The Ritual

down, or was he really trying to save them all? Maybe Dom was right and he was only trying to rationalize his own selfish desire to survive. In extreme situations self-preservation did take over.
Was it time for him to cut the rope, or go down with them too? He didn’t know any more.
    He suddenly felt ashamed; visualized himself walking away from these two forlorn figures, sitting beside a half-collapsed tent. Neither of them could even erect one. He and Hutch had put both
tents up every night from the beginning of the trip.
    Luke pointed down and into the ravine, desperate to displace another confrontation. He glanced at Dom. ‘Can you get across that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘For real?’
    ‘Yes for fucking real.’
    ‘OK then. Let’s do it.’
    Phil rapidly looked at each of them in turn. ‘Safety in numbers,’ he said, his voice rising to form a question within the statement.

THIRTY-FIVE
    ‘I can’t go any further.’ Dom stared between his knees, at the ground he had slumped upon. His face was concealed by the hood of his waterproof.
    ‘Me neither,’ Phil muttered in solidarity.
    Luke turned his head from where they lay and looked back up the hill he wanted them to climb. Just the sight of it defeated them. One obstacle too far.
    He groaned and removed the rucksacks, first from his chest and then from his back. Aches burned up and down his torso. Stretching upright, his spine cracked with sudden shocks of pain. The worst
of the discomfort was deep within his shoulders; without the weight of the rucksacks acting like tourniquets, his muscles were squeezing themselves into brief contractions of agony. What was wrong
with his thighs? They were heavy, but trembling uncontrollably. He checked his watch. 4.25 p.m.
    Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he stared at the higher ground. The dark fir trees and spruce thinned into the white trunks of silver birches and dwarf willows about the summit of the hillock;
one long spruce tree sprouted incongruously from the peak. The high ground was topped with rock, grey with reindeer moss, and could offer a decent vantage point. Maybe he could climb the spruce
too, and see over the surrounding ocean of forest. Get a sense of where they were. Be easier to defend too. Smoke from a fire might carry on the breeze. And the hill could be seen from the air. It had finally come to that. This had been his thinking.
    He’d become fixated with the hill after glimpsing it periodically in the places the wood broke around the boulders they had stumbled over after crossing the strip marsh. His entire focus
had been upon the hill from then onwards. He doubted they had moved more than three miles since crossing the ravine, in three hours. Time had elongated around their perpetual rest stops.
    At least the rain had finally petered out to a drizzle after they had suffered nearly two hours of a drenching downpour. During which they’d tried to shelter under trees, but had ended up
merely sitting in silence and had become soaked, then started to shiver, their fingers going numb. With no means to dry their clothes, Luke had persuaded the other two that it was better to walk
wet, in the rain, to maintain body temperature. The other two had agreed in silence by rising groggily to their feet in unison. And then there was just more of the tramping of their feet on the
unforgiving ground until they reached the foot of the stony hill.
    They were moving four, maybe five, kilometres a day now. No good. No good at all.
    Another night out here was unavoidable. If they stayed in a group and continued to shuffle at the pace Dom set, while Luke carried most of the gear, they would never get out. But if they could
just climb up there. Make camp. Maybe get a fire going with the dead wood buried in the underbrush on the slopes. Rest until the morning. Then tomorrow he could set off alone and use the last of
himself to get out of here and to get help. It would be a good place to leave Phil and Dom. They might feel better about the idea up there too.
    How would he tell them? He could explain it to them in the morning, first thing, when they were able to think more clearly, after a long rest. There was nothing more to say about it: he had to
go on alone from here.
    Luke bent over, standing just ahead of the other two. Squeezed his eyes shut. ‘OK. OK.’ Then straightened his back again. He gulped at the boggy water in his canteen. ‘Up
there. We camp. Get a fire going.’
    ‘I can’t,’ Dom said,