To the Hilt Read Free

much longer.
    Those bastard hikers, I thought eventually. I remembered their faces. I could draw them. They were demons in a dream.
    The accurate knowledge of who I was and where I was arrived quietly.
    I tried to move. A mistake.
    Time would take care of it, perhaps. Give it time.
    Those bastards had been real, I realized, demons or not. Their fists had been real. “Where is it?” had been real. In spite of everything, I ruefully smiled. I thought it possible that they hadn’t known what they were actually looking for. “It” could have been whatever their victim valued most. There was no guarantee in any case that delivering up “it” would save one from being thrown down a mountain.
    It occurred to me to wonder what time it was. I looked at my left wrist, but my watch had gone.
    It had been about eleven o’clock when I’d got back from the post office...
    Hell’s teeth, I thought abruptly. Mother. Ivan. Heart attack. I was supposed to be going to London. Or the moon.
    The worst thing I might feel, I considered, was nothing.
    Not the case.
    With fierce concentration, I could move all my fingers and all my toes. Anything more hurt too much for enthusiasm. Outraged muscles went into breath-stopping spasms to protect themselves.
    Wait. Lie still. I felt cold.
    Bloody stupid, being mugged on one’s own doorstep. Embarrassing. A helpless little old lady I was not, but a pushover—literally—just the same.
    I found the casual callousness of the walkers extraordinary. They had appeared not to care whether I lived or died, and had in fact left it to chance. I supposed they could truthfully say, “He was alive when we saw him last.” They could dodge the word “murder.”
    The ebb tide in my body finally turned. Movement could at last be achieved without spasm. All I had to do from then on was scrape myself off the mountain and go catch a train. Even the thought was exhausting.
    I was sure, after a while, that by immense good fortune I had broken no bones in my helter-skeltering fall. I’d been a rag doll. Babies got lucky through not trying to help themselves. Same principle, I supposed.
    With an unstoical groan, I raised from prone to kneeling on my rock and took a look up at where I’d come down. The edge of the plateau was hidden behind outcrops but was alarmingly far above. Looking down was almost worse, though from five or more years of living there, I understood at once where I was in relation to the bothy above. If I could traverse to the right without losing my footing and plunging down another slope, I would come eventually to the uneven but definable path that meandered from the road below up to my home: the challenging half-hidden ascent that brought walkers to my door.
    The four hiker-demons had probably come up that way. I certainly didn’t want to meet them if they were on their way down. Hours had probably passed, though. I knew I had lain helpless for a long time. They must surely by then have left.
    Realistically, I was going nowhere except uncontrollably downwards again unless I could reach that path. Hikers or not, it was the only possible route. Trying to go in the opposite direction, to reach the road-track up from the post office, was pointless, as it involved an overhang and a perpendicular rock climb, neither of which could be managed without gear.
    I was well used to moving alone in the mountains, and I was always careful. I would never normally have attempted what now confronted me without an axe and crampons, let alone with every move a wince, but fear of a less lucky fall, of a broken leg or worse, kept me stuck like glue, with fingernails and tiny cautious shifts of weight, to every protruding scrap of solid rock. Loose stones rattled and bounced away. Scrubby earth gave too little purchase. Rock was all.
    I made the journey sitting down, looking out over the perilous drops to the valley, digging in with my heels; careful, careful... careful.
    The path, when at last I reached it, was