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up,’ Dom said; his words were slurred after drinking the lion’s share of the Jack Daniel’s. Supped from their plastic mugs after they’d eaten half of the remaining food: the last four tins of sausage and beans, preceded by a first course of powdered chicken soup with noodles. Two chocolate and oat cereal bars each completed the meal. But it wasn’t enough. Despite gulping at the soup and then stuffing the steaming beans into their mouths, even licking the bowls clean, which they had never done before, they remained hungry. This had been the most demanding day so far, even though a shorter distance had been covered than on the previous day.
    Phil’s feet were bare and glistening with antiseptic. Dom’s swollen knee was raised and supported under Hutch’s rucksack. All of their thighs were stiff with slowly pumping aches and their lungs were flat with exhaustion. A coma of tiredness had swept through all of them the minute their sleeping bags were unrolled. Luke had never felt so beaten. Had not known it was possible to become so heavy in body and so listless. He could take about one more day of this. Phil and Dom looked like this had been their last.
    Enough food for one more day outdoors remained. And only a tea-coloured trickle was left in the small whiskey bottle Dom had lugged around since leaving Gällivare. It was to have been a treat, opened beside some lake of an astonishing Nordic blue, around an open fire, with the sky turning pink as the darkness of night approached. That had been the plan.
    Luke watched Hutch push the last leg of the stool through the door of the iron stove they were huddled around. A shower of sparks erupted inside as he rooted the ancient wooden spoke around the hearth. They coughed in the acrid smoke that belched out. The chimney was almost totally closed. Smouldering remnants of the seat formed the base to the red ashes inside the little oven that only heated part of the ground floor, before the draughts from the door and between the floorboards took over with a night chill, a tang of damp earth, and the ferment of rotten wood.
    Phil and Dom had smashed the stool to firewood earlier, against Luke’s wishes. Aren’t we in enough trouble? And he’d been unable to watch Hutch start the fire using four of the crucifixes as tinder. By not watching Hutch snap and twist them into small bundles, he quietly hoped he was exempt from the further misfortune this act of desecration might evoke.
    Hutch frowned at Dom, then leaned back against his friend’s knees. ‘Go easy on the sauce Domja. It’s got to go four ways. That’s your last tot. I’ve barely had a mouthful.’
    Phil smiled to himself. ‘We should save one last swig for when we leave the forest.’
    ‘I’d see it off tonight. It’s the worst thing you can drink if you’re wet and cold.’ Hutch seemed to stop himself from saying anything further, as if what he had suggested might befall them the following day.
    Sitting and leaning forward on top of their unrolled sleeping bags, which in turn were placed on their foam mats on the filthy floor of the hovel, they consumed the hot red air that belched from the tiny door. Even when they got too close and it burned their faces and seared their heavy eyes, they welcomed it. It was the first heat they had felt in two whole days.
    Above the stove, hung from a tent’s guy rope fixed between four of the nails that had once held animal skulls in place, sodden clothes gradually steamed and smoked dry in the darkness: four bedraggled fleeces and four pairs of grimy trousers. Their waterproof coats were hanging behind them on the nails of the far wall. Everything else gone damp inside their packs, was haphazardly suspended from other nails about the room. Dom had taken all of the skulls and crucifixes down. Something else that made Luke uneasy. Though he wasn’t sure why.
    He felt the warmth of the whiskey rise from his belly and numb his mind. It was worn out anyway and grateful for