He fell onto the bank, wet from the waist down.

Had he slowed down, he might have plunged completely under the water, waiting for them to pass by, but he wasn’t thinking clearly.

He was exhuasted, filthy and bleeding from a gash in his left side. At some point during his escaple, one of the men had snuck around an alley and come at him with a large garden rake. It stung, but it was much later before Daniel Tarver realized he was bleeding. A few inches higher and I’d be dead by now, Daniel thought briefly.

For the last hour or so, he had been headed west through a large wood. At some point during the run, he had pressed his left arm to his side to stop the bleeding. He thought that might have helped, but he was afraid to pull the arm away for fear of starting the flow again.

He was lightheaded, and had he owned a mirror that afternoon, he would have seen that he was very pale.

On the opposite bank, he looked back at the clearing and the wood, watching for them, but no one came.

No one came.