The Ritual

up.’
    Dom stayed silent. ‘Then we’re fucked,’ he eventually said in a voice suddenly empty of any warmth or edge or inquiry. His words were flat and tired; the sound of despair, the
voice of yesterday. Dom shuffled back to the stove and looked down at the water in silence. Two tin mugs were lined up beside it, next to the tub of coffee granules. The mugs were stained black
inside.
    ‘We need water. Badly. I got to drink something. Then look at my head. I have a shaving mirror.’
    ‘Take it easy.’
    ‘Maybe sterilize the wound with some of that boiled water.’
    ‘Shush. Just—’
    ‘Antiseptic. There was some in the medical kit.’
    ‘All gone. Phil’s blisters.’
    ‘Jesus.’ His face screwed up. He thought he might cry.
    ‘Just take it easy. Drink this coffee. Get your head straight. It’s just a flesh wound. A bump. Looks worse than it is.’
    Was Dom only trying to make him feel better, or did what he say make sense? He had no idea, but it reassured him because he had nothing else to believe in but unexamined statements.
    Dom began pouring boiling water into a mug. ‘Let’s just drink this. Then we can think about what the hell we’re going to do next.’
    It took them half an hour to stumble down the south side of the hill. At the bottom, they paused to get their breath and to wait for their respective agonies to subside enough
to raise their chins and look back up at the side of the green and silver tent, rippling in the sudden cool gusts that washed over the hillock.
    Except for two sleeping bags, the knives and the torches, they had abandoned everything else they had carried this far. Three rucksacks, an assortment of soiled clothes, an empty first-aid kit,
and the empty gas canister and stove that had made them a final mug of bitter coffee, was all still in place up on the rocky summit. On the lonely and dreary place where they were supposed to have
met their end, remained the final clues of what befell their hiking trip. Evidence of four friends who took a short cut.
    They stood on a thin layer of soil covering the rocks at the foot of the hill and both turned and looked at the dark fir trees, solemn in the soft light, awaiting them. Further inside the dark
cool forest, a wall of bracken erupted around the last few willows, before the taller spruce and firs resumed their blanket dominance where the soil was deeper.
    As they peered into the woods and prepared to move south west, it was the sight of the uneven ground below them, tumbling up and down through the sentinels of trees, tilting from the sudden
rocky crests made slippery with moss, that most disheartened Luke before they even began. Back in there for another day’s tortuous scrabbling and crying out with pain at every step and every
motion that involved the carriage of a wound. And they would be moving slower today than ever before. Luke closed his eyes and readied himself. He was finished before he’d even begun, and
knew it.
    Dom’s messy bandage had fallen off his head at the first prompt. But at least it had absorbed most of the bleeding, a seeping that continued for the hours he was unconscious. The gash ran
from his left eyebrow, up his forehead and into his hair. It was pink and open like a sideways mouth. Using his thin shaving mirror, he thought he had seen a glimmer of bone inside it. The gash was
at least five inches long and desperately required stitches.
    With the last absorbent pad from the first-aid kit, he had dabbed at the wound with the last dregs of hot water from the pan, trying not to cry out too loudly at every contact. Dom could not
even look at him while he attended to his torn flesh. He’d then placed the gauze pad under the wrappings of the soiled bandage and gently retied it around the crown of his head. Dom had fixed
the safety pin in place.
    The most horrifying thing to Luke had been the sight of his own blood-stained face, barely recognizable when it peered back from the tiny shaving mirror. The water Dom had poured over his head
had not washed his face clean; much of the streaky dried blood remained caked on. One side of his face was bruised purple, and further blackened with the grime already coating his skin right down
to his throat. His left ear was plugged with dried blood and it was like having that side of his head submerged in a bath. If he ever stumbled out of here, he would be scarred for life. His
bloodied face and the thought of a cruel white scar made him more