Highlands, Scotland
When Logan came to, his entire body felt numb from the cold. It took him a few moments to find the strength to get his limbs working again. He hauled himself to a sitting position and pulled his hand up to the spot where the rock had crashed into his skull. There was a gash that was sticky with blood. The area around it was lumpy and sore. The cut wasn’t deep, though, and the flow had already stopped.
Logan grimaced as he got to his feet. Pain shot through his head. His legs felt dull and heavy. He didn’t know how long he had been out for. Minutes at most. Any longer and he probably wouldn’t have woken up at all, given the freezing temperature. As it was, he was shaking violently from the cold, his whole body spasming.
He felt over his body, patted himself down, looked around the ground, realised that Fleming and Butler had taken everything but the clothes off his back. He had no knife, no compass, no watch on his wrist. He cursed loudly and kicked at the soft snow, sending plumes of white into the air.
If he’d thought the task ahead was arduous before, it would be even more so now. He was out in the wilds all alone with nothing but his wits.
But as daunting as the situation was, something else entirely was filling his thoughts. This was the last straw. He wasn’t going to sit back and take Fleming’s shit any longer. It was time to fight back. Despite the perilous position he found himself in, Logan’s mind was already racing, alert, focused.
Fleming would have to wait, though, if only for a few hours. Logan knew time was on his side. He guessed he was still a couple of hours ahead of the trackers. Before he set off again, he needed to get warmed through and find some water and food to fuel his body. After that, he was going to become the hunter.
It was supposed to be an escape and evasion exercise, but Logan knew at that moment the game had changed. It was time to put everything he’d learned to the test. He no longer cared if the trackers found him. Getting Fleming and Butler was the goal now.
He set about rebuilding the fire, first removing the covering of snow and then re-digging the pit. It took some time to gather enough kindling and tinder, particularly as he no longer had the knife to cut away the branches. But it was worth the effort. The warmth from the fire when it was finally ready quickly made him feel revitalised.
Perhaps more importantly, it made it possible to melt some of the snow for water, which he desperately needed. It would have been a whole lot easier if he’d still had a survival tin to use as a receptacle for the water. As it was, he had to hold the snow above the fire a handful at a time, lapping up the small amount of liquid that pooled in his hand with each fistful. It was a lot of effort for a small amount of water, but he knew it was better than simply eating the snow, which would deplete his energy supply as a result of further reducing his core temperature.
Logan thought he would be about an hour behind his foes. If he’d set off after them as soon as he’d woken up, he might have caught them in minutes, but he just hadn’t had the energy. And he knew they would have to stop eventually too. That should prove to be his opportunity to snare them.
Provided he could actually find them.
When he felt able enough to get on the move again, Logan covered the fire with snow, completely burying it, and then set off along Butler and Fleming’s sporadic trail. Initially it was clear which way the two soldiers had headed, but the trail didn’t last long. Logan’s progress was soon slowed as Butler and Fleming’s tracks became almost non-existent, with nothing more than a few yards of prints and spoor at a time.
After a while, Logan began to doubt whether the snippets he was finding were even from Butler and Fleming at all. As adept as Logan had shown himself to be so far in his training, Butler and Fleming were seasoned evaders and knew every trick in the book for covering their tracks.
The terrain certainly wasn’t helping either. Logan had crossed two small bodies of water already, which somehow or other were unfrozen. It had given him the opportunity to drink but crossing water made it notoriously difficult to track. Even with dogs, water would have been a huge hindrance. Depending on how far the evader moved in the water before emerging, the scent trail could disappear entirely.
To add to that, the further Logan went, the harder he found it to figure his direction of travel. He was good at telling his orientation from the position of the stars, but it was a dull and overcast night with the glare of the moon only barely visible behind the clouds. That at least gave him some idea as to where he was going given his understanding of lunar movements, but it was nowhere near as accurate as the soldiers could be, given that they had compasses.
After a few hours, Logan began to realise that following the trail was near-impossible. He couldn’t have moved more than a few miles since he’d left the rock. The cold night and tiring exercise were quickly sapping his energy and motivation.
A doom-and-gloom feeling began to slowly creep over him and it wasn’t much longer before Logan lost the trail altogether. Some two hours before, he had entered a forest, which varied from expanses of fir trees to patches of thick undergrowth. There was little snow, just frozen-solid ground, and he hadn’t seen a footprint or any signs of life since he’d walked past the first looming tree.
It was easy terrain to stay hidden in, especially at night. Perhaps Butler and Fleming had already stopped for rest and Logan, lost in the woods, had simply carried on past them. It would explain why there was no evidence at all of where they had gone.
Logan was at a loss. With only sporadic glimpses of the dim moonlight coming through the tree canopy, his already diminished sense of direction was now all but gone. He stopped moving and slumped against a thick tree trunk, his legs exhausted, his stomach aching with hunger, his hands blue with cold.
After a few seconds of unsatisfactory contemplation, Logan moved onto his knees and began to root around the trunk of the tree, scraping off the moss with his fingers. It was reindeer lichen, a staple food for survivors in cold climates. It didn’t taste great and its nutritional content was poor at best, but it was a lot better than nothing. It would have been better heated through, boiled or fried or roasted, but he stuffed it into his mouth frozen, almost past caring about the possible consequences of ingesting the ice-cold food. Instead, his mind raced with thoughts of how he would get his own back on that bastard Fleming.
After a few soggy, cold mouthfuls, Logan’s insides began to cramp, a natural instinct warding him off eating any more of the frozen moss. He cursed himself for having been so nonchalant.
The paltry amount of food inside him would give him a little energy, but Logan determined there was little benefit of moving any further in the night. If he could wait until morning, he would have a much better sense of where he was and where he was going. Plus, he badly needed rest and more food.
Feeling somewhat dejected at the prospect that Fleming could be moving further away, Logan got to his feet to begin another fire. If he was stopping, he would need a way of staying warm. And he needed more food too – the fire would be essential for warming through any more moss or other food he could find.
Then, suddenly, something caught Logan’s attention. At first he thought it was an animal sound. A call maybe. He strained his hearing, holding his breath so that the only sound around him was the gentle rustling of foliage in the cold breeze. He heard it again. It was distant and quiet, dispersing in the freezing air. But the sound was unmistakable.
A human voice.
And not just any voice. A deep, growly bass voice.
Fleming.