter fast approaching, the day was warm, and Ulrik was sweating rivers down his face. He had shed his shirt and cloak, his large ax on the ATV behind him. He walked bent forward at a forty-five-degree angle, pulling the rope that towed his inoperable vehicle.
Val had put Morten in charge of the men, but each day when Ulrik moved his dead ATV onto the road and began pulling, the Laplander had been content to let him lead the procession. In fact, Morten had taken up a defensive position at the rear of the convoy, with Oskar just ahead of him, and Nils and Anders—their weakest members—in the middle. Ulrik appreciated the gesture. The Laplander wasn’t trying to distance himself from Ulrik, but rather the man quietly accepted responsibility without being told.
They had started out as potential enemies, but Morten had shown his worth so far. Less could be said for Oskar. The man was, as ever, Morten’s ally, but he seemed reluctant to do much of anything else, besides bemoan their fate.
“How much longer?” Oskar asked, pulling his ATV in the middle of the convoy.
It was not lost on Ulrik that Nils had the heaviest
vehicle with its improvised second seat, and yet the thin historian remained silent in this company—unless anyone sought his counsel. Yet Oskar always complained.
Ulrik ignored the younger Laplander, looking ahead. “Something is coming,” he said, stopping the convoy, and allowing his ATV to roll to a stop. He reached over the saddle and retrieved his large ax.
Morten stepped up next to him, peering into the distance.
Whatever was coming stood as tall as a man, yet it loped on the road like a large, black animal. A horse, or something else. Around it, in constant movement, were a swirl of short, dark, creatures filling both sides of the road, darting back and forth with frenetic energy.
“Whatever they are,” Morten said, pulling his sword, “they are coming fast.” He looked to Ulrik, as if for guidance, but the larger man stayed still, so he turned back to the oncoming threat and waited.
“I don’t believe it,” Nils said, with deep concern in his voice. As the huge black creature resolved, the smaller shapes around it were recognizable as a large pack of dogs. Many of them had beards of dripping foam at their mouths, and large boils or furless distended skin on their bodies. They darted away from and back to the dark central creature, which was taller than a man. In some cases they snapped and bit at each other. “It is an ape. It will be strong like Trond. Stronger than Trond.”
“I will take it,” Ulrik said. “The rest of you, the hounds.”
And then the oncoming horde of animals closed the distance. Anders loosed several arrows, taking down dog after dog, his arrows piercing boils and spraying greenish liquid into the air. The pack consisted of thirty animals of varying size. There were breeds Ulrik had never seen, as well as many of the northern wolfhounds he knew. He had seen them in the North, surviving in forests in packs. Large animals with pointed ears, tufted fur, and long, thin legs like reindeer.
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