Rude Awakening

By Ian Okell

He thought he knew exactly what was happening, he was dying in hospital, in fact he should already be dead. But now he's woken up in a very strange place. Is there life after death - and if so is this it?
Or is this just the random sparking of failing brain cells before the last goodbye? Is this what death itself feels like?
Out of place and out of time - even realising that he might still be alive doesn't do him any good. He is at the wrong end of an impossible journey, stranded in a society untouched by civilisation. So much is different, so many things aren't there. But human emotions never change - and that's the problem.
They told you at school that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America, but they were wrong, two and a half thousand years wrong - that's quite some mistake. Why don't you let Michael tell you the whole dirty story?
- Tangled and dangerous relationships in a sweeping saga of conflict, betrayal and discovery. As seen through the eyes of an ironic and thoroughly devious observer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Okell
• Release date: May 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476072173

Ian Okell

Ian was for many years a ship’s chandler, part of the fourth generation in his family business, supplying merchant vessels around the United Kingdom and north west Europe. Deciding that too much of his time was spent in travelling, and looking for a job which allowed more time for a home life, he set up a local business of his own; a registered firearms dealership. However, although still fun, the gun shop has turned into a much busier operation than originally envisaged, and is now run by son Mike, with Ian relegated to the role of general dogsbody. He is also a commercially qualified pilot on medium sized twin engined aircraft. Ian and his wife Margaret, another pilot, live in Cheshire, they have three grown up children and, so far, two grandchildren. For many years writing has been his hobby, resulting in about one book a year, although never with any thought of being published. It was only after taking part in a British Arts Council literary criticism website that his books found their way into print.

Book preview

Just a sample of the Five Star Reviews for 'Rude Awakening'

- more online-

'A magical mystery tour - had me alternately laughing and crying. I'm still not sure if I've been reading an adventure, a history, a travelogue or a very moving love story - I'm clearly going to have to read it again.' (Rosie B.)

'I've never read a book before narrated by a dead man, if that's what he is - kept me gripped right through to the end.' (Drumwilldrum)

'A seriously good book - I loved the self deprecating black humour and irony (Wildwildwest)

'Classic Storytelling. Treads a delicate line between witty observation and tense action.' (Julie K.)

Rude

Awakening

by

Ian Okell

Published by feedaread.com at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Ian Okell

See other Ian Okell titles and 'About the Author' at the end of this book

Smashwords Edition, license notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share it with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Rude (Concise Oxford Dictionary),

primitive, simple, unsophisticated,

in natural state, rugged, uncivilized, uneducated.

Violent, not gentle, unrestrained.

Author: you get the idea.

Chapter 1

My last memory was of going to sleep in the High Dependency Unit. Well not exactly sleep, more like floating and drifting, gently surfing on the morphine. There was an oxygen mask on my face, an IV line in the back of my right hand and two in the back of my left hand. I never knew what any of them were connected to. There was a small clamp like a clothes peg on a wire attached to one of the fingers on my left hand. Then there was the epidural line, it started on my chest, ran through some kind of plastic filter on my left shoulder and carried on down to the small of my back where it sank itself directly into my spine. On each side of the top of my bed, stacks of pricey electronics beeped quietly to themselves. Oh, and don’t forget the catheter, sneaking anonymously out from under the bed clothes to its steadily filling bag.

If ever I fell out of bed the resultant tangle of wires would probably strangle me. When it all got too much I had a glowing green plastic button hanging on the bed head, which I could press to top up the morphine. All the comforts of home.

They had operated on me that morning and I still hadn’t been fully awake when the surgeon came and sat by my bedside. That’s got to be a bad sign, when they sit down. If it was good news he would just stand there.

Well how are you feeling old chap - oh good - good, well that’s fine then. Everything went like clockwork, back on your feet in no time, home before you know it. Then he’d bugger off. But no, he sat down. And he had the matron with him. That would be in case I cut up rough when I heard the bad news. Very physical, matrons.

It was just the same when I came round from the colonoscopy, he’d sat down that time as well.

Well yes, as matter of fact you do have cancer of the colon, but the good news is that it’s not too big and it’s just the sort we can deal with. In fact I’ve got a picture of it that we took during the procedure, would you like to see it? He had handed me a colour print of various pink shiny things, but I wasn’t sure which way up it went. It must have been an extremely small camera to get it up there. He’d had the matron with him that time as well. I suddenly realised that he had been talking to me.

