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Jean-Pierre lost sight of the doctor and tried to quicken his pace. He could hear Debby crying from the shaking, but he tried to walk faster.
“Faster, come on!” he shouted.
Yulia ran beside the handmade stretcher and held Debby’s hand. She could feel Debby’s hand clenching with each step from the pain running through her body. The wind rumbled so loud and fierce that Yulia didn’t dare look up. The cold seeped under her clothes and burned her body. Little icicles sliced her face and hands.
The fascinating landscape was drowned in fog and blackness. The sun had disappeared, though it was only a few hours after noon. The landmark of the rock was swallowed up by black clouds. Jean-Pierre picked his direction at random, trying to find the doctor.
Yulia felt Debby’s hand weaken and her fingers loosen.
“Stop!” Yulia screamed.
David began to reduce his step, slowing down the procession. Jean-Pierre turned over his shoulder and looked at Debby. Breathing heavily, he shouted desperately into the fog:
“Doc! Doctor!”
Yulia looked ahead and screamed in fright, too:
“Dr Capri, where are you?”
The light was still breaking through the dust and fog, but the hum drowned out their voices. Yulia pointed ahead at eleven o’clock, noticing some sort of movement.
“Hurry up!” Jean-Pierre commanded.
Everyone moved briskly forward.
“Doctor!” Yulia ran out in front of Jean-Pierre. “We are here! Wait for us!”
The light abruptly changed and blackness began to come over them. Jean-Pierre looked up, trying to understand the size of this unknown danger. They took a few more steps, and through the impenetrable swell Jean-Pierre began to make out the shape of a mountain. Yulia was running in front of him ten or fifteen meters away, shouting something in Russian. Suddenly, she stopped abruptly and fell silent. David looked out from behind Jean-Pierre’s shoulder, checking to see what was there. The porters took a few more steps and saw the doctor standing in front and some man beside him. Their figures were not clearly visible, but the doctor’s posture was recognizable.
Dust and fog still hung in the air, but the wind died down. It became quiet and a little lighter. Everyone approached Dr Capri and the stranger who was standing beside him, talking quietly about something. The hum left behind and there was silence.
“Good day, I want to say,” the stranger said in English.
Everyone began to respond to him with repetitive nods without words. Dr Capri rehabilitated the stranger and said:
“This is Bhrigu. He is a hermit. He says there is a cave to take shelter in.”
Jean-Pierre felt that his hands were stiff, and he could hardly feel them. He looked at the strange-looking man, at the doctor, at the bewildered Yulia.
“Where are the soldiers?”
“I lost them out of sight,” the exhausted doctor shook his head.
David said quietly:
“Debby is hushed, what’s happened to her?”
Dr Capri walked over to the stretcher and leaned over it.
“She lost consciousness; her breathing is even.”
The hermit looked behind Jean-Pierre’s back and glanced at the girl.
“For me follow,” said Bhrigu and walked leisurely toward the mountain.
“We must go,” said Dr Capri. “She needs water and warmth. She is very weak. We can’t find the helicopter now.”
Jean-Pierre was hesitant to go, he turned to the doctor:
“If we turn back now, we won’t be able to find the military today.”
“I ran as fast as I could,” the doctor excused himself, “but they just disappeared in that dust. I screamed.”
The doctor shifted his gaze from the hesitant Jean-Pierre to the hermit in front, who was standing half-turned ten meters away, waiting for them to move.
“It’s a calm for a few minutes,” the doctor looked around.
“You think they’ve gone far?” David asked.
Yulia answered:
“In this storm we won’t even see them within fifty meters.”
To prove Yulia’s words, the light went down even more.
“Okay,” agreed Jean-Pierre.
Everyone began to walk forward, getting over the slight incline. The wind howled again somewhere in the distance. After a few hundred meters, they came to a large rock. The top of the cliff was covered with fog. But somewhere at the top was a dark cave. The travelers looked around the steep stone wall. A hermit was climbing the steps carved in the stone. He turned and beckoned again, pointing to the beginning of the stairs.
“A little more,” Yulia whispered in Debby’s ear, “don’t be afraid, everything will be fine soon.”
David lifted the stretcher above his head to keep Debby from rolling down. They slowly began to climb the narrow, winding stairs. David’s hands began to shake from fatigue, and he set the door on his head. The wind died down, and the scalding snow stopped falling. They climbed the last step, and David collapsed to the ground with fatigue.
