Longshot

If ever this ended, I thought, I wouldn’t go walking in woodland for a very long time. I would go back to my attic and not be too hard on my characters if they came to pieces on their knees.

I thought of Fringe and the Downs and wondered if I would ever ride in a race, and I thought of Ronnie Curzon and publishers and American rights and of Erica Upton’s reviews and it all seemed as distant as Ursa Major but not one whit as essential to my continued existence.

Grapevine round Shellerton. A mass of common knowledge. Yet this time... this time...

I stopped.

The archer had a face.

Doone would have to juggle with alibis and charts, proving opportunity, searching for footprints. Doone would have to deal with a cunning mind in the best actor of them all.

Perhaps I was wrong. Doone could find out.

I tortoised onwards. A mile was sixty-three thousand three hundred and sixty inches. A mile was roughly one point six kilometres or one hundred and sixty thousand centimetres.

Who cared?

I might have travelled at almost eight thousand inches an hour if it hadn’t been for the stops. Six hundred and sixty feet. Two hundred and twenty yards.

A furlong! Brilliant. One furlong an hour. A record for British racing.

Twinkle twinkle little star...

No one but a bloody fool would try to walk a mile with an arrow through his chest. Meet J. Kendall, bloody fool.

Light-headed.

One o’clock.

The moon, I thought briefly, had come down from the sky and was dancing about in the wood not far ahead. Rubbish, it couldn’t be. It certainly was. I could see it shining.

Lights. I came to sensible awareness; to incredulous understanding. The lights were travelling along the road.

The road was real, was there, was not some lost myth in a witch-cursed forest. I had actually got there. I would have shouted with joy if I could have spared the oxygen.

I reached the last tree and leaned feebly against it, wondering what to do next. The road had for so long been the only goal that I’d given no thought to anything beyond it. It was dark now; no cars.

What to do? Crawl out onto the road and risk getting run over? Hitchhike? Give some poor passing motorist a nightmare?

I felt dreadfully spent. With the trunk’s support I slid down to kneeling, leaning head and left shoulder against the bark. By my reckoning, if I’d steered anything like a true course, the Land Rover was way along the road to the right, but it was pointless and impossible to reach it.

Car lights came round a bend from that direction and seemed not to be travelling too fast. I tried waving an arm to attract attention but only a weak flap of a hand was achieved.

Have to do better.

The car braked suddenly with screeching wheels, then backed rapidly until it was level with me. It was the Land Rover itself. How could it be?

Doors opened. People spilled out. People I knew.

Mackie.

Mackie running, calling, ‘John, John,’ and reaching me and stopping dead and saying, ‘Oh my God.’

Perkin behind her, looking down, his mouth shocked open in speechlessness. Gareth saying, ‘What’s the matter,’ urgently, and then seeing and coming down scared and wide-eyed on his knees beside me.

‘We’ve been looking for you for ages,’ he said. ‘You’ve got an arrow...’ His voice died.

I knew.

‘Run and fetch Tremayne,’ Mackie told him, and he sprang instantly to his feet and sprinted away along the road to the right, his feet impelled as if by demons.

‘Surely we must take that arrow out,’ Perkin said, and put his hand on the shaft and gave it a tug. He hardly moved it in my chest but it felt like liquid fire.

I yelled... it came out as a croak only but it was a yell in my mind... ‘Don’t.’

I tried to move away from him but that made it worse. I shot out a hand and gripped Mackie’s trouser leg and pulled with strength I didn’t know I still had left. Strength of desperation.

Mackie’s face came down to mine, frightened and caring.

‘Don’t... move... the arrow,’ I said with terrible urgency. ‘Don’t let him.’

‘Oh God.’ She stood up. ‘Don’t touch it, Perkin. It’s hurting him dreadfully.’

‘It would hurt less out,’ he said obstinately. The vibrations from his hand travelled through me, inducing terror as well.

‘No. No.’ Mackie pulled at his arm in a panic. ‘You must leave it. You’ll kill him. Darling, you must leave it alone.’

Without her, Perkin would have had his way but he finally took his dangerous hand off the shaft. I wondered if he believed that it would kill me. Wondered if he had any idea what force he would have needed to pull the arrow out, like a wooden skewer out of meat. Wondered if he could imagine the semi-asleep furies he’d already reawakened. The furies had claws and merciless teeth. I tried to breathe even less. I could feel the sweat running down my face.

Mackie leaned down again. ‘Tremayne will get help.’ Her voice was shaky with stress, with the barbarity of things.

I didn’t answer: no breath.