Each herd comes with ten tents where the herders and their families live. Ever since the guerrillas’ women and children from the coast joined them, that makes more than a thousand souls. They’re all employed and fed by Kresan. But nobody is idle. The children help the herders with the herds; the women process the meat, milk, and skins. They smoke the reindeer cheese, salt, mix, and preserve the reindeer feta in round wooden churns. Every pair of hard-working hands is needed.
Kresan lets each of his herders keep a pair of their own reindeer. Then the herdsman sees himself as a small farmer and runs round exhausting himself, protecting at the same time Kresan’s huge herd.
Kresan is a good Slovak, but he likes to get on with everyone. When the Junjan extortionists come, he complains, but gives them whatever they ask for. If they raise their demands, he gives them more. He doesn’t want trouble. He’s hard on his own people, but yielding to Junjans. He’s not cowardly, just reasonable. He knows that if he made enemies of the Junjans during a civil war, they’d send their mercenaries to destroy him.
The reindeer in the tundra are easily harmed. Junjan revenge would starve, as well as Kresan, a thousand people: a thousand good Slovak men and women. Kresan can’t fight for the whole Slovak nation. It’s enough for him to fight for his employees. So he yields. His commitment to the Slovak cause is met by supplying Slovak guerrillas with dried meat, reindeer cheese and other foodstuffs behind the Junjans’ backs. In the tundra he makes and maintains secret storage places for weapons, ammunition, tins and medicine brought by Czech submarines.
So when Junjan mercenaries come to requisition reindeer, he gives them, without a word, as many as they ask for. Only he knows what he’s thinking then. The positive side is that he can also supply the guerrillas with fresh information on the mercenaries’ movements in the taiga.
“Let’s be true Slovaks, but not everyone has to know about it,” he’s glad to repeat when his close relatives are around.
As soon as news spreads of Geľo’s and his men’s arrival, the whole Kresan settlement comes to life, as if night were over and it was time to get up.
Kresan, too, wakes up. He lies on soft reindeer skins, covered by a fox-fur coverlet. He looks blank for a moment, but then he gets up. He calls in both daughters and his bride and gives them each an order:
“Anča and Cila, cook a full pot of walrus meat. The lean one! These slant-eyed Slovaks from the coast are mouse-eaters! They don’t understand good reindeer meat. You needn’t keep serving them the best. And you, Mária, light another lamp. Light two! Three! Kresan’s not a poor man, he’s not going to welcome special guests in the dark.”
Geľo, Telgarth, the priest and Urban clamber into the warm corner.
“Is that you, Geľo?” Kresan asks.
“Yes, it is,” answers Geľo.
“And Telgarth himself!” an amazed Kresan shouts, recognizing Telgarth by his black eye patch. “Oh, what an honour for an ordinary poor reindeer herder! Oh, how many brave heroes in my unworthy yurt!”
The men sit down round the reclining Kresan.
“This is Urban,” Geľo presents his guest. “He’s from overseas, too, from the Slovaks’ country. He came to see Telgarth; they’re old friends.”
Urban bows awkwardly.
Well, I can see that we can’t lose if even foreign Slovaks support us,” exclaims Kresan. “Slovaks must stick together! This is how, look!”
Kresan clenches his dry hands and presses them to his chest so everyone can see.
“Slovak brother, embrace your mother!” he adds.
“Do you know why we’ve come, uncle Kresan?” asks Geľo.
“Yes, your messenger arrived three days ago,” Kresan confirms.
“We were held up on the coast, until we found the number of dogs we needed,” says Geľo.
“It’s all ready, as you asked,” reports Kresan. “Yesterday the herders brought the ammunition and tinned food. One storage place was found and looted by Ökötöm-kökötom, the snow monster, but he left the tins alone. And we’ll give you lots of reindeer cheese and dry meat. After all, you fight for us, too, my heroes. And what’s new? How is our cause?”
Geľo was about to open his mouth, but Kresan interrupts.
“Žofa!” he orders his bride. “Are our guests to talk with dry throats? Where’s the tea? And you, Jakub, where’s the booze, damn it all!”
The youngest son reaches for a carefully cleaned plastic bottle and treasured plastic cups. Kresan pours the drinks.
Geľo tells him about the situation at the front. The old herder listens with interest. Now he asks for explanation, now he nods sympathetically.
All this time, women in the kitchen corner use a hammer to break frozen raw meat into small pieces, slice the roast, take smoked tongues out of the pot, and make a salad of mushrooms, green herbs and roots cooked in fat. Soon Kresan’s yurt wafts a tempting aroma of delicacies.
“So the mercenaries seem to be resisting hard,” reflects Kresan when Geľo finishes. He pours more drinks. “Are they on your tracks?”
“They’re pursuing us,” says Geľo. “But they’ll be looking for most of us on the northern islands. We’ve swept our tracks clean.”
“They won’t look for you here,” says Kresan. “I put on an act for them and pretend to be on their side. One of their units may wander over here, but we’ll know long in advance. The herders on the pastures won’t miss a thing.”
“But they’ll come,” says Geľo. “They will. A unit of mercenaries will come here for certain. It’s been planned to happen.”
“Who planned it?” says Kresan with fear.
“We’ll discuss it later,” says Geľo. “Telgarth has come up with an excellent plan to capture Tökörnn Mäodna alive. But tell him yourself,” he asks Freddy.
Freddy blushes. They all look at him. So he starts to talk. Even though he’s learned quite a lot of Junjan Slovak dialect, he still uses a lot of fast Bratislava language. Geľo, who more or less understands him, occasionally has to interpret for him.
Freddy’s plan is simple. When the Junjan soldiers caught him a few days ago, he deliberately told Mäodna that the guerrilla leaders’ women and children were hiding at Kresan’s. So Tökörnn Mäodna won’t miss a catch like that: he’ll come here in person. In the meantime, Kresan will send all the women and children to safety in distant pastures. The settlement will be full of Geľo’s men dressed as herders. It will be a trap God would wish for. When the mercenaries come, the guerrillas will overpower them and wipe them out. They’ll take Mäodna alive.
Kresan shakes his head in disbelief. He utters incomprehensible shouts of amazement. He falls to the ground and jerks his head and arms and legs only to freeze suddenly, his eyes staring wildly. His expressions of admiration and respect are so exorbitant that Freddy is embarrassed.
“Without Mäodna, the Junjans are lost,” exclaims Kresan, when he takes his place and recovers from his astonishment.
“Yes, indeed,” says Geľo. “Victory will be ours.”
“And when are we going to do it?” Kresan enquires.
“We must wait,” says Geľo, “here, at your place. The mercenaries are on our tail, but we’re well ahead. But I know they’ll show up.”
“My herders have eyes everywhere,” says Kresan. “If just one mercenary appears within a thousand kilometres, we’ll be the first to know.”
Kresan orders another bottle of spirits and pours for everyone. Freddy’s cup is filled to the top.