The shaft of the arrow protruding from my back occasionally knocked against something, bringing me to a gasping halt. I didn’t know how long it was, couldn’t feel as far as the end, and I couldn’t always judge how much space I needed to keep it clear.
I’d come out on the simple camera-fetching errand without the complete zipped pouch of gadgets but I did have with me the belt holding my knife and the multi-purpose survival tool, and on the back of that tool there was a mirror. After the next fifty yards I drew it out and took a look at the bad news.
The shaft, straight, pale and rigid, stuck out about eighteen inches. There was a notch in the end for the bowstring, but no flight.
I didn’t look at my face in the mirror. Didn’t want to confirm how I felt. I returned the small tool to the pouch and went another fifty yards, taking care.
North. Ten yards visible at a time. Go ten yards. Five times ten yards. Short rest.
The sun sank lower on my left and the blue shadows of dusk began gathering on the pines and firs and creeping in among the sapling branches and the alders. In the wind, the shadows threw barred stripes and moved like prowling tigers.
Fifty yards, rest. Fifty yards, rest. Fifty yards, rest
Think of nothing else.
There would be moonlight later, I thought. Full moon was three days back. If the sky remained clear, I could go on by moonlight.
Dusk deepened until I could no longer see ten yards ahead, and after I’d knocked the shaft of the arrow against an unseen hazard twice within a minute I stopped and sank slowly down to my knees, resting my forehead and the front of my left shoulder against a young birch trunk, drained as I’d never been before.
Perhaps I would write a book about this one day, I thought.
Perhaps I would call it... Longshot.
A long shot with an arrow.
Perhaps not so long, though. No doubt from only a few yards out of the clearing, to get a straight view. A short shot, perhaps.
He’d been waiting there for me, I concluded. If he’d been following me he would have to have been close because I had gone straight to the camera, and I would have heard him, even in the wind. He’d been there first, waiting, and I’d walked up to the carefully prominent bait and presented him with a perfect target, a broad back in a scarlet sweater, an absolute cinch.
Traps.
I’d walked into one, as Harry had.
I leaned against the tree, sagging into it. I did feel comprehensively dreadful.
If I’d been the archer, I thought, I would have been waiting in position, crouched and camouflaged, endlessly patient, arrow notched on a bow. Along comes the target, happily unaware, going to the camera, putting himself in position. Stand up, aim... a whamming direct hit, first time lucky.
Shoot twice more at the fallen body. Pity to waste the arrows. Another nice hit.
Target obviously dead. Wait a bit to make sure. Maybe go near for a closer look. All well. Then retreat along the trail. Mission accomplished.
Who was the Sheriff of Nottingham...?
I tried to find a more comfortable position but there wasn’t one, really. To save my knees a bit I slid down onto my left hip, leaning my head and my left side against the tree. It was better than walking, better than fighting the tangle of woodland, but whether it was better than lying in the clearing I couldn’t decide. Yet he, the archer, might have gone back there to check again after all and if he had he would know I was alive, but he would never find me where I was now, deep in impenetrable shadow along a path he couldn’t follow in the dark.
It was ironic, I thought, that for the expedition for Gareth and Coconut I’d deliberately chosen to aim for a spot on the map that looked as remote from any road as possible. I should have had more sense.
The darkness intensified down in the wood though I could see stars between the boughs. I listened to the wind. Grew cold. Felt extremely alone.
I let go of things a bit. Simply existed. Let thoughts drift. I felt formless, part of time and space, an essence, a piece of cosmos. The awareness of the world’s antiquity which was often with me seemed to intensify, to be a solace. Everything was one. Every being was integral, but alone. One could dissolve and still exist... I hovered on the edge of consciousness, semi-asleep, making nonsense.
I relaxed too far. My weight shifted against the tree, slipping downwards, and the shaft of the arrow hit the ground. The explosive pain of it brought me hellishly back to full savage consciousness and to a revived desire not to become part of the eternal mystery just yet. I struggled back into equilibrium and tried to ride the pulverising waves of misery and found to my desperate dismay that the finger of arrow in front was almost an inch longer.
I’d pushed the arrow further through. I’d done hell knew what extra damage to my lung. I didn’t know how to bear what my body felt.
I went on breathing. Went on living. That’s all one could say.
The worst of it got better.
