The Hosts of the Air

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Two days later John was in Munich, and he learned that Auersperg had not increased his lead. It was easy enough to trace him. He had secured an extensive suite of apartments at the large hotel, the Bayerischer Hof, although Julie and the Picards had been secluded in another part of the hotel. Auersperg had gone to the palace and had held a long conference with the old King of Bavaria, but on the second day he had left, still going eastward, escorted by hussars.

John departed again and on foot. The weather was balmier now, with touches of spring in it. Faint shades of green appeared in the grass and the foliage, and his pursuit was sanguine. Fortune had certainly favored him in a remarkable manner, so far. He had been able to answer all questions in a convincing way, and here in Bavaria the people were not so suspicious, and perhaps not so stern as they were in Prussia. Nor did he doubt for a moment that Julie knew he was following them. She had recognized him and their eyes had spoken in the language of understanding to each other. It was easy enough to re-create for himself, almost as vivid as reality, her beautiful face with the golden hair showing under the edges of the hood, and the startled look of the dark blue eyes when they first met his own. Relief and joy had been in that look too. He could read it.

John had learned in Munich the location of Auersperg's principal castle. It was Zillenstein in a spur of the Eastern Alps just inside Austria, where for centuries the Auerspergs had held great state, as princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Now when they were princes of both the German and the Austro-Hungarian empires with their greater fealty for the former, they often went there nevertheless, and John's information in Munich made him quite sure that the prince had gone directly toward the ancient stronghold.

Auersperg could cover the distance quickly in his powerful automobiles, but it would take John a long time on foot, helped by an occasional ride in a peasant's cart. Nevertheless he hung on with patience and pertinacity. He was but a single man on a quest in the heart of Germany, but in the old days men had gone alone through a world of dangers to the Holy Sepulchre and had returned. He was not far from the path taken by those from Western Europe, and he was uplifted by the knowledge. The feeling that he, too, was a crusader grew strongly upon him, and by night and day was his support.

He crossed the border at last and came to Salzburg in the mountains, where the gray-green Salzach flows down from the glaciers and divides the town. The place was thronged with soldiers, and the summit of the frowning Muenchburg was alive with activity. Here in the very heart of the Teutonic confederation, far from hostile frontiers, travelers were not subjected to such rigid scrutiny. It was deemed that everything was safely German, and John could travel at ease almost like an inhabitant of the land.

Salzburg looked familiar to him. There had been much to photograph it upon his mind. He remembered the uneasy night he and his uncle had passed there before his flight with Lannes, which had taken him into such a train of vast events. It had been only seven or eight months before but it seemed many times as long. He had felt himself a boy in Vienna, he felt himself a man now. He had been through great battles, he had seen the world in convulsion, his life a dozen times had hung on a hair, and since it is experience that makes a man he was older than most of those twice his age.

He was stopping after his custom at an obscure inn, and in the moonlight he strolled through the little city. In its place among the mountains on both sides of the gray-green river it was full of romance to him, romance colored all the more deeply by memory. Off there among those peaks the Arrow had first come for him and Lannes, while here the great Mozart had been born and lay buried. In remoter days Huns had swept through these passes, coming from Asian deserts to the pillage of Europe.

John sat down on a bench in the little square before the cathedral and looked up at the mountains. He knew the exact location in which lay Zillenstein, the ancient seat of the Auersperg race, and he calculated that in two days he could reach it on foot, the lone youth in peasant's garb, pursuing the powerful prince and general, surrounded by retainers and hussars and in the land of his ancestors.

John wondered what had become of his comrades. Was Lannes well, and had he got his message? Were Carstairs and Wharton still alive, and where was Weber? They were questions the solution of which must wait upon the success of his quest, and therefore the answer might never come. But he fiercely put away such a thought. He would succeed! He must succeed!

He was not walking in the dark. He had learned that Auersperg and his people had arrived at Salzburg two days before, and had left after a few hours for Zillenstein. The prince was in excellent health and would not remain at his castle more than a week. Then he would return to the western front, where he was one of the great generals around the Kaiser. He had brought with him two Frenchwomen, spies, who would be imprisoned in the dungeons of Zillenstein until the war was over, if, indeed, they were not shot before. One, it was said, was very young, and beautiful, but she was the more dangerous of the two.