The Ritual

direction.’
    ‘But how long is it going to take? We should have come out of here the day before yesterday, and been on the other side of the forest. This bit is not that thick on the map.’ Dom
spread his dirty fingers across the paper, his eyes frantically searching the colours and shapes and dotted lines, hoping they might suddenly provide a clue as to where they were now sitting.
    But it was hardly only a ‘bit’ or patch of forest. In some areas the forest was at least fifty kilometres deep and from what they had seen of it, mostly impenetrable or unmanaged
virgin forest. It had been Hutch’s intention to just cut through a far westerly band, where the forest was at its thinnest. No more than ten kilometres deep according to the map. But Luke
wondered if they had blundered off the original trajectory Hutch envisaged them taking, while following the track to the old church. They’d also been repeatedly turned about by the terrain
and its impenetrable foliage; had walked due west, due east, north west and south west at various times. They’d spent most of the previous day walking west, and even north west, according to
the compass, instead of moving south west before angling directly south and down to what Hutch was sure was the lower edge of the forest on the map, with the river running beneath it. That had been
the plan. But now H wasn’t with them, Luke had turned them due south that morning so they wouldn’t overshoot the narrowest section of forest. Which was fine if they were positioned
where he’d guessed they were. But if they had strayed too far west the previous day and entered the adjacent thicker belt of forest they were now looking at thirty kilometres of hard terrain
and forest so old and dark, the hours of sunlight barely lightened the earth. If they had continued to walk west, eventually, they would have emerged in Norway. Similar endgame situation again if
they hadn’t corrected far enough in a south-westerly direction the day before, and the due south course he had set that morning pitched them far into a broader area of eastern wilderness. It
would take about three days’ walking to get through the bigger and more densely forested areas on either side of the narrow band they hoped they were inside, but only if they were fit; for
him, if he were alone, that would mean another two, possibly three nights, without food. But for the other two, who were injured . . . Luke felt sick and lightheaded.
    ‘I mean, what if we get over this fucking hole, and then there’s another one, just like it, on the other side?’
    He’d not even thought of that, but now Dom had voiced the concern, Luke believed it to be entirely possible. Patterns of terrain often repeated themselves, or sometimes they were just
single anomalies. There were marshes all over the map on either side of the narrow band of forest. Like the woodland functioned as a funnel; a trap, if you were foolish enough to take a short cut
through it, hoping to avoid the bordering wetlands. The very thought seemed to drain the last of his strength as he imagined a bird’s-eye view of a topography revealing long deep ravines
parallel to this one, a rib cage stretching for miles. It would be the end of them.
    Luke made an energy bar vanish in two bites and immediately thought about ripping into a second. The other two were already chewing the end of their second bars, which meant they should each
have three left. Hutch’s last four had been divided equally, with one left in reserve that he held on to along with the chocolate bar. To remind the others of the perilous situation he said,
‘I reckon we should eat two more bars tonight, with coffee and loads of sugar in it. We have the gas for another night and morning. That’ll leave one energy bar each in reserve with the
chocolate if needs be.’ He didn’t say tomorrow, but since they had been forced to sit down and face the gorge, the idea of another night together in the open, with two of them
keeping watch with knives drawn while the third slept, had begun to fill his chest with a pressure so terrible he could not swallow or exhale with any ease. But the inference, the threat of another
night out here, was implicit in his voice.
    Each bar contained 183 calories. With two consumed now, and two eaten later they still would not even scrape 1,000 calories each, and they were still facing hours of extreme exertion ahead,
hiking into the cold and wet.
    ‘Those were my