by Francis: TO THE HILT

I stopped walking and said again, 'What do you want?'

The first speaker said, 'Where is it?'

I felt a strong primitive impulse to turn tail and run, and wished afterwards that I'd listened to the wisdom of prehistory, but somehow one doesn't easily equate knobbly-kneed hikers with positive danger.

I said, 'I don't know what you mean,' and I made the mistake of turning my back on them and retracing my steps towards the jeep.

I heard their heavy feet scrunching on the stony ground behind me but still didn't truly believe in disaster until they clutched and spun me round and purposefully and knowledgeably punched. I had a sort of splintered composite view of intent malevolent faces, of grey daylight reflecting on their incongruous glasses, of their hard bombarding fists and of a wildly slanting horizon of unhelpful mountains as I doubled forward over a debilitating pain in the abdomen. Neck chop. Jabs to the ribs. Classic pattern. Over and over. Thud, merciless thud.

I was wearing jeans, shirt and sweater: they might as well have been gossamer for all the protection they offered. As for meaningful retaliation, read nonexistent. I couldn't find breath. I swung at them in anger but fought an octopus. Bad news.

One of the men kept saying insistently, 'Where is it? Where is it?' but his colleagues made it impossible for me to answer.

I wondered vaguely if by 'it' they meant money, of which I carried little. They were welcome to it, I thought groggily, if they would stop their attentions. I unintentionally dropped my small bunch of keys and lost it to a hand that grabbed it up with triumph.

Somehow or other I ended with my back against the jeep: no further retreat. One of them snatched handfuls of my hair and banged my head against metal. I clawed blood down his cheek and got a head-butt in return that went straight from my skull to my knees, buckling them like butter.

Events became unclear. I slid to the ground, face down. I had a close view of grey granite stones and short dry struggling blades of grass, more brown than green.

'Where is it?'

I didn't answer. Didn't move. Shut my eyes. Drifted.

'He's out,' a voice said. 'Fat lot of help you are.'

I felt hands roughly searching my pockets. Resistance, as an option, promised only more bruises. I lay still, not wholly conscious, inertia pervading, angry but helplessly passive, nothing coordinating, no strength, no will.

After a time of floating I felt their hands on me again.

'Is he alive?'

'No thanks to you, but yes, he is. He's breathing.'

'Just leave him.'

'Chuck him over there.'

'Over there' turned out to be the edge of the plateau, but I didn't realise it until I'd been dragged across the stones and lifted and flung over. I went rolling fast and inexorably down the steep mountain slope, almost bouncing from rock to rock, still incapable of helping myself, unable to stop, dimly aware of flooding with whirling comprehensive pain.

I slammed down onto a larger rock and did stop there, half on my side, half on my stomach. I felt no gratitude. I felt pulverised. Winded. Dazed. Thought vanished.

Some sort of consciousness soon came crazily back, but orderly memory took much longer.

Those bastard hikers, I thought eventually. I remembered their faces. I could draw them. They were demons in a dream.

The accurate knowledge of who I was and where I was arrived quietly.

I tried to move. A mistake.

Time would take care of it, perhaps. Give it time.

Those bastards had been real , I realised, demons or not. Their fists had been real. 'Where is it?' had been real. In spite of everything, I ruefully smiled. I thought it possible that they hadn't known what they were actually looking for. 'It' could have been whatever their victim valued most. There was no guarantee in any case that delivering up 'it' would save one from being thrown down a mountain.

It occurred to me to wonder what time it was. I looked at my left wrist, but my watch had gone.

It had been about eleven o'clock when I'd got back from the post office…

Hell's teeth , I thought abruptly. Mother. Ivan . Heart attack . I was supposed to be going to London. Or the moon.

The worst thing I might feel, I considered, was nothing.

Not the case.

With fierce concentration, I could move all my fingers and all my toes. Anything more hurt too much for enthusiasm. Outraged muscles went into breath-stopping spasms to protect themselves.

Wait. Lie still. I felt cold.

Bloody stupid, being mugged on one's own doorstep. Embarrassing. A helpless little old lady I was not, but a pushover - literally - just the same.

I found the casual callousness of the walkers extraordinary. They had appeared not to care whether I lived or died, and had in fact left it to chance. I supposed they could truthfully say, 'He was alive when we saw him last.' They could dodge the word murder.

The ebb tide in my body finally turned. Movement could at last be achieved without spasm. All I had to do from then on was scrape myself off the mountain and go and catch a train. Even the thought was exhausting.

I was sure, after a while, that by immense good fortune I had broken no bones in my helter-skeltering fall. I'd been a rag doll. Babies got lucky through not trying to help themselves. Same principle, I supposed.

With an unstoical groan, I raised from prone to kneeling on my rock and took a look up at where I'd come down. The edge of the plateau was hidden behind outcrops but was alarmingly far above. Looking down was almost worse, though from five or more years of living there, I understood at once where I was in relation to the bothy above. If I could traverse to the right without losing my footing and plunging down another slope, I would come eventually to the uneven but definable path that meandered from the road below up to my home: the challenging half-hidden ascent that brought walkers to my door.

The four hiker-demons had probably come up that way. I certainly didn't want to meet them if they were on their way down. Hours had probably passed, though. I knew I had lain helpless for a long tune. They must surely by then have left.

Realistically, I was going nowhere except uncontrollably downwards again unless I could reach that path. Hikers or not, it was the only possible route. Trying to go in the opposite direction, to reach the track up from post office, was pointless, as it involved an overhang and a perpendicular rock climb, neither of which could be managed without gear.

I was well used to moving alone in the mountains, and I was always careful. I would never normally have attempted what now confronted me without an axe and crampons, let alone with every move a wince, but fear of a less lucky fall, of a broken leg or worse, kept me stuck like glue, with fingernails and tiny cautious shifts of weight, to every protruding scrap of solid rock. Loose stones rattled and bounced away. Scrubby earth gave too little purchase. Rock was all.

I made the journey sitting down, looking out over the perilous drops to the valley, digging in with my heels; careful, careful… careful .

The path, when at last I reached it, was by comparison a broad highway. I sat on one of its rocky steps and felt as weak as thankful: sat with my forearms on my knees, head hanging, trying to be cool about a degree of strain and discomfort far beyond the easily bearable.

Those bastards , I thought. The helpless rage of all victims shook in my gut. My physical state was shaming and infuriating. Somehow or other I should surely have put up a better fight.

From where I sat I could see most of the long path down to the road. No scarlet, orange or blue backpacks moved on it anywhere. Curse them, I thought; and damn them; and shit .