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Your stomach lurches when you hear yet another shot echo across the mountains. You flinch as you run, half expecting to feel the pain of impact, but the bullet misses you and lodges itself in the trunk of a pine tree less than ten yards ahead.
You reach the trees and throw yourself down behind a thick pine, breathless with fear and sheer exertion. As you lie there, inwardly weeping, fighting to control the nausea that rises in waves, Marine Knott crawls to your side and tugs at your sleeve.
‘We stand a better chance if we can get deeper into the forest,’ he says, his voice betraying the fear that is gnawing at his insides like a voracious rat. You blink your approval and struggle to follow him as he crawls across the tinder-dry bed of pine needles and sickly brown vegetation that covers the tall trees’ roots.