. . . have to wait for the results from pathology before we can be sure. He paused and looked at me, he looked worryingly sympathetic.

Right, I said slowly, I see.

He patted my arm. So I’ll be back to see you tomorrow morning, I know it‘s difficult, but do try and get some sleep. The matron gave me a look over her shoulder as they were leaving, checking that I wasn’t getting my wires knotted.

Wonderful, so much for it being ‘just the sort we can deal with’. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t heard everything he’d said. I’d got the punch line, and it wasn’t good.

He had probably known whatever it was all along, but had wanted to break it to me slowly. What was almost as bad was that I would now have to tell Stephanie, she would be in to see me later and would expect a word for word re-run of the unheard diagnosis. Then we would have a row because she would say ‘you should have asked him . . . ’ and I would say, ‘if you’re so interested why weren’t you here, you could have asked him yourself’ Then she would say ‘I told you he was useless the first time I met him’. If I wasn’t busy having colon cancer I would probably have spent the time getting a divorce.

We had always been very happy living together, and then we got married. Perhaps if we’d had children it would have been better. I’d wanted them but she had said her career came first. I said in that case what was the point of us getting married? She said it was a chance for me to show my commitment. But if you’re happy living together and you don’t plan to have children, what exactly are you committing to?

Lately it’s been any excuse for a row. Maybe if we got a divorce we could go back to living together. Maybe it’s my fault for going on about children.

Nurse, this morphine isn’t working. She came and stood by the bed.

Where does it hurt? Eventually she came up with a couple of tablets to take with the morphine. I don’t know what they were, but they worked. Oblivion came and I stopped worrying.

I think it must have been in the early hours that I woke up. I was hurting so much that I pressed the morphine supply button to increase the flow, which helped. There were always some lights on in the High Dependency Unit, dimmed at night obviously, but it was never dark. There were two beds in the Unit, one on each side, with a permanently occupied nurse’s station in the middle. The other bed was empty, so it was just me and her. She was sat at her station reading a paperback under a small desk light, the only noise was the electronic muttering of my monitors.

I closed my eyes to try and sleep, but nothing happened, somehow I could still see the room, so I opened them again. Slowly and with great deliberation I closed and opened them several more times, but it still made no difference. Eyes open or eyes shut the room stayed where it was, clearly visible. I put a finger on the side of my eyelid to make sure that I really was closing them. Yes - up, down, my eyelids worked fine, it was my brain that had packed up.

The nurse came over to stand by my bed, she smiled at me and said something, well that is her lips moved but I couldn’t hear anything. I opened my eyes and saw that she was still sat reading her book. So this was a hallucination, wonderful, I’d never had one of these before. I closed my eyes and smiled at her. I have always had a thing about women in uniform. She smiled back, she probably felt the same way about drugged physical wrecks. It's easily done.

The next thing I knew was when I found myself lying by a river, in a place I didn’t recognise, with a sharp stone jabbing me in the ribs.

*****

It was the sharp stone that got my attention, that was what woke me, rather than the shouting. I was lying on my side, with my legs curled up and one arm flung out. Comfortable enough I suppose, except for that one sharp point digging into me. I opened my eyes and found myself on a sandy foreshore, by a river. The water just a couple of yards away, moving silently past.

Rolling over I pushed myself up and rubbed my ribs in a distracted sort of way, I was still coming round. Then it came again, the shouting that I must have been partly aware of, a mixture of shrieking and what could have been laughter.

It never occurred to me to look for the obvious, that would come later. I seemed to have arrived somewhere, but had no memory of travelling. In those first moments my mind wouldn't focus on the sensible questions; where, why, how? Instead, I stood up and looked about me. It was a short narrow strip of beach littered with fallen trees and rocks. On both sides of the wide dark river the banks rose, steep and thickly wooded. It seemed strange there were no birds.

Listening to them, the voices were definitely human, rather than animal and they were somewhere up the slope behind me. I started to make my way up through the trees and found myself clambering up a twisting gully. In places it was so deep that the sides almost seemed to meet over my head.

