Getting blown up, Tom thought, didn't hurt as much as he had expected it to. He lay with his eyes closed, awkwardly sprawled with his bergen pinned beneath him, the weight of the Cyclone across his chest, the weight of his helmet dragging his chin up, heat of the sun across his cheek. He felt, more than anything, incredibly stupid.

Snipers didn't take stupid risks. You couldn't be operating as far as they did from tactical support and be a risk-taker. You planned your routes, your hides, your shots and your exits. You planned them once, then you planned them again. Then you reviewed them again while they were happening. You didn't take any risks. You didn't make shit up on the fly. And you definitely, definitely didn't touch strange cars with probably-bombs in them.

But having been that stupid once, Tom decided quickly that he wasn't going to be that stupid twice. If he'd lost a limb or two, or been filled with shrapnel that might, with a single move, split an artery, he was just going to lie right where he was until either the medic got to him or he died. Other than the pain in his back from the awkwardness of his position, he was surprised by how little pain there was. He wondered if that was because he'd severed his spinal cord. He heard that this might be the case. He wasn't sure if he fancied surviving if it meant being quadriplegic. Especially given that it was his own stupid fault.

Hm.

Maybe he'd just check to see if he could wiggle his fingers. That shouldn't sever any arteries and it would tell him if he still had arms as well.

Very cautiously, he flexed the tip of his right index finger and then the left one. It certainly felt like it was still there but, on the other hand, he'd heard people talk about phantom limbs. Perhaps he might still have lost both his arms but just have the residual sensation of having hands. If he still had fingers, they ought to be able to feel something, flung out as they were to either side of him.

Gently, he brushed the back of his knuckles against the ground, feeling... Huh. It didn't feel like the grit of an Afghani mountainside in the early winter. It felt more like... carpet?

'Ak thuk,' said a voice, close by. 'Pleni mukta zhu.'

Shit. Not dead. Captured.

How the fuck did that happen? Had the whole thing been an ambush? The car, bait to pull in a platoon?

But... No, that made no sense at all. If he'd been captured by the Taliban he'd've been stripped of his gear and plasticuffed at least. He wouldn't still have his kit and weapon. Had some locals saved him, somehow, but not known what to do with him?

Shit. He couldn't keep playing dead. He needed more information.

'Solaki! Pta zhu!'

Tom opened his eyes just a little: enough to see the fabric of some kind over his head, with light dancing across it from... an open fire. That was where the heat had come from that he'd been able to feel. Suddenly a silhouette appeared above him, making him jump with surprise.

'Ah! Dekantis! Pta zhu,' said the shape above him - an indistinct face, smiling at him. 'Eki, eki, gramanta.'

Gentle hands patted his shoulders, taking a grip on his smock and rolling him towards the fire. Panicking, now, Tom grabbed the quick release catch on his bergen with his left hand, dropping it off his shoulders as he rolled over, awkwardly yanking his 9mm Glock from its thigh holster to point at his captors.

'Whoaza!' said the nearest of what he could see now was two men. The one who had rolled him over was young-ish. It was hard to tell how young at first glance. He had brown skin and wild black hair, like a lot of Afghan men, but he was clean-shaven, smiling. He wore what looked, in the firelight, like set of... well, if Tom had seen someone wearing them back home, he'd have assumed there was a comics convention going on, because they looked like Jedi robes except for being blue instead of brown. He switch the target of the outstretched pistol from the smiling youngster to the other one: an old man. A really old man.

No.

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Now that Tom looked properly, he could see the naked, pendulous breasts of an old woman flat against her chest, deep wrinkles running across every part of her visible skin, cast into dark relief by the dancing lights of the flame. Her eyes were blind and her silently laughing mouth filled with... sharpened teeth.

He switched his pistol back to the young man who showed no signs of fear or alarm, just... curiosity.

'Who the fuck are you?' Tom demanded. 'Where the fuck am I?'

