S Bolton - Sacrifice

Sharing a table in the hospital canteen with some other members of staff, I'd found myself incredibly frustrated that the topics of conversation had ranged from school sports days to rising prices on the buses and road works on the A970. For God's sake, I'd wanted to yell, we dug up a body four days ago, not ten miles from here. She's in the morgue right now. Does nobody care? I hadn't, of course. But I had wondered if Gifford's oblique warning to me in the pub that night had been repeated across the hospital: don't discuss the particularly grizzly murder that has taken place amongst us, because that will be bad for the social and economic health of the islands; don't talk about it and it might just go away.

And then there was Kenn Gifford.

I'd met him just four days ago, and during those four days he'd been on my mind an awful lot more than he had any business to be. I'd even gone so far as to buy Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, drinking in greedily any descriptions of the character he'd likened me to and finding myself absurdly flattered by references to 'superior height', 'exquisitely fair complexion' and 'profuse hair of a colour betwixt brown and flaxen'.

I've been married for five years and of course Gifford wasn't the first man I'd found attractive during that time. I'd also met quite a few who had found me… interesting. It had never really been a problem. I have this simple test, you see; I say to myself, 'Tora, however amiable, however pleasing to the eye he may be, can he really, honestly measure up to Duncan?' And the answer has always been the same: never in a million years. But with Gifford the answer wasn't quite so clear-cut.

All in all, I had quite a lot to think about.

Henry, perhaps picking up on my mood, started to jump and skitter about. Then a guillemot flew close and he shied, backing into the water. Henry had ridden through waves, not to mention rivers, streams and ponds many times and there was absolutely no reason why the feel of water around his hoofs should bother him, but for some reason it did. He started to buck and kick, spinning in the water and going in deeper. He was in danger of slipping and I of losing my seat. I tightened the reins and pulled him up sharply.

'Pack it in!' I snarled, pulling him round so that he was facing up the beach and out of the sea. He side-stepped and backed up further.

Mildly concerned now, I kicked him forward, regretting not having brought a whip with me. I raised his head and kicked again. He shot forward, just as I saw a man standing on the cliff top, staring down at us.

Gifford, was my first thought, but it was impossible to be sure. The cliffs were to the east of us, the sun was still low and the man was little more than a shadow blocking out a fraction of the early- morning light. He was tall and broad and his hair, long and loose, seemed to gleam like gold. The sun was hurting my eyes and I looked away for a second, screwing them closed to shut out the brightness. When I opened them again the man was gone.

I urged Henry away from the surf and put him into an active walk along the beach. It was two miles to home and I still had Charles to ride.

Charles was in no state to be ridden.

Missing Henry and with no Jamie to keep him calm, he'd panicked, jumped a fence into the next field, stumbled on the uneven ground and fallen into the stream that runs down our land. That, in itself, wouldn't have been too bad, but in slipping he'd dislodged an old barbed-wire fence and wrapped it around his left hind leg. The least sensible of my horses was trapped in a stream, with several razor-sharp points digging into his flesh. Not surprisingly, he was seriously distressed. His eyes were rolling and his grey coat was dark with sweat.

I untacked Henry as fast as I could and pushed him into the field. Hearing Charles's panic he rushed up to the fence and started calling out to him. Horses have a particular whinnying cry when they're hurt or distressed. It's a sound you rarely hear, fortunately, because it pierces your heart the way I imagine the screams of a terrified child would. Charles's cries doubled in volume and he started to struggle and kick.

I knew I'd never get the wire off Charles without some sort of wire-cutter so I turned and ran back into the house. I was wearing an ancient pair of green Hunter Wellingtons and they were caked in mud from the last time I'd worn them – Jamie's aborted burial day. The mud had dried and started to flake off over the carpet as I rushed upstairs to the spare room where Duncan kept his tools. I found a pair of pliers, then grabbed another, stronger pair just for good measure and raced back downstairs again. On the fourth stair from the bottom I slipped and went down, banging my coccyx badly on the stairs. It hurt but I forced myself to stand up and get moving.

Running outside, I found Charles and Henry winding each other up and Henry prepared to jump the fence and join Charles in the stream. He needed to be tied up but the time it would take me to find a head-collar and catch him just couldn't be spared. Blood was running down Charles's leg. Even if I did manage to get him free – and from the state of him that was looking increasingly unlikely – he'd probably done irreparable damage to his leg. Surely I wasn't about to lose a second horse in as many weeks?

Forcing myself to move slowly, I approached Charles. The stream is a narrow one, at times barely visible under rushes and long grass. In summer it doesn't carry much water but the gully is deep. Charles was using his front legs in a scrambling motion to propel himself out but, fastened as he was by his hind leg, it was impossible. Plus, every effort he made sapped his energy, increased his panic and pushed the sharp prongs of the wire deeper into his flesh. I hadn't faced a situation remotely like it before and for a second I was tempted to just throw back my head and scream for help. Except I knew none would come.

I stood just out of reach of Charles's hoofs and tried to calm him. If he would let me touch his head I was in with a chance.

'Steady, steady, steady, whoa now, steady.' I reached towards him. He tossed his head up and towards me, grabbing with his teeth. Then he spun round, trying to scramble away. I'd known this horse since he was two years old; he'd come to my mother's farm to be broken in and I was the only regular rider he'd known, but pain and fear had turned me into the enemy. I looked down. The left hind leg was pretty well immobilized and there appeared to be two – no, three – strands of wire connecting Charles to the fence. If he let me approach, I might be able to cut through the wire, enabling him to climb out of the ditch.

I jumped down into the gully and Charles glared, swinging round to face me. A kick from a big horse can seriously injure, if not kill – and yet without getting close, I could do nothing to help him. Talking gently, wishing my voice sounded calmer, I moved forward. He was panting heavily and his eyes were rolling. If he sprang, I could be pinioned beneath two very powerful forelegs; if he fell, I'd be crushed. It all looked impossible and for a moment I was tempted to give up and ring the vet. Yet I knew the chances of him being able to come straight away were slim and if there were to be any possibility of saving Charles I had to get him loose from the wire-fence pretty much immediately.

I moved forward again as Charles reared, balancing precariously on his trapped rear limbs. He fell forward and I moved again before he had chance to recover. I was no longer talking to him, my voice just wouldn't work any more. Crouching down in the ditch, I willed myself to ignore the half-ton of muscle and bone poised above me as I squeezed the pliers around the first thick strand of wire. It snapped in two and Charles chose that moment to kick out with both hind legs. The remaining wire dug deep into his fetlock and he screamed out loud with the pain. He reared again and this time those murderous forelegs were directly above me and coming down fast. I had to move!