by Isaac Stone
“Grom, Tommy,” I whispered to them. “Fall back to me. We need to make for the jungle. There’s a place not five miles from here where we can hide.”
Grom popped off a few more shots as he slid back in my direction with Private Tommy. Both of them kept their eyes on the source of the gunfire.
“I think I got one, sir,” the sergeant said to me. He huffed on the ground and gripped his weapon.
“I think you did,” Tommy added. “I heard one of them curse someone’s mother, so he must’ve been hit.”
“Follow my lead,” I told them. “I’m going to count to three and we’ll make for the jungle. Grab what you can from the cart as we go because I have no idea when we’ll return. One, two, three!”
We ran to the cart, dancing around bullets on the ground, grabbed a few parcels, and fled into the forest.
I ran down the hill with the team in search of the lost city and the terrain where it was situated. There were more trees in my face that day than I remembered from Wolf Mountain, but the environment was different. Wolf Mountain was in temperate zone, this place in the tropics. The trees could and did grow all year round. I ate a ton of leaves as I we rushed down to the bottom of the hill.
I stopped a second before I fell into a stream. As Tommy thundered past, I reached out and grabbed him by the arm. He halted on a precipice that overlooked it. It wasn’t deep enough to be river, more of a large creek. But right now, I didn’t need to fall into it with the Nazi’s in pursuit of us.
Howard and Grom came to halt a foot from where we stood. They looked over the cliff and saw the same stream as it flowed toward an unknown source.
We were all quiet. In the distance, I could hear shouting in German. For some reason, this was not a language my character understood, so I had no idea what they said.
“Anyone speak German?” I asked them in a low voice. I could feel the sweat turn my backside into a soaked mass.
“I do, sir,” Private Tommy spoke up. “You’ll be happy to know their commanding officer has called a retreat. We’re safe for now.”
“Retreat?” I said. “What are they retreating from?”
“I believe they are retreating from them, cap’n,” Howard spoke up. I turned in the direction of where he pointed.
There had to be twelve of them and they all carried bows. Each bow was pointed in our direction and I was surprised they hadn’t fired. We might all have guns in our hands, but I doubted we could get those guns up fast enough to prevent a volley of arrows in our direction. These were longbows wielded by men who knew how to use them.
I looked at the dark faces that glared at me. The tribal people from beyond the frontier had found us.
“Don’t move,” I instructed my men. “One move and they’ll release the bows. We’ll be dead before our bodies hit the ground.”
“Savages,” Grom snarled. However, he kept his gun pointed down.
“If it makes you feel better,” I told him. “I never knew they were here. We’ve been tracked all day long.”
The tribal people wore loincloths and had painted faces. These were men who considered this part of the forest their territory. We’d trespassed onto it and didn’t ask for their permission. By their law, we were invaders. It didn’t matter who made the trail we used, or that their ancestors built a vast temple complex in the jungle. I expected the Germans were in a similar situation right now. I hoped they were smart enough not to try anything stupid that would get us all killed.
It suddenly hit me that as “Captain Vince” I had plenty of negotiating skills. Furthermore, I was supposed to have an extensive knowledge of obscure language dialects from all the postings and study I’d accomplished around the world. The game designers allowed me to understand everyone in the town of Lackendow and Dunwoody. And yet no German, but whatever. Surely, I could make myself known to these people.
“Friends,” I said to them in the dialect spoken in the village we’d left a few days ago. When none of the men responded, I repeated the words several more times. I prayed the dice would roll in my favor this time. The computer system the VR team used to inject a certain level of randomness into this game was far more sophisticated than a pair of ten-sided dice tossed on a game board, although that is what it was supposed to represent.
Once again, I was impressed with the level of research and detail, which went into the design of this VR world. Someone had done their homework and found out about the fierce tribesmen who lived to the Northwest of India. Regarded as “unclean” by people further south, they lived free and undisturbed in the jungles. Their lives might be short, but they answered to no one outside their own tribes.
These were the Dimmur people and little was known about them, although I had a workable command of their language.
I took me a few more tries as the words formed into my head. Finally, I watched them turn their heads in amazement as the right world for “friendship” was uttered. With slowness and stealth, the tribesmen lowered their bows and aimed them at the ground.
I’d won this roll for opposition, but the game was far from over right now.
And I still had no idea how this would all prevent the destruction of Wolf Mountain. This wasn’t even the Howard of my dreams and phase-shifts with me. He never once mentioned our private chats.
“It seems to be working, sir,” Sargent Grom spoke to me. He stood there and glared back at the men with bows in their hands. This wasn’t the first time his character faced death.
A few minutes later, a regal man emerged from between the archers with a spear in his hand. I could tell by the jewelry he wore around his neck that this was a person of some importance. The others fell back and let him approach us, although they never dropped their bows.
“Who are you?” he said to me. “We’ve had too much trouble with Europeans who think this forest belongs to them. Tell me why I shouldn’t have you all killed on the spot?”