Stupid questions to put to people who probably didn't speak any English, he realized as soon as they left his mouth. But it still seemed like a reasonable question to ask. He pushed himself up from the ground onto his knees - which was as high as he could get without his head pressing into the fabric of what he now realized was some sort of tent. He was to one side of a roughly circular space with the fire at the centre beneath a hole in the tent's peak. It reminded him a little of a Mongolian yurt he saw once in a documentary, but it was painted with a dense population of abstract swirls, shapes and figures that seemed to move unnervingly as the wind outside moved the fabric and the flames of the fire danced and leaped. The floor was almost entirely covered with fine carpets, beautifully woven in bright blues, reds and yellows, with elaborate depictions of strange animals and geometric designs.

'Ak-ak-ak!' laughed the old woman, coming around the fire on hands and knees, her joints strong and limber despite her age, long strings of beads and gems dangling from her wiry, white hair and ears. Despite her white eyes she ambled towards him unerringly. For a second he contemplated shooting her, but then he dropped the pistol back to rest on his thigh. If they'd let him stay armed, they couldn't mean any harm, and he wasn't about to shoot a half-naked centenarian for giving him a bit of a fright. All the same, she was intimidating close up. For a woman so visibly ancient, her full set of filed teeth was unnerving, with each one sharpened to a shark-like point. She could certainly do some damage with those if she chose to.

Once she knelt opposite him, she stretched out her sun-baked arms, bangles jingling, the swirls and lines of ancient tattoos from wrist to shoulder almost rendered invisible with age, and placed her gnarled fingers onto his shoulders, her white eyes staring, unblinking, into his. Her brow furrowed deeply, into lines that reached from forehead to chin, then she chuckled and, with a movement so fast he barely had time to be shocked, planted a firm, dry kiss right on his mouth.

For a split second he felt an incredible rush of heat. She pushed his lips apart with hers and with a touch of her tongue, coaxed his, unbidden into the trap of her jaws and, with the gentlest of touches, he felt her teeth pierce the tip of his tongue. In that instant, the rabbit-in-headlight sensation vanished and, with a yell, he tumbled away from her, pistol rising up again as he grabbed at his injured face.

'What the actual fuck?' he yelled.

'There now!' cried the woman, cackling as she clambered back to the other side of the fire. 'Now he is truly part of our world!'

'You do speak fucking English!' Tom shouted again, pistol twitching back to cover the man in his blue robes.

'No,' he said, eyes wide with curiosity and fascination, not at all intimidated by the pistol, 'we do not speak in-gleesh. But you now carry the blessing of tongues. It is the least boon I could negotiate for you as feeble compensation for dragging you to this place. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make amends for my terrible sin!'

There had been something strange about the way the man had said "English". Not the pronunciation of it so much as the way it had sounded for a moment like a nonsense word.

'You dragged me here?' Tom asked him, angrily, pistol still raised despite his audience's lack of concern. 'From the mountain? From the bomb? Where is everyone else? My friends?'

'Ah, no, I did not drag you like that, honoured warrior,' said the man. He turned to the woman, and gestured at an enormous kettle beside her. 'He is a visitor in your tent, Lady Yagan. Will you not make him tea?'

'Oh, yes!' she laughed, hefting the enormous metal pot without visible effort onto a hook hanging over the fire. 'Tea for the world walker. A worthy offering.'

The man turned back to him, a serious look of his face. Now the immediate panic had passed into mere confusion, Tom could see that he was probably in his twenties or maybe early thirties, but he had one of those faces just looked young at first glance. Other than his slightly mad hair, his blue robes were immaculate and looked expensive.

'I will cut to the chase,' he said, bringing his feet around in front of him to sit cross-legged. 'I am Solak of the Azure Order, one of my nation's last magi. My nation and our whole world is afflicted with a terrible burden and I came a long way to this place where I could turn the power of my enemies against them to tear open the barrier between worlds and find, among all the ten myriad of myriads, one person who might be able to stand against the Earthbreaker and save our people.'

Tom stared at him.

'You are that person, World Walker,' said the man - Solak. 'I stole you from your world and brought you here to fight a war in which you have no stake against an enemy you've never seen for reasons you cannot understand and for very little reward. I am deeply, deeply sorry.'

Tom stared at him some more. The woman - Lady Yagan - had come around the fire as Solak spoke and handed Tom a small cup of dark brown liquid. Tom broke his stare at Solak long enough to look down at, shrugged and threw the hot liquid down his throat in one go. Then he looked back at Solak.

'I'll be quite honest chum,' he said. 'That sounds like just another Tuesday to me.'