“We need to walk a few more meters,” said Dr Capri, “let me do it.”
David nodded and relented. Sweat ran down his face.
He wiped his sleeve and looked at the stairs they had just climbed. The makeshift steps were of varying heights and stooped from time. In some places, snow covered the stairs. David tried to see the valley they had come from, but the weather was still bad and nothing was visible. The wind rustled and drove a wad of fog in front of David’s eyes. He looked around, and a peak flashed between the clouds. Majestic and calm. It seemed unaffected by the storm. It was illuminated by the sun, and only the fuzzy top showed that the strong wind had blown thousands of tons of snow off the ridge of the giant.
“David,” Dr Capri’s voice was heard, “you will freeze there. Please go deeper into the cave. You have a lighter, don’t you?”
“Yes,” David answered, still breathing heavily, and wiped his face again with his sleeve.
He rose with great effort, stepped into the gloom of the cave, and saw Jean-Pierre trying to wake Debby up. Dr Capri watched him and looked intently at Debby. Yulia was sitting on the cold floor, breathing tiredly. Out of the darkness came the hermit.
“Cold here, but warm in other place. Deeper to go we need. Please,” he looked at the oblivious Debby and then nodded to himself, “Water there. For her we need it.”
“The important thing now is to make a fire and keep her warm. Let’s go a bit more,” Jean-Pierre said, looking at Debby, and took hold of one edge of the door.
The cave was quite wide. Jean-Pierre, David, and Dr Capri took the stretcher and followed the hermit. He walked ahead with Yulia and talked with her nonchalantly about something.
Part 2 – Chapter 24
The second hall of the cave was slightly larger than the first and quite spacious. There were several stalactites on the wall opposite the narrow entrance. In the center was a place to keep the fire going, which smoldered slightly. To the left of the entrance were semblances of shelves on which lay books and some dried flowers and plants. On the right was a pile of twigs and a few dry scraps of dung. Near the entrance hung a lamp with several lights burning. The temperature in the cave was very comfortable. First Yulia and then everyone else felt their bodies go limp and relax from the warmth.
The men placed the stretcher next to the smoldering fire.
“Water,” the hermit said, pointing to the iron pot, “good to drink.”
Dr Capri took a small steel pot that stood on a stone near the fire. He poured water on his hand and wiped Debby’s face, touched her tangled hair, and tried to pour some water into her mouth. Debby coughed. That cough made everyone smile and relax even more. Debby began to greedily gulp down the water with her mouth. She drank as if she had taken her last sip of water at her home in Stamford. The water quickly ran out.
David stepped back tiredly and sat down, leaning against the wall near the entrance to the cave. He was tired, his legs and arms disobeying him. Yulia sat beside the stretcher, while the doctor and the Frenchman attended to Debby. They began to examine her leg again. Debby was whispering something incomprehensible and would not open her eyes. The hermit tossed some dry pieces into the fire and listened to Debby’s inarticulate words.
He looked at the girl and the doctor and Jean-Pierre, who were fiddling around her.
“Better will be,” he nodded, “rest and water needed. Tomorrow we can see.”
“Tomorrow?” Jean-Pierre was indignant. “We need to get her out of here as quickly as possible.”
“Storm just begun,” Bhrigu said, pointing to the exit.
Jean-Pierre looked at the doctor and Yulia. They looked back tiredly. Jean-Pierre got up and walked toward the exit. He needed to see for himself what was going on outside.
Now he had a backup in the form of this cave, but he needed to assess the situation for a full plan.
“Cure I will make,” said Bhrigu. “Rest you must.”
The hermit went to the semblance of a rack near one of the walls and began to look there for something. He sang softly and seemed completely convinced that Debby had a cold rather than a closed leg fracture and painful shock. He pinched off parts of some dried plants and put them on the wooden plate. Occasionally he looked at Debby and nodded, continuing to purr something.
Jean-Pierre walked to the exit of the cave. The wind increased, and the snow flew parallel to the ground. Jean-Pierre felt how difficult it was for him to walk to the stairway. Fatigue and pain throughout his body made him stop. He walked to the top of the stairs and looked up at the sky. A blizzard was howling and beating desperately against the rocks. It seemed as if the weather was only getting worse. Jean-Pierre looked at his hands, which were shaking with exhaustion and exertion. The cold wind was blowing his breath away.