All I could hear now was the sound of my own breathing as I scrambled up the hill, clutching at the roots in the gully wall to help me. Gradually the ground began to level out, and I found myself amongst bracken and tall pine trees. It seemed to be lighter in front of me as the trees thinned out, I moved forwards, pushing my way though the undergrowth.

Something primitive, deep inside, made me reluctant to show myself and I hesitated at the edge of the trees. The ground dropped slightly before me, forming an open grassy slope with smooth rocky outcrops. There were no trees for several hundred yards and in the middle of this natural arena a spectacle was unfolding.

A group of 25 or 30 men carrying spears had formed a loose circle surrounding a young woman and an older man. The young woman was clutching a bundle to her chest, probably a baby. If it was a baby it was silent, but she was shouting something to the encircling men. I couldn’t make out the words but the tone was aggressive. Her companion had a short sword in his hand and stared wildly around him, as if challenging the attackers.

Suddenly, one of the encircling group darted forward, lifting the spear above his shoulder. He ran straight for the older man and made as if to throw it, but at the last moment he merely prodded the man with its point and ran back to join the circle. The woman screamed more insults, the man clutched his chest where the spear had caught him. The surrounding group roared with laughter and stamped their feet. This was the noise I had heard. I should have slept on.

Twice more, as I watched horrified, they tormented him with mock attacks and he looked close to collapse. Then one of the spearmen shouted something, the old man turned towards him, the spear was thrown and hit his chest with an audible thud. His sword dropped and he toppled to the ground in slow stages. There was silence. The woman’s mouth was open, but no sound emerged as she stared at her fallen defender and slowly stumbled backwards, away from him.

Eventually she looked up and saw that the spearmen had fallen back to one side. Instead of surrounding her they now formed a line some distance away. One of them called something out and gestured to her to move away, to run. They were letting her go. But she didn’t look pleased, she shouted something desperate and defiant. The bundle she held had also started screaming, so it was a baby.

The spearman spoke again, it was no language that I had ever heard, this time his tone was threatening and once more he pointed at her to go. Another of them threw a spear and it stood trembling in the ground, an arm’s length from her. She had no choice.

She turned and ran. Twenty paces, thirty, now fifty paces, soon she was almost across the clearing, surely beyond the range of a spear. By now she was no longer stumbling, but running for her life, clearly beginning to think she might have a chance. It was then that the spearmen began to move after her, slowly at first, easy, confident, sure of themselves. I shrank back - this wasn’t my fight, it fact it wasn’t really going to be any fight at all.

She looked over her shoulder and saw them coming, she was still running flat out, but glancing about her. Then she made up her mind, she decided where her best chance lay. She swerved to her left and made straight for the nearest part of the tree line, perhaps she thought to lose them there. Instead of running past me she was now coming straight for me. I had been a spectator, I was about to become a participant.

I backed slowly away, moving from one tree to the next. Still she rushed towards me, clutching the baby in both arms. The line of spearmen had slowed down to a walk, laughing and talking to each other. They clearly realised that she had made a mistake, she had turned towards the river and trapped herself. They were in no hurry, this was an easy kill. She had no obvious means of escape and neither, unfortunately, did I. There wasn’t a lot of room for manoeuvre. I now found myself back at the top of the winding gully that led down to the river. I was ready to turn and run – other people's business should stay that way.

But I hadn’t moved fast enough, she saw me and paused, staring open mouthed. The spearmen might not be able to see me, but they could certainly see her. From her reaction they now knew there was someone else here - they now knew there was someone else to kill. I had to get out of here. Correction; we had to get out of here.

It was a slim chance but better than nothing, if we used the gully to reach the river we would be invisible until we actually emerged on the riverbank. I had edged so far back that the spearmen were no longer in sight, but could still be heard coming this way, jeering and calling to her tauntingly. She was still moving towards me, looking puzzled. I held my arms out to each side with the fingers spread to show that I was unarmed, and then beckoned her forwards.

She was good, no panic, no screaming, just a narrowed gaze as she stared at me for a second, in intelligent calculation. Then she decided that I wasn’t the enemy, and under the circumstances that was about as good as things were going to get. She stepped quickly and lightly towards me and spoke quietly, it sounded like a question. I turned my palms upwards in incomprehension and asked.

