He felt a certain degree of anxiety as he walked over the skyline to look down into the next valley, but when it appeared there was nothing much to see; no familiar landmarks to jog his memory, no column of bloodthirsty soldiers advancing on him with swords drawn. Instead there was a gentle slope falling away to a heather-covered plain, across which was a road. He didn't know why exactly, but he knew that a road was a good thing, potentially. A road could take him in the right direction, towards people who might help him. There were other things it could do, of course, but he preferred not to think about them.
The boot he'd taken from the dead man became uncomfortable pretty quickly; being too big, it rubbed his heel and instep, and it was full of muddy water. It occurred to him that he might want to go back, find a boot that fitted a little better, and while he was at it he could scrounge around for other things he might need-a better cloak, something to eat, money, all the advantages the dead could offer to a man making a start in life. He decided against it, though the decision was irrational. He couldn't keep going back there; if he went back, maybe the next time he wouldn't be able to leave. At any rate, he had to do something, and walking away down the road was probably as good a choice as any.
No more choices, please. Take all the choices away, and I'll be a happy man. He shook his head, and was glad he hadn't said that aloud, just in case someone was listening. When he reached the road he didn't stop. East was slightly uphill, west was slightly downhill, so he went west. See? Another choice successfully made, in a rational manner with due regard to prudent self-interest, and no need even to break stride for it.
After that he walked for a long time, until it was too dark to go any further. He hadn't noticed any houses, forests, rivers, other roads, there was nowhere to reach, so when he felt it wasn't safe to walk any further (last thing he needed was a twisted ankle) he stopped, lay down with the spare cloak rolled up as a pillow and tried to go to sleep. Perversely, he couldn't. Instead he lay with his eyes open, feeling the rain tapping his face, with nothing to see however hard he looked. When he started to feel cramp coming on he shifted over on to his side but the sensation of rain falling in his ear wasn't pleasant. He stood up, wondered about walking a little further, chose not to, lay down again. All the while his mind was looking hard and there was nothing to see there either.
That night lasted a long time. He tried to make use of the time by taking stock, making a rational analysis of his position and the options available to him, laying plans, figuring out. That didn't work. Instead he kept coming back to a sound in the back of his mind. At first it was just a suggestion, a shape made out of noise, but the more he tried to ignore it the clearer it became, until he recognised it as a tune (music would be overstating it). Where it had come from he didn't know. Possibly it was a genuine memory, or possibly it was something he'd just made up (in which case, he hoped very much that when his memory came back, he wouldn't turn out to be a professional musician)Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, And along comes the Dodger and he says, 'That's me.'
Once it was stuck in his mind, like a stringy scrap of meat lodged between two teeth, there was no escaping it; quite probably he lay there humming it under his breath for an hour, not listening to it, not thinking, just following the shape of the sounds round and round in a dance. It did occur to him that if it was a memory, it was a stupid one to have chosen, like dashing back into a burning house to save one odd sock. Unfortunately there weren't any more where that came from, so he tried to pass the time by making up another verse, an experiment that had the dubious merit of disproving once and for all the professional songwriter theory.
Perhaps it was because he was listening so closely to the song that he didn't hear the cart until it was almost too late; or perhaps he'd finally fallen asleep after all, and simply dreamed he was humming the same tune over and over again. In any event, the cart was suddenly there-the sound of creaking axles, iron tyres crushing the heather stalks, the breath of the horses-and if he hadn't jumped out of the way it would have rolled right over him.
The cart noises stopped, and he heard a man's voice swearing in the dark, the first words he could remember having heard. He picked himself up and tried to see, but all he could make out was a vague shape.
'Stupid bloody fool,' the man was yelling into the rain. 'Could've startled the horses, could've bloody well killed me.' The man sounded like he was drunk, which might explain why he was driving a cart at night without even a lantern.
'Got a good mind to give you a smack round the head for that, stupid bloody clown.'
Any thoughts of trying to hitch a ride evaporated. Wonderful, he thought. Even drunks driving carts want to attack me. If this sort of thing happens to me all the time, no wonder I'm having trouble getting my memory back. Who'd want to remember a lot of stuff like this?
He heard the sound of boots crushing heather, and a noise that had something to do with metal that his instincts didn't like at all. 'Teach you a damn lesson,' the voice said. 'Teach you to go jumping out at people in the middle of the night.'
'For God's sake, you idiot, leave it alone.' That was a woman's voice, coming from where he reckoned the cart was. 'Get back in and sleep it off, before you do yourself an injury.'
'You shut up,' the man's voice replied. 'Gotta teach him a lesson, roads aren't safe otherwise.' That was useful; it gave him a fix on where the drunk was. Now all he had to do was walk quietly away in the opposite direction, and everything would be fine.
Instead he contrived to put his foot in a pothole and go down hard on his face. A stone found his cheekbone, jarring him painfully enough to make him cry out. What the drunk made of the sound he never found out; best guess was that he took it for a challenge or a battle-cry, because the next sound was that of a sword blade cutting empty air as the drunk drew and slashed at where he thought his enemy ought to be. All wrong, of course, but a drunk waving a sharp object about in the dark can be just as dangerous as a well-trained swordsman-worse, in some cases, since his moves are irrational, therefore impossible to read and predict. Staying still was probably the best policy, except that the drunk was very close now, so close that he could easily blunder into him. More choices, more decisions… Just for once, couldn't something contrive to happen on its own, without him having any say in the matter?