Level: Novice

The shadow on the tunnel wall grew larger. A man followed it around the corner and stopped when he saw the two wounded soldiers on the ground. He watched them for a few moments, before beckoning to somebody behind. Four more men came up, carrying coils of rope, wound around bundles of a brown material. The men, themselves, wore rugged mountain-men gear; fur coats, fur-lined leather caps and breeches, made of a course material like the stretchers. On their feet they wore fur boots, and in their hands, they held spears and swords.
“Katin!” the leader said, nodding and gesturing to Tom and Lucky to follow him.
From the pleasant smile on his face, Tom guessed they could trust him, but knew he had no choice anyway.
“Broken!” Tom replied, pointing to his arm.
Lucky pointed at the crimson rose of blood over his belly with the Very pistol. He inadvertently waggled it in the direction of the stranger, who held up his hands to protect himself.
“Put it down Lucky!” Tom gasped.
“What?” Lucky replied.
“The Very.”
“Oh! Sorry.”
The stranger smiled again and beckoned to his followers, who placed the coils of rope on the ground and rolled out the bundles. Holes had been made at each corner of these, and within moments, the men had threaded the ropes and put together simple, but ingeniously constructed field stretchers that had harnesses to fit over their shoulders. They lifted Tom and Lucky onto these and hoisted them to their shoulders.
Tom and Lucky remembered little of their strange journey through the maze of red-walled tunnels. Both knew they could be going to their deaths, but they had little strength left to resist. After about fifty metres, they passed over and around many dead bodies, each dressed much as the men that were carrying the stretchers.
“This was the battle!” Tom shouted to Lucky, who bobbed up and down behind him.
“Tantor!” the leader of the cave-men cried.
Tom didn’t reply, but he had heard the name before.
The rough ride continued, switching into side-tunnels, smaller and more difficult to negotiate, before seeming to return to the larger tunnel again. Tom had almost grown too weary to keep his eyes open, when they finally emerged into a wide cave. An icy, cold wind blasted from somewhere in front of him, making his eyes water and his fingers ache. He guessed they would emerge into a landscape. But what kind of landscape and where? As far as he could tell, they journey had only taken downward, so by now they should have been deep below the spring fields of Poland.
The little train of stretchers followed their leader along the uneven floor of the cave until they rounded a corner of the red rock. Suddenly the biting wind came roaring toward Tom, carrying with it flakes of snow.
“Seems it was the Devil after all!” Lucky joked.
“You still alive?” Tom joked.
“Only just. Beginning to wish I wasn’t. I thought Heaven would be warmer than this! And you? You’re shaking!”
“Not from the cold. Fever. And I have the worst hangover ever.”
The men in furs followed their leader out of the cave and between rocky outcrops as they began to descend what looked to Tom like a mountainside. He couldn’t see clearly for the whipping snow-flakes, but the pale orb of the sun pushed its way through the murk somehow, bringing hope to him.
After perhaps an hour, during which time Tom began to believe his carriers had unlimited strength, the leader stuck his hand in the air, and the train stopped. The snow seemed to ease and then stop altogether. While the strange leader laid out thick, flatbreads and salted rinds of meat on plates, the clouds cleared, and the sun began to warm Tom’s cheeks.
“Not so bad after all!” he joked.
His rescuers crowded around Tom while their leader, the only one wearing a white fur coat, raised a water-bottle to his patient’s lips.
“Good to drink?” Tom asked, feeling nervous.
The leader nodded. Tom tried a sip and found it to be water, clear and refreshing. He waited for any side-effects but only felt better. After eating some bread and meat, he felt better still and grinned. The leader raised Tom up by his shoulders and showed him the terrain ahead. The mountain path dipped down to a dry valley and then rose to a line of green hills. These lacked the icy caps of those Tom could see either side of the mountain they were on, but beyond these, far beyond, and just poking through a haze of cloud, he could make out a single peak, rising much higher than any other hill or mountain. Upon its tip he could see no snow but only two jagged peaks, one white and one black.
“Where are we?” Tom asked.
The leader of his rescuers pointed to himself. He said, “Inyan! Inyan!” and pointed to Tom, who replied:
“Tom. Tom Merriweather.”
Inyan shook his head and pointed to tom. “Omacron! Omacron!”
“Omacron!” Inyan’s men echoed.
“No! Tom!” Tom repeated, but Inyan only laughed and moved to Lucky. He repeated his introduction.
“Alan!” Lucky replied. “But everyone calls me Lucky.”
“Alan Lucky!” Inyan replied, laughing. “Tallana!”
“Where are we?” Tom asked.
Inyan shook his head and furrowed his brow. Tom swept his arm around to encompass the whole landscape before them.
“Ah!” Inyan replied. “Atalan T’ea Llantu.”
“Okay. Nice.” Tom asked, “And that?” pointing to the high peak in the far distance.
“Tpatam t’akalliyan,” Inyan replied.
Inyan’s words sounded strange to Tom, guttural, with lots of glottal stops and sudden sounds that surprised him. But he found Inyan’s face reassuring. The stranger had a long face and doleful eyes that seemed sad in some way. His cheeks converged with his mouth in jowls that would make him look more and more like a bulldog as he grew older. But when Inyan smiled, he did so with his whole face, the creases in his cheeks disappearing as if a sun radiated from within. It was a simple, innocent smile that Tom had never seen in anybody, except children, during the war. And in Inyan’s eyes, as well as the apparent sadness, there lay a stillness that seemed like lake that had lain undisturbed for centuries. These features made Tom smile, so that he decided that he liked Inyan. Without thinking Tom reached out and took Inyan’s hand. At first the strange man from this strange land seemed unsure of Tom’s touch, but seeming to come to a decision, he clasped Tom’s fingers within his own and shook Tom’s hand heartily.
“Peroturnakar!” Inyan said, pointing to the sky.
“I’ve heard that word before!” Tom replied, not understanding the significance of the sky.
“Peroturnakar!” Inyan said, looking sad.
Tom looked up again and thought he saw something strange through the clouds. It seemed to him that high up there, above the clouds, the sky consisted of rock, faint but hanging impossibly over them and mountainous landscape.

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