“Did you have the other men killed?” I asked him. “The ones who chased us.” I saw his face harden.
“We will take care of them as opportunity permits,” he told me. “I am Ramshunda and these are my men. You still haven’t answered my question. Why should I allow your people to live?”
“Because it will make Mahakali very angry,” I told him. “We are her servants and she won’t like it if you kill us.” I was playing a hunch with them, but it seemed to work.
“We are all Mahankali’s children,” he snapped back. “The last European I let pass through here told me the same thing. Now I’ve had to suffer an invasion of your kind. The other group tried to follow him. They couldn’t. So perhaps he is Her son and what does that say about you?”
I took the survival knife out of the holster where it rested on my thigh. This caused the archers to raise their bows until I handed it to the leader by the blade.
“It’s yours,” I told him. “Kill me if I have offended you, but allow my friends to go back.” After all, it was just a game, although I didn’t want it to end so sudden.
He took the knife from me and examined it. “This is a good knife,” the man said to me. He handed it to one of the archers who placed it in his arrow quiver. “Perhaps I will let you live. Why are you here?”
“The man you spoke about,” I told him. “I am searching for him. He carried something of importance and I need to see it returned. Do you know where he went?”
“Tall white man with hair above his lip?”
I nodded.
“He was by himself when we found him. I think he was mad.”
“Why mad I wonder?" I questioned. At least my team was silent, as they couldn’t understand what I said to the tribesmen in front of me.
The air was thick with humidity. This close to the stream it was filled with all manner of flying insects that were swarming around my face. And it was very hot. At least the game designers didn’t make the insects ones that bit, but I was sure it was in the works.
“He wanted to know how to find the place where the s
prits live,” I was told. “Only someone who is mad or a fool would do such a thing.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because no one has ever came back from that place alive,” he explained.
I tried to act surprised, but he knew what I thought. “So you want to go there and find this man?” He deduced. “Very well, we will not stop you. You will need to cross the stream, but if you travel up it, you will come to the place you seek. It is obvious and you will have no trouble finding it. Perhaps you will find your friend. I think you are all fools because the spirits will find you first.”
Seconds later the Dimmur vanished into the jungle. They were silent and it was as if they’d never been in front of us.
“Where did they go, sir?” Tommy asked me. “I couldn’t follow your conversation, but it seems you said the right things.”
“They told me the major went up stream to find the lost city,” I explained. “They also let me know no one returns from that place.”
“Whatever you did,” Grom spoke to me, “it seems to have worked. I do say my balls were all the way up to my throat a few minutes ago.” I could tell he was shaken by fear, as were all of us.
“So where to now, Vince?” Howard asked me. He still held onto his carbine, even after the run down the hill to the stream.
“Where else?” I told them. “Upstream to the lost city of Virkya. Although I suppose it can’t be too lost if the local tribes know where it is.” I turned and looked in the direction Ramshunda indicated.
It was hard to see very far as the sun was setting down and the brush tended to absorb the light of twilight. We still had a far trip to reach the ancient city. Unless we could find a trail, which was doubtful, it meant hacking our way through the forest until we reached the destination. Since the end point was likely to be an over-grown and hard to pin down, I decided to make camp for the evening.
In a few minutes, we’d chopped out a clearing next to the stream. There was a small spring that flowed down the hill and into the stream, so we did have a source of water. While the last rays of sunshine vanished, Howard helped the others get a fire in our clearing.
The only remaining problem was our lack of supplies. The flight from the first campsite left most of them up the hill. As I didn’t want to leave anything behind, it seemed logical to go back up and get as much as I could.
I opened up the logbook and found the direction of the camp listed on the map inside it. We were very close to the lost city, but no trails or roads appeared next to the stream. Thank you, game designers. The jungle was very realistic, which meant we needed to chop our way through VR vines, trees and swampland tomorrow. This time I was able to scope out the grade to the original campsite, which was listed as a “3” out of “5”. In other words, hard to climb, but not as bad as a mountain. Of course, I’d noted that on the way down.
“I’m going up to the previous camp to see if I can get anything out of the cart,” I told the other men. “It shouldn’t take me too long.”
“How are you going to find it in the dark?” Howard asked me.
I walked over the fire and grabbed a burning stick out of it. Just as the ones had done in the cave on the mountain, this one continued to burn and gave off enough light to illuminate my path. Of course, a real burning torch didn’t work that way, but the game designers had accomplished a few things when they modified reality.
“I’ve got my compass,” I told him. “Have this to light my path. I won’t be long.”
Once again….
I made my way up the hill by following the path we’d made on the way down. Even in the dark, it was possible to see the way we’d come. Now that I thought about it, this wasn’t smart. The tribesmen merely followed the obvious path we’d generated on the way to the stream. We’d left signs anyone from this area could read.
