A war hero is invited to the Countess’s mansion to be awarded the Valor Medal. He arrives after a trip of weeks by carriage over the wilderness roads leading to her manor. It is after midnight. He is escorted by the butler to his room and brought a meal and drink and told he will meet with the Countess tomorrow.
When he awakes there is a crowd outside his window. It’s a mob. The butler explains a group of peasants and town merchants had formed a union and were besieging the manor in anger against the Countess for her treatment of them.
The mob breaks through the gates and breaks into the mansion. The butler asks if the hero knows how to fly a plane. The war hero says yes. The butler brings the war hero to tunnels below the mansion. He shows him an experimental airplane. The butler says, ‘Please familiarize yourself as best you can with the controls. I’ll bring the Countess.. Then we can escape. The plane is sitting on a straightaway that leads to an opening we can fly out of.’
The butler fetches the Countess. She is old and frail and confused. The butler, propping her up, escorts her up the ladder and helps her into the cockpit.
“There’s no room for three,” the war hero says.
“I know,” the butler says and shuts the canopy.
He climbs down the ladder and pulls it away from the plane. The sound of yelling comes from somewhere in the caves. It’s the mob. The war hero starts the engine and takes off. The plane shoots along the straightaway and out of the cave opening into the stormy sky, going faster than any plane the war hero flew.
The Countess is groaning and has not said anything.
“Are you all right?” the hero says to no response.
Lightning flashes. The air is turbulent. There appears to be flak coming from the ground. Something strikes the plane and the hero loses control. He is able to bring the plane down for a water landing in a lake in the wilderness.
He pulls the Countess out of the cockpit. She is unconscious. He swims with one arm around her to the nearby shore. Over the next few weeks, bands of peasants scour the wilderness looking for the wreckage and the Countess. The war hero and Countess evade the bands.
They go to the outskirts of the Countess’s estate and see the butler’s head on a pike. Time passes and the war hero and the Countess adapt to life in the woods. The Union of Peasants and Merchants establishes an elected official to take the place of the Countess. The war hero spies on some peasants talking about it.
When the Countess hears the news she becomes distraught. Her health declines and she seems to be dying. She asks the war hero if he would bury her on her estate. The hero says he will and she dies.
He brings the Countess to the edge of the estate, carrying her corpse on his back. He digs a grave and buries the Countess there. The next night he goes to the pike. The butler’s skull is still there. He kicks the pike down and takes the skull. Be brings it to the Countess’s grave and buries it next to her.
The next day the war hero starts walking the road leading to his home, far away.