Do you speak English?

She just looked puzzled and clutched the baby tighter. I took hold of her arm and pulled her towards the top of the gully. There was a whistling sound and a smack, a spear had buried itself in the tree I’d been standing by. More shouting, they had seen us and were closing in. I wrenched the spear from the tree, and we scrambled into the gully. I would have preferred a gun - but if the only thing available is a second hand spear, then I‘ll take it and thank you for it.

To allow for the obvious direction of attack, I sent her ahead and despite carrying the baby she moved quickly down the narrow defile. The shouting began to fade, they must have lost sight of us and be beating around in the undergrowth. All we had to do was get to the river whilst they were doing that, then swim for it. The dry stream bed twisted and turned, still no sound of them starting to follow us down the hill. Then there was the water shining through the trees. She ran out to the river’s edge.

There was a bark of triumph. Incredibly, one of the spearmen was already there, waiting. He was alone and had obviously left the others thrashing about at the top of the slope. It was the same one that had killed her companion, he had played a long shot and it had come off.

I managed to stop before he saw me, and hesitated, could I seriously hope to attack him, or should I stay hidden? He threw down his spear and stood with his arms outstretched, as if to welcome her. He knew he was smart and this proved it, he was having a great time.

But she was smarter. She gave no sign that I was right behind her and started to make wailing noises, as though pleading for mercy. She held up the baby and shook it, she wailed, the baby wailed and all the time she edged around him - and as she did, he turned to follow her. Then she stopped, her back to the water and his back to me.

I charged. No preparation, no careful planning, just one deep breath and go for it. At the last moment he heard me and started to turn, but far, far too late. The spear went deep into the left side of his chest and we tumbled to the ground, him first and me on top of him, still grasping the spear. The last breath he ever took came out of him in a grunt.

I turned to her and made swimming motions with my hands and pointed to the water. She shook her head vigorously, saying something brief but very emphatic.

Listen you silly bitch they’re coming to kill us, I said, pointing up the hill Now will you just get in the bloody water. More emphatic refusal. This didn’t seem a suitable occasion for extended discussion, so I took a step forward and punched her hard on the side of the jaw. I’m not big on hitting women – but if my life's in imminent danger they’re fair game. As she fell, I grabbed the baby and placed it on the ground. Our remaining lifespan could be measured in seconds.

I ran to pick up a man sized piece of fallen dead wood from near the trees and heaved it to the water’s edge. I then dragged her to the river and started to splash water on her face, she groaned and began to come round. Sudden wide eyed panic - where’s the baby? I pointed to the kicking crying bundle and then went and picked it up. Holding the baby in one arm I dragged the log into deeper water and beckoned her to join me. She shook her head, clearly not frightened, but very determined, she wasn’t coming. She pointed at the baby, she wanted it back.

The hillside was echoing with the shouts of advancing men. I waded over to her and used my free hand to grab the front of her tunic, with our faces two inches apart I hissed through clenched teeth.

Get in the sodding water NOW. I then threw her towards the log which was already starting to drift slowly away. Finally, with me still holding the baby and both of us holding the log, I managed to push us out into the stream.

The shoreline erupted with men, very angry men, and spears began to splash into the water around us. The sight of their dead comrade having done little to improve their mood. I had arranged it so that we had the log between us and the shore, it was some protection, but not enough. One spear glanced off the top of the log and scored a groove across my left cheek bone. I hadn’t seen it coming and the shock almost made me vomit, but I was grateful it hadn’t been an inch to the right. Better alive and hurting than the alternative.

It was the last spear that got her, a desperate last throw at extreme range. It landed in the water in front of us and passed underneath the log to strike her somewhere in the chest or belly. She gasped, her face contorted in pain and I clamped one of my hands over hers to stop her letting go. The spear had fallen away, so it wasn’t stuck in the wound, but looking down in the water I could see a dark cloud of blood hovering in front of her. I didn’t know what to do, there was nothing practical I could do that would help. Should I try to keep her awake? For want of any better idea I started talking, saying things of such pointless banality that I was glad she couldn’t understand me.

Don’t worry, I’ll look after the baby. Just hold on a bit longer and I’ll get us to shore. It won’t be long now. But I was whistling in the dark. She was in a bad way and looked to be not far from losing consciousness.

