Longshot

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.

It wasn’t so bad...

It was awful.

For God’s sake, I told myself, ignore it. Get used to it. Think about north.

It wasn’t possible to go all the way to the road on one’s knees: the undergrowth was too thick, the saplings in places too close together. I would have to stand up.

So, OK, hauling on branches, I stood up.

Even my legs felt odd. I clung hard to a sapling with my eyes closed, waiting for things to get better, telling myself that if I fell down again it would be much much much worse.

North.

I opened my eyes eventually and took the compass out of my jeans pocket, where I’d stowed it to have hands free for standing up. Holding on still with one hand, I took a visual line ahead from the north needle to mark into memory the furthest small tree I could see, then put the compass away again and with infinite slowness clawed a way forward by inches and after a while reached the target and held on to it for dear life.

I had travelled perhaps ten yards. I felt exhausted.

‘Never get exhausted’, I had written. Dear God.

I rested out of necessity, out of weakness.

In a while I consulted the compass, memorised another young tree and made my way there. When I looked back I could no longer see the clearing.

I was committed, I thought. I wiped sweat off my forehead with my fingers and stood quietly, holding on, trying to let the oxygen level in my blood climb back to a functioning state.

A functioning mode, Gareth might have said.

Gareth...

Sherwood Forest, I thought, eight hundred years ago. Whose face should I pin on the Sheriff of Nottingham...

I went another ten yards, and another, careful always not to trip, holding onto branches as onto railings. My breath began wheezing from the exertion. Pain had finally become a constant. Ignore it. Weakness was more of a problem, and lack of breath.

Stopping again for things to calm down I began to do a few unwelcome sums. I had travelled perhaps fifty yards. It seemed a marathon to me but realistically it was roughly one thirty-fifth of a mile, which left thirty-four thirty-fifths still to go. I hadn’t timed the fifty yards but it had been no sprint. According to my watch it was already after four o’clock, a rotten piece of information borne out by the angle of the sun. Darkness lay ahead.

I would have to go as fast as I could while I could still see the way, and then rest for longer, and then probably crawl. Sensible plan, but not enough strength to go fast.

Fifty more yards in five sections. One more thirty-fifth of the way. Marvellous. It had taken me fifteen minutes.

More sums. At a speed of fifty yards in fifteen minutes it would take me another eight hours to reach the road. It would then be half-past midnight, and that didn’t take into account long rest or crawling.

Despair was easy. Survival wasn’t.

To hell with despair, I thought. Get on and walk.