The cart was in place. I felt bad for the dead water buffalo, even if it was just a simulation. I wasn’t sure how detailed this game’s scenario was, but shouldn’t the tribal people have taken the water buffalo carcass for their use? They didn’t strike me as vegetarians.
As I went through the supplies in the wagon, I heard a sound from behind me. I pulled out the service revolver and cocked it. The wagon was still intact; no one had gone through it. For all I knew, this was one of the surviving Nazi commandos here to check out was left behind. I hunched down as the sounds of insects died. Someone or something was very close.
I turned around and felt the point of three arrows, drawn back upon carved wooden bows, at my neck. This couldn’t be the Dimmur unless they’d changed their minds. It was too dark to tell who was out there and I raised my torch to get a better view.
The flickering light allowed me to see the faces of my captors. They all looked very angry and were painted for war.
All were naked. Not a single one wore any clothing at all. Not even a thong or loincloth.
There were seven of them. Every last one was very much a woman. I could tell as their breasts swayed in the cool breeze that blew across the forest.
The hidden settlement of yogini nuns had found me.
For some reason, they didn’t try to capture any of the other men. My hands were tied behind me and after the women took away my revolver. This was frustrating as the revolver contained the communicator in the handle to the VR team. They didn’t say a word, but they didn’t have to let me know I was taken prisoner. After prodding my backside with the tips of their arrows, I had the notion that I was to follow without question.
We walked through the forest for another two hours. It’s not easy to do that with your hands tied behind you. I nearly fell over tree stumps and logs several times. They never even tried to help me up, merely stood there and watched me as I worked my way up to a standing position. What made the trip hard was the lack of any trail. These women knew the jungle well enough not to need one.
I walked along as I tried to avoid the trip falls and kept up with them. I noticed there was a white powder that covered their bodies. After a while I figured out they covered themselves with ash. I assumed it to be from protection from the bugs, although I hadn’t encountered any species’ which bit me as of yet. They could still be a nuisance and I was forced to spit clouds of bugs out of my mouth all night long.
The last half of the trip involved climbing up a rocky hill toward some rise below a set of cliffs. I could no longer hear the sound of running water in the background, so I knew we’d left the vicinity of the stream. When we reached the rocky hill, the women untied my hands from behind then retied them in front. The placed two women in behind with bows and a few more to my side. The rest continued to climb upwards. It wasn’t a long climb, but almost impossible to accomplish with my hands tied in front. So far, they hadn’t located the logbook or compass I’d taken with me. The gun was the only thing they’d recognized as a threat to them and it was taken away the moment I was captured.
After and eternity of climbing, we reached the top of the rise. A few of the women reached over and pulled me up as we cleared the final ledge. I noted the ash came off on my clothes as I made it to a standing position at the level plane where they were camped.
This had to be their settlement. I could see fires burning all over the rocks where they lived. More light flickered from inside a series of caves that lined the cliffs in front of me. This was a spot easy to defend, which had to be why they’d chosen it as a dwelling place. I counted a good thirty women who sat and meditated on the rocks that face the fire. All wore nothing more than grey ash. A few of them had beads strung around their necks and several wore red paint on their faces. Their hair was long and tattered, although the ones who picked me up kept it wrapped in some kind of rag.
The entire landscape was decorated by paintings and stone carvings from various Hindu religious scenes. I stopped and turned my head as I tried to figure out which particular denomination they favored. The answer came to me when I noted that all of the couplings of Shiva and Kali were made to show Kali on top
.
“Shakti,” I said to myself using the term for the feminine force of the universe. “These women are all Shakti renunciates.”
I’d never heard of holy women who lived by themselves before, even in any of the Yogini traditions in the Indian subcontinent. Even the memories the game supplied me with were blank as far as this went. My hands were still tied in front, so I had no way to pull out the logbook to see if any new information was inside it.
“Correct, Captain Vince,” a voice said to my side. “We serve the Holy Mother of the universe. And do you know why I have brought you to this place?”
I turned around to face the woman who spoke to me. She stood three feet to my right and, like the others, wore nothing but ash. Her forehead bore the sandalwood paste mark of her sect. It was the same one the colonel showed me back at the fort. She held a staff in one hand and wore a garland of skulls carved out of wood. Her eyes stared into mine, but she did not recognize me.
I had found my VR wife. This was the very image of Chamita, although she was covered in ash. I could never forget that body, that face, those eyes.
“Chamita?” I gasped to her. “What are you doing in this place?”
“I don’t know who you are talking about,” she snapped back. “I am Mother Chamistra and I run this convent. I had you brought here because I wanted to see the Englishman who dared to enter our lands.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“My apologies,” I said to her. “You reminded me of someone I left behind once.”
“No apologies are necessary, captain,” she told me. “I learned English years ago, but I seldom have the chance to speak it. You may note several women in our kula who are European. We come from all parts of the Earth. When Kali summons, she sends them to us.” I looked to the right and saw women with many ethnic features. She didn’t lie about that statement.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said to her.