Longshot

Cautiously, sweating, with fiery stabs in every inch, I wormed my right hand between my body and the earth and came to what seemed like a rod between the two.

I must have fallen on to a sharp stick, I thought. Perhaps I hadn’t been shot. But yes, I had. Hit in the back. Couldn’t mistake it.

Slowly, trying to ration the pain into manageable portions, I slid my hand out again, and then after a while, hardly believing it, I bent my arm and felt round my back and came to the rod there also, and faced the grim certainty that someone had shot me not with a bullet but an arrow.

I lay for a while simply wrestling with the enormity of it.

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 compass 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 compass...

With an inward smile and a mental sigh I retrieved the compass 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.’

Illustrations 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.