The Hall of Heroes

4. - Up the high slopes

They had been on the way for a whole day, following the line of the river that ran through the valley where the village of Jalka stood, when Tereza asked as she was climbing up a steep riverbank, "So like, do we actually know where we're going? Like where exactly this Hall of Heroes is?"

Alois pointed towards two high mountain tops set close together far in the distance and said, "It's supposed to be somewhere up on the two-peak mountain over there. The river should guide us there. The wise woman said the ancient peoples who built the tomb cleft that mountain in two themselves."

"And are we going to recognize the place?" Tereza continued.

"I'm sure it's gonna be like, really obvious." Alois dispersed her clouds of doubt with his characteristic waft of obliviousness. Tereza climbed on, reluctantly.

Honza dug into a canvas bag hanging by his side and pulled out a strange carved piece of wood. He waved it over his head and said, "The wise woman gave me this. It's supposed to give us some leads."

Fanda shouted from a little ways behind, "Can I see that?"

Honza threw the wooden totem to him and Fanda started examining it. It was carved from a thick tree branch and there were three rings of carvings that went all around the branch. The images were strange, like some mad concoction of objects, faces and landscapes all mashed together.

"And she said this should help?" Fanda shouted at Honza in front.

"She said it's a guide from the spirits." Honza shouted back.

"Have a little faith." Alois added.

Looking at the totem once more, Fanda shook his head and put it in his own backpack.

All along the way, Honza, Tereza and Fanda were dawdling behind Alois, who always chose the road and was always there to prod the others to move faster. After all, who else should be the leader of this delegation than Alois himself, since he was the one who turned the tide in favor of the wise woman when they had the argument back at her hut. So in a way, it was because of him that they all agreed to go.

The riverside was growing steeper and steeper as the river climbed towards its origin up in the mountains and the walk along it was gradually becoming more of a climb among boulders and rocks. 

They made their first camp near the water as dusk fell and the darkness made further climbing impossible.

Climbing rocks was much more tedious and slow than walking and when Alois looked behind at noon the second day to see how far they got, he sighed, not wanting to believe how little distance they had covered that day.

The river was falling and pooling as they climbed over various platforms of rock and towards the late afternoon of the second day, they got to the place they knew as 'The Waterfall.' It was a faraway place visible from some fields near the village of Jalka. Here, the river fell from a higher platform in a very long drop creating a spectacular sight that sometimes sparkled in the moonlight or sent forth colorful beams like small rainbows into the distance.

This was the point when they all felt that they had reached the very edge of what they knew. They remembered seeing this place from their fields and thinking they would never see it up close, because who in their right mind would ever venture this way, so high and dangerous and far away from home?

They looked at each other and seeing that everyone found it hard to draw breath after the climb, they sat down for a snack.

Alois took a look into his bag, where he kept the rations for the journey and realized there must have been some kind of a miscalculation. Two things that could have happened occured to him. For one thing, when they were preparing for the journey, they had no idea how long the journey would take. Another thing was that the journeying was taking its toll on them and they had to eat more than they usually would, so they took bits from the next days' rations. They were, after all, not very experienced travelers.