The iron chariot

“That sound of wheels, gradually stifled by the forest until it faded away, brought back one of the strange little incidents of the previous night: my meeting with the fisherman. I recalled that he, too, had come from the moor, and like me had stood listening to the sound of distant, rolling wheels. But what was it he spoke of? The Iron Chariot… I saw him before me again, standing in the dark, small, hunched, shaking his head at my question: Who owns the Iron Chariot? ‘Yes, who owns it,’ he had said”.

Summertime, and at a small seaside guesthouse, the living is easy. The guests sit on the veranda and recharge their batteries before the city’s hustle starts again. One of them is the narrator, an author with a keen eye for women, who has set his sights on the squire’s sister: Hilde of Gjærnes Manor. After being turned away attempting to court her one evening, he takes a shortcut back through the woods, and that’s when he hears it: a strange, metallic clattering echoing through the trees. Something ghostly. It’s the iron chariot. According to legend, the sound means one thing: someone will die.