Lado Tajovic, a student, is charged by the communist party to go to his home in the Montenegrin Mountains, to illegally spread the liberation movement's propaganda. Alone, surrounded by enemies, always awake and ready to evade traps and ambushes, Lado fights on the verge of sleep, against people which are cowards ready to betrayal. He fights his own temptations, hallucinations that constantly besiege him. Although he perseveres in holding to party directives: no killing and no revenge, Lado at one moment of weakness falls to a primal human act vengeance. Yugoslavian nationals struggle against fighting religious factions and the Nazis from their mountain stronghold. When some of his own friends become collaborators and traitors, a young man wrestles with his conscious before he willingly sets out to destroy his enemies.