I touched my face and said my name Michael. I did this a couple of times then held out my hand to her and looked enquiringly. She pointed to herself and said what sounded like Marika and then to the baby and said Torm. I don’t know what good it did either of us, but it felt better knowing their names.

We had been in the water for over an hour now, the baby was still breathing but blue with cold and ominously quiet. I was shivering to the extent that I could only just hold on. We didn’t have a lot of time. The river was getting much wider, the nearest bank was about 200 yards away. Considering the condition I was in, there was no hope of me using my legs to propel the log and the three of us to the shore. If I was ever going to make it to dry land with the baby, just about now was my last chance, and that would mean abandoning Marika. It seemed I wasn’t the only one thinking this.

Michael, she said weakly, Michael, and then a sentence in her own language. She pointed at the afternoon sun and swung her arm to describe its arc through the sky, then pointed to where it would set and gestured that I should take the baby and go in that direction. Take the baby ashore and head west?

I stared at her to be certain I had understood. She reached across and stroked the back of my hand, then repeated her mime that I should take the baby and head west. She smiled faintly at me as if to say she understood this was the end of the road for her, but that we should go.

I held the baby out to her, she kissed it and spoke quietly to it for a few moments. Then she pulled at a thin string around her neck until she reached a ring that was looped onto it. She snapped it free and handed it to me, indicating that it belonged to the baby. I nodded that I understood and managed to slip the ring onto my little finger. Then not knowing what else to do I kissed her hand and said goodbye.

Holding the baby on my chest I slid slowly backwards into the water, my legs kicking us towards the shore, and left the young woman named Marika to die alone.

Chapter 2

By the time we reached the shore it was no longer possible to see the drifting log, and to be honest I didn’t spend much time looking. I was sorry that by now Marika would have lost her grip and drowned, but my regrets could change nothing. Right now the baby and I were shivering and freezing in our wet clothes. As for the huge questions of where was I and how did I get here, that sort of thing was just too big for me to come to grips with. Let’s try and deal with the here and now.

It was late afternoon but fortunately there were still a couple of hours of sunshine left. There was no sign of our pursuers over on the far bank, they had no doubt given up the chase. In fact there was no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of any sort of life at all, not even any smoke rising through the trees. Just me and my baby.

I stripped off, squeezed the water out of my clothes and spread them over some bushes to dry out. I turned my attention to the baby, and discovered that Torm was a boy’s name. He was wrapped in a coarse loosely woven brown material, it had been decorated but seemed unfinished. Frankly it looked more like the product of a first year Arts and Crafts class than baby clothes. I washed the heavy soiling off in the river and hung them next to mine on the bushes. As I cleaned him up with water and handfuls of grass he stared at me with big brown eyes, very calmly, considering what we had just been through.

I eventually got us somewhat warmer by hugging Torm to my chest and walking up and down in the sunshine. This gave me the first chance to think about what was going on. The people I had seen were speaking a language completely unknown to me and I would have recognised any of the major European tongues. They were white skinned, a little swarthy perhaps, or maybe just dirty, but still white. They were mostly dark haired and dressed in woven smocks and leggings, with sleeveless jackets made from what looked like animal skins.

My surroundings, whilst not exotic, looked somewhat lusher and warmer than seemed normal for the British Isles, so where? I asked Torm what he thought about it, but he had gone to sleep against my chest.

Then it struck me - although I‘d been running about the place like a five year old, I had a fresh surgical incision from my pubic bone to my diaphragm. It had only just been done, that’s why I was in the High Dependency Unit with a nurse watching me. And furthermore it hurt like hell. I felt, I looked, at first I thought there was nothing there. But at last I saw that, yes, there was the pale ridge of a scar running vertically up my belly and making a little detour around my belly button. It must have taken weeks or months for it to heal to that extent.

Where had I been? How many months were missing from my life? I knew that I had been hallucinating, is this just another one? Or more importantly - am I dead? Is this what happens when you die, am I being put through some sort of test to determine my fitness for the afterlife? I felt light headed and sat down.

Be rational and calm down, get your breathing straightened out. You’re not dead, you’re sitting stark naked by an unknown river, holding a dead woman’s baby, that much you know for sure. Weird, yes. Dead, no.