In his mind, options of what might happen swirled. He realized that with every hour of delay, Debby would lose her chances of survival. Jean-Pierre looked at his watch. The hands were not moving. He put it to his ear and didn’t hear the familiar ticking. The cold was creeping under his dirty and wet from sweat and snow shirt, pushing the Frenchman back into the cave.
“We won’t find the soldiers. The helicopter won’t take off, but maybe at least we can send a signal. We’ll have to put up some kind of sign here tomorrow. Debby. What if she doesn’t make it to morning? What if there’s internal bleeding or…” Images of what might happen to Debby began to flicker in his mind. He felt a burning sensation in his chest from the fact that there was nothing he could do.
Jean-Pierre picked up a stone the size of his fist and threw it as hard as he could into the fog.
“Don’t try to not calm down before morning!” he said angrily in French, and went back to the second cave.
“Do you have a radio?” Jean-Pierre asked Dr Capri. “Communication with the military?”
“No,” replied the doctor.
“What, you don’t have any…” Jean-Pierre started to speak loudly, but he was interrupted by Yulia.
“Radios and cell phones don’t work here,” she said calmly. “We’re scientists, and that’s why we are here.”
“Why don’t they work?” Jean-Pierre asked incomprehensibly. “I’m the assistant head of the General Directorate of Foreign Security of France, tell me everything, what’s the reason you’re here?”
“Listen,” Dr Capri stood up to defend Yulia, “your friend is in a very serious condition right now. I think we need to focus on how we can help her.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Jean-Pierre said even louder. “We can help her if we understand what’s going on.”
David opened his eyes from his slumber. The hermit took the second pot off the fire and poured the contents into a smaller steel cup, smelled the aroma, smiled, and walked over to Jean-Pierre.
“Help,” Bhrigu said, smiling, and handed the cup to Jean-Pierre, “drink.”
Jean-Pierre looked at Bhrigu and wanted to refuse, but almost without thinking, took the cup and automatically, quenching his thirst, took a few sips. Bhrigu took the cup and went to Yulia.
“Drink. It warms you.”
Yulia tried to smile and bow. She took a few sips, too, and felt the warmth and pleasant light taste spreading through her stomach. Her hands warmed and her face relaxed.
Bhrigu took the cup and returned to the fire. He poured more decoction and held it out to the doctor.
The doctor gently lifted Debby’s head and began to drink it slowly.
“Help. Help,” the hermit repeated in heavily accented French, smiling. “Help not easy if you don’t know how, but it harder if you don’t know whom.”
Jean-Pierre looked stunned at the hermit, who was already walking toward David.
“What did he say?” the doctor asked Jean-Pierre in surprise.
“That… That we still need to figure out who needs help,” Jean-Pierre answered, continuing to follow the hermit with his gaze. “Who is he?”
“How would I know?” Dr Capri shrugged his shoulders. “When you came up, I just met him. He said his name was Bhrigu, and he lived around here.”
“Is that all?” Jean-Pierre was surprised.
“Yes,” said the doctor, finishing the rest of his drink.
The hermit went to the pile of firewood and scones near the entrance, chose a smaller scone of dung and put it to David’s ear.
“This help. Keep it here,” said Bhrigu, “soon you will hear everything.”
“Thank you,” David said, smiling and embarrassed, with eyes half-closed from fatigue.
“Good,” laughed Bhrigu, “very good.”
Jean-Pierre caught the hermit’s gaze and asked in French:
“Who are you, tell me, where are we now?”
Bhrigu came almost right up to Jean-Pierre and looked at him very intently. For several seconds he looked up from below, studying and examining the Frenchman’s facial features, eyes and hair.
“I am Bhrigu. We are all here. Tomorrow will be better. Right now, you need to rest.”
Jean-Pierre was not satisfied with this answer, and he wanted to continue, but the hermit took a step back and looked at the Frenchman’s mud-gray boots in surprise. Jean-Pierre involuntarily lowered his gaze and became embarrassed, and then moved his eyes to the old man’s feet. The bare tips of his toes were sticking out from under the recluse of the hermit. Bhrigu tweaked and straightened his toes. There were no shoes on his feet. Jean-Pierre looked up and met the elder’s good-natured glance. He smiled, nodded, and walked toward the stalactites. Jean-Pierre noticed that the doctor, Debby, and Yulia were asleep, lying down by the fire. He turned around, David was also asleep, sitting against the wall near the entrance.
