Longshot. Part 68

I had an arrow right through my body from back to front somewhere in the region of my lower ribs. Through my right lung, which was why I was breathing oddly. Not, miraculously, through any major blood vessels, or I would by now have bled internally to death. About level with my heart, but to one side.

Bad enough. Awful. But I was still alive.

I'd been hit twice, I remembered. Maybe I had two arrows through me. One or two, I was still alive.

'Survival begins in the mind.'

I'd written that, and knew it to be true. But to survive an arrow a mile from a road with a killer around to make sure I didn't make it- where in one's mind did one search for the will to survive that? Where, when just getting to one's knees loomed as an unavoidable torture and to lie and wait to be rescued appeared to be merely common sense.

I thought about rescue. A long long way off. No one would start looking for me for hours; not until after dark. The sun on my back was warm, but the February nights were still near zero and I was wearing only a sweater. Theoretically the luminous trail should lead rescuers to the clearing even at night- but any sensible murderer would have obliterated the road end of it after he'd found his own way out.

I couldn't realistically be rescued before tomorrow. I thought I might die while I waited: might die in the night. People died of injuries sometimes because their bodies went into shock. General trauma, not just the wound, could kill.

One thought, one decision at a time.

Better die trying.

All right. Next decision.

Which way to go?

The trail seemed obvious enough, but my intended killer had come and gone that way - must have done -and if he should return for any reason I wouldn't want to meet him.

I had a compa.s.s in my pocket.

The distant road lay almost due north of the clearing and the straightest line to the road lay well to the left of the paint trail.

I waited for energy, but it didn't materialise.

Next decision: get up anyway.

The tip of the arrow couldn't be far into the earth, I thought. I'd fallen with it already through me. It could be only an inch or so in. No more than a centimetre, maybe.

I shut my mind to the consequences, positioned my hands, and pushed.

The arrow tip came free and I lay on my side in frightful suffering weakness, looking down at a sharp black point sticking out from scarlet wool.

Black. The length of a finger. Hard and sharp. I touched the needle tip of it and wished I hadn't.

Only one arrow. Only one all the way through, at least.

Not much blood, surprisingly. Or perhaps I couldn't tell, blood being the same colour as the jersey, but there was no great wet patch.

A mile to the road seemed an impossible distance.

Moving an inch was taxing. Still, inches added up. Better get started.

First catch your compa.s.s-

With an inward smile and a mental sigh I retrieved the compa.s.s carefully from my pocket and took a bearing on north. North, it seemed, was where my feet were.

I rolled with effort to my knees and felt desperately, appallingly, overwhelmingly ill. The flicker of humour died fast. The waves of protest were so strong that I almost gave up there and then. Outraged tissues, invaded lungs, an overall warning.

I stayed on my knees, sitting back on my heels, head bowed, breathing as little as possible, staring at the protruding arrow, thinking the survival programme was too much.

There was a pale slim rod sticking into the ground beside me. I looked at it vaguely and then with more attention, remembering the thing that had sung past my ear.

An arrow that had missed me.

It was about as long as an arm. A peeled fine-grained stick, dead straight. A notch in its visible end, for slotting onto a bowstring. No feather to make a flight.

The guide books all gave instructions for making arrows.

'Char the tips in hot embers to shrink and toughen the fibres for better penetration-'

The charred black tip had penetrated all right.

'Cut two slots in the other end, one shallow one for the bowstring, one deep one to push a shaped feather into, to make a flight so that the arrow will travel straighter to the target.'

Ill.u.s.trations thoughtfully provided.

If the three arrows had all had flights- if there'd been no wind-

I closed my eyes weakly. Even without flights, the aim had been deadly enough.

Gingerly, sweating, I curled my left hand behind my back and felt for the third arrow, and found it sticking out of my jersey though fairly loose in my hand. With trepidation I took a stronger hold of it and it came away altogether but with a sharp dagger of soreness, like digging out a splinter.

The black tip of that arrow was scarlet with blood, but I reckoned it hadn't gone in further than a rib or my spine. I only had the first one to worry about.

Only the one.

Quite enough.

It would have been madness to pull it out, even if I could have faced doing it. In duels of old, it hadn't always been the sword going into the lungs that had killed so much as the drawing of it out. The puncture let air rush in and out, spoiling nature's enclosed vacuum system. With holes to the outer air, the lungs collapsed and couldn't breathe. With the arrow still in place, the holes were virtually blocked. With the arrow in place, bleeding was held at bay. I might die with it in. I'd die quicker with it out.

The first rule of surviving a disaster, I had written, was to accept that it had happened and make the best of what was left. Self-pity, regrets, hopelesness and surrender would never get one home. Survival began, continued and was accomplished in the mind.

All right, I told myself, follow your own rules.

Accept the fact of the arrow. Accept your changed state. Accept that it hurts, that every moment will hurt for the foreseeable future. Take that for granted. Go on from there.

Still on my knees I edged round to face north.

The clearing was all mine: no man with a gun. No archer with a bow.

The day in some respects remained incredibly the same. The sun still threw its dappled mantle and the trees still creaked and resonantly vibrated in the oldest of symphonies. Many before me, I thought, had been shot by arrows in ancient woodland and faced their mortality in places that had looked like this before man started killing man.

But I, if I stirred myself, could reach surgeons and antibiotics and hooray for the National Health Service. I slowly shifted on my knees across the clearing, aiming to the left of the painted trail.