Torm wriggled and started to cry, and then peed down my chest. That proves it’s real, I don’t think people piss on you in dreams. Or perhaps it’s a nightmare and everyone is going to piss on me.

This has to be susceptible to logical analysis. Where do they still throw spears at each other? The Amazon Rain Forest, Papua New Guinea, Borneo? This didn’t look like any of those and nor did the people, but what do I know? The logic said that wherever in the world I had been dumped there had to be some contact with civilisation. A trading post, a mission, somewhere within walking or rafting distance. It might take me a week or more, it should be a simple exercise in basic field craft to stay alive that long - I could and would make it. Then I would start to get some answers.

Presumably when I found Torm’s people they would be glad to get their baby back and there might even be someone who spoke English. At the very least I could expect some level of help. Marika had indicated that it lay to the west, so first thing tomorrow that’s where we would make for. As far as possible from the Stone Age throwbacks and their damn fool spears.

As the sun went down we ate blackberries, crushed in my palm and fed to Torm on a finger and drank water from my cupped hand. He got some of it down him, but you could tell he wasn’t too keen. He cried and whinged until I had us both dressed in our almost dry clothes and bedded down in a pile of ferns. Eventually I went to sleep, cradling him for mutual warmth, wishing that whoever had dumped me in this godforsaken hole had thought of putting a disposable lighter in my pocket, we could at least have had a fire.

*****

Waking was difficult. Well perhaps not the waking itself, but coming to terms with where I was and the mess I was in, that was difficult. The sun wasn’t fully up yet, but it was already light. I could feel Torm’s breathing, so he was alright and we were both warm, for a while I just lay there.

No scenario I could imagine fitted the observable facts. I had lost several months of my life and found myself in some remote and astonishingly primitive backwater. Was this some kind of amnesia, had I been wandering delirious through some jungle? But my clothes hadn’t been ripped or dirty when I woke by the river and I seemed to be fit and well nourished.

I might have missed some of what my doctor was trying to tell me, but I had understood very clearly that it hadn’t been good news. If there is an afterlife in which you continue as yourself, how do you know you’re in it?

There was a low voice, a man’s voice, very close by. He was speaking in little more than a whisper. I pushed myself very carefully up on one arm and peered out through the ferns. Drifting with the current was a makeshift raft made from five or six logs lashed together, squatting on it were five of the spearmen from yesterday. Two of them were steering the raft, using pieces of wood as paddles, whilst the other three scanned the shoreline - minutely. I froze with fear, these men had no intention of giving up, it hadn’t even crossed their minds.

I was only ten yards in from the river’s edge and they were very close to the bank. We could have had a conversation without raising our voices, if only we’d spoken the same language. I was too frightened to move and staying still was probably the best option anyway. Torm started to stir and I could feel him sticking one of his arms out against my chest. Please, please keep quiet.

Only the top of my head and eyes were partially visible through the ferns - but one of the men was staring right at me, then two of them were. They wanted me dead and would probably make a game out of killing me. Should I put a hand over Torm’s mouth? But I couldn’t, I was supporting myself on one arm and holding him with the other.

One of the paddlers said something very quietly and they all looked ahead for a moment, when their gaze was redirected to the river bank they were slowly moving past me. Gently, very gently, I lowered myself to the ground and looked at Torm. He was wide awake and returned my worried stare with a smile. Oh you beautiful boy, quiet as a mouse. I was beginning to take to the child.

Risking another cautious peek I saw them continuing downstream. The trouble was that if I knew where five of them were, there were another twenty or so that I didn’t know about. One of the men on the raft looked back upstream, past me, and made a gesture with his arm to someone on the shore who was out of my line of sight. He paused a moment, still looking back, waved once more at whoever it was and returned to his inspection of the bank. That answered the question about where the rest of them were. They weren’t just coming for us, they knew which side of the river we were on and they were horribly close.

Our best hope was that they would find Marika’s body washed up on the river bank and assume that we had all drowned. As best hopes go, that one seemed distinctly threadbare. We needed to move as far and as fast as possible.

Drinking stream water and eating berries as we went, we headed west throughout the morning. A gentle slope had led up from the river through a deciduous forest. There was only light undergrowth and we made good time, but I worried about