Help will not come. No living soul
passes here, and if one would, it would not stop, it would not
linger. He does not know how he is still alive. There is blood
everywhere. His blood. On the grass at his feet, on his shoes, on his
pants, his shirt, his hands and face, his hair. His sword is
spattered with the boar's darker blood. He can feel his blood still
flowing from the wound at his side, soaking his shirt and sticking it
onto his skin. He is lying on the ground. On his back. He is panting.
His flesh is burning, he is sweating, he can feel the beads rolling
on his forehead. He shivers. The pain redoubles. He does not know
what really happened, if he attacked the boar or if he was charged by
the beast. He cannot really remember what he was doing in this part
of the forest. He does not know when or how he struck the brute dead.
If he passed out or not. What time of night it is. He cannot see the
moon. The sounds of the darkness breathing in his ears come muffled,
distant, as if they were not really there, as if they were happening
in another reality, in another time, as if they came from the moon
and that by the time they reached him she had already gone. All he
knows is that help will not come. He grabs a handful of grass and
presses it on the cut. He does not know why he does this, but it
soothes him somewhat. Like filling the hole where his flesh was, as
if it could make his skin whole again. The gash runs deep, he can
feel the depth with his fingertips. Help will not come. He has to do
something. He rolls onto his stomach and he yelps and he can see
white dots floating in front of his eyes. Outside of him, darkness
prevails. It tries to infiltrate his body through the cut. He pushes
on his feet and knees, his right hand clawing at the ground ahead,
and crawls. He does not know where, but he crawls on. He cannot
remember if there is a clearing nearby, or if the forest is as dense
as legends say it is. Perhaps he crawled for hours, for the spangles
in the skies have dimmed and the obscurity has faded. He can see
somewhat. Never has he suffered so much. He cannot remember if he has
ever heard anyone tell of so much pain. It seems now that his dreams
have fled, that everything he has lived has come to nought. And the
pain. Sharp, steely stabs of pain, spurring at his side, radiating
through his chest, numbing his fingers, knotting his throat, churning
his innards, crushing his mind. He can die, this he is certain of.
His mouth is more parched than when he and his brother were lost in
the desert. Back then his body had felt as dry as the sand, but it
had felt resistant enough to withstand the ordeal. There had been no
breach in his body, no blood spilt. His hair is matted with clotted
blood, and he can feel patches of dry blood curdling on his face. He
is still crawling, but he does not know how, or why. Or where. The
sounds of the daybreak feel less distant, somehow. The pain has not
abated, yet the bleeding has ceased. The white dots are still
hovering. He does not want to look back, in case he loses his
impetus, the little willpower he has mustered. But he cannot know how
far he has crawled, he cannot see where it is that his life has
changed, for ever. Never has he felt so lonely. He stops to catch his
breath. Something is rasping in his throat. Still knotty. He can feel
spasms in his left leg. He can feel it jerking at times. Sometimes it
does not respond. He rests his chin on the ground and looks around.
Trees are less dense, and he can see the sun a little to his right.
For now it is only a thin line of purplish red, curved like a
nail-cutting. If the trees are sparser, and if he goes on more or
less in the same direction, he will come across the cave he has spent
the previous night in and in which he has left a few provisions for
the return journey. All he can remember at present is the brutal
onslaught and his feet being lifted off the ground and the tusks
boring through his ribs. On foot and uncaring about the future, the
cave is a half day's journey ahead. Help will not come. This land no
traveller roams. So he will have to confront the ruthless bite of the
sun, the occasional nibbling of the crows which will spring him back
to life. This will scare them only a short way off and they will
follow and watch. He will have to suffer the thirst, the heartbeats
drumming in his side, his wound bleeding again. He will have to
suffer the consciousness of the slow progress, the realisation of the
imminence of death, the loss of both hope and despair. Nightfall
comes and another pain makes his mind swirl. Hunger. Weakness slows
him even further down. He is afraid to fall asleep and not to wake
up. He is afraid that if he loses consciousness the crows will eat
him alive, that some wild beast will finish him off. But darkness is
covering the land, fast. Regaining prevalence. He must find a shelter
to pass the night, take his chance at sleeping and regain some
strength. He would have to find some nook beneath some flat stone at
the feet of the mountain, and there he would lay flat on his back and
abandon himself to sleep. He would then dream of the boar furrowing
in his side as if he were mere ground, and feast on his flesh, its
snout dripping with blood and the occasional bone cracking would mark
the progress of the banquet. He would feel his body rock and jerk,
and the intense, fiery pain electrifying his entire frame. His eyes
would only see the fingers of his left hand resting on its back, a
little curled, smeared with dry blood. Dirt under his fingernails. He
wakes up and finds dawn breaking. He still has a long way to crawl,
and his strength seems to have ebbed away in the night. He feels so
weak he can barely breathe. Dew dripping on his shoulder. He moves
his head a little, lets the drops land on his tongue. It has a
strange metallic taste. It has melted the dry blood on his tongue,
but it feels strangely reviving. Soon the drops cease to fall. His
tongue pecks at the underside of the stone. Salty taste. His heart
sinks, he feels like crying. The end is near. He must leave, at once.
The return journey is now. Never did he forget the hours he crawled
towards the cave, these hours which passed like years; never did he
forget the dry thunderstorm which split the skies in twain, which
made the ground shake, which splintered a nearby tree with the
spine-shivering, crackling noise of bones breaking. He never forgot
the pulsating solitude of those hours, the excruciating sadness he
felt when he sighted the cave and the sharp feeling of emptiness on
that instant as he felt drained from his last resources. He sleeps on
the spot, uncaring, ready for either death or life to come. He cares
for none, and none has come, it seems. So he crawls forward,
unminding the world around him, the rocks snatch at his clothes, tear
at his hands, flint roll under him. His mind echoes like a beehive.
He cannot think but for the constant buzzing. If he could weigh the
heavens up above, each of his eyelids would feel twice this weight.
Each of his limbs is a heap of pain, an agonising mass which he drags
against its will. Going through the crevice, he realises that he now
has to build up a fire, collect water in the pan and boil it, sit up
and undress. All of these now sound monumental actions. The routine
of living appears as a shocking waste of energy. He has to bathe his
wound, sew his skin back into place. Help will not come. He has not
done all this to die now. He cannot die. If he survives this, never will he let anything or anyone stand
in his way, never will he let a heart break his, nor a sword match
his; and spear in hand, he will affront this pig of a world.
