I capture a sniff of the weather outside; it is rain water. It is a delicious smell, breaking into the dark and musty interior of the cart. My nose has seen the view outside and formed the image for me. The rain has brought with it trees, a rustling of wind in the quiet wood. The path is slick with new water. Stones crunch beneath the wheels and the air is tight with chill as my enemies in cotton shirts cross their arms and the herdsmen pull their greatcoats around them. The smell has faded as quickly as it lifted into my nostrils, but the image is permanent. Its cool taste is transitory, but the sweat that I grind on the skin of my joints triggers the thought by contrast. Without stimulus the image remains, undefeated. It is permitted a berth for an unknowable time. My hours of deprivation continue, causing synaesthesia. I drift to sleep over the course of days with the rain falling in me.

I wake up. I realise time has gone; I clock it away by my bladder's need. I have near-forgotten my situation, try to move, and wish that I had remained still. My bound wrists chafe on the rope – asleep I rested tilted over on one side, pushing my right shoulder in the wall of the box and pulling my bonds tight with half my body weight pulling a rope into my left wrist. As I shift sleepily, I scrape, and the already-bloody skin is torn. I try to undo what I have done; it is unfair that the pain remains even though my position has reverted. I cannot bear the voice of pain so soon after waking, and feel the jerks of my bodily sob. I cannot hear my sob. I cannot hear because thick muffs are secured by wrapping all around my head. I am blindfolded with wrapping. I am thoroughly gagged with wrapping and it means my head sweats constantly. I feel the motion of the cart, but not the noise. I remember the smell of the rain and all the sensations conjured by its smell where the only sense is free to indulge in rain and breath. The pain rests. I let my mind wander outside again; it rained some time ago, for a while, falling into a forest and a meandering path where carts are dragged by horses with hooves on iron. I follow dreams and wake completely, slowly, and raise my mind into the place where it can fight.

I have never been taken captive before. I do not know what they do to captives. I have heard stories and seen men return, but I have not talked to them. If I had talked to them, I would have made up my mind and received reliable information. No object can tell me whether I will live or die. I am being taken to a place; their camp or some staging point. The final destination must be stockades if there are enough provisions to keep us alive until we complete this journey. Else they will kill us all. There must be other boxes and other carts carrying a number of prisoners of war. I do not know this. There could be no others. Assume that I am alone on this convoy, why not? Assume there is no convoy and this deprivation is torture to preclude torture – new exciting torture. What I use for knowledge is extremely limited without senses beyond the pressures that are the movements of this box. And the gap which brought me some air wet with a day's cold dewy rain that did not smell of the stink of me.

My fight: the gap in this box on the cart can be exploited. It is my fight. If I exploit the smell then I can form a wedge of my body parts and burst free: push my wrapped face against the hole until it, or I, break. Once free I can escape or I can fight. If I fight I will die. If I flee I will be caught. If it is night then my chances of fleeing improve, but the convoy will have guards with lanterns. They will take me easily, beat me, destroy me, kill me. Is there a sense for me to use? Pressures through the cart? Beneath the cart I feel changes of surface. I am sure that I would hear the crunching of the wheels over stones spread sparsely on a mud track. A consistent squelch and slide and a slow raising and a snap as the stone is squeezed out from under the wooden wheel and trickles down the edge of the raised road into a few of the sticks and shorter grass that line the way. If I had no wrapping.

There is a change in the beat – the beat of the gravel comes sometimes and goes quickly again. There's the attending slope upwards and downwards and I believe that there are bridges. A bridge most likely over water, and if I were to escape at the correct moment I might fall into especially fast-running water and be taken downstream more quickly than they can chase. I think it is a good possibility. I must think further – more deeply. There may be other solutions to this that are less difficult to implement. However, I must act rapidly. I must not lose my chance. There is one chance and no more will come. The bridges in this region cross hundreds of forest streams. These foothills stretch for hundreds of kilometres. There are some bridges which span ravines. If I jump I may fall to my death. No more chances.

The smell of a forest's wood comes to my nostrils and rises through my sinuses and down into my lungs where I keep its cool taste of mould; I warm it in my lungs, in my blood, and expel it slowly back into the box. Temperate rainforest. A permanent luxury on the outside; deep and fleshy the earth that yields. There will be hundreds of rivulets, waterfalls, pools of whirling water. If I jump I could flow along trying manically to break my bonds, being dashed on rocks two or three times. I would strike my head, lose consciousness and drown, or I would strike my bonds, be released and swim to the shore, built a shelter of reeds and a log and survive the cold night unseen. A shallow stream might be my first sensation – on my head where the rock would kill me, or on my feet where I might take the pressure through my knees and break into an easy run, lucky enough to find the path through the trees blindly.

The slimmest chance is one that must be taken. I may not give in. I feel I can cease consciousness, and die. I could do this, and leave my problem alone. This is unacceptable; I must always try and must always fight, despite myself. Yet when I feel the sting of my bonds and the atrocious specks of cold air that I pull up my nose – that have me and pull me towards the gap – I sense my plans deteriorating. I want the chill in my spine and to slosh in the nightly-iced stream, where my salt rejoins the streams and river to the sea and I can tear my wraps to shreds, bandage my wounds and sit waiting for death in enemy territory.

Depth of thinking, where I can find some answer: there's a solution beneath me; I can feel its shape; a torus of smoothness; a blunt stone. It is too large to grasp. It is opaque and slippery. I think deeply, so I find my hand wanders and finds no entrance. Where is a door? It is a taste, suddenly of metal and the torus of stone is a wheel crushing the path, made of metal that burns with cold to the touch. I keep wandering and I keep wandering and I sleep again.

There is light streaming in to my box on the cart. I feel its warmth all the way through my blindfold and see the faint orange-blood glow which has soaked the wrapping around my eyes as the light passes through it, the rag, my lenses, my eyes. I move and tear the scars on my wrists. I am in agony, gurgling though I cannot hear it. Are there guards to hear me? I see my mask and beyond it there is a gap in the box. The rest is darkness. I feel my heart striking a stony beat and I follow. I strike the light with my groggy head. The pain sends my vision tumbling and I scream inwardly, biting the gag. I try again and swallow spit and bite my cheek as I flail from pain and fear. A great wave of claustrophobia writhes in me. A few seconds pass while I smash my whole body into the gap in the box, beginning with my head. I cannot see. There is no design in this.

My head breaks free of the box, I feel the splintered wood cut through the tape that wraps my face and slices knife-like into my skin. I realise that if I pull backwards these splinters will act as barbs. It is this and not the promise of freedom that drives me to push forwards and fling my whole body from the cage of the box and the cart. The adrenaline of flight makes its rush, its final drive on, as if this was its only time to act in tall cowardice. The times it could have shown itself during my stay; they were times that I wanted and could not have. I could not find the fear to push me. I was slave to emptiness. Now it makes me alive. Now it wants me to be.

A splash of mud and a knee strikes ground. I roll my body rightwards having landed on my left knee. The blindfold falls from my eyes as I make contact with the gravel and mud. It turns out that I can see. My eyes take on the property of sight. They are valuable. An expanse of possibilities has opened to me! There are my legs, and my torso, and in front of me is the mud and stone and water-filled field of vision. The wheels turning are about me. The ear muffling is loose. I shake my head and see around me as the wrapping comes away in sheathes and the gauze rips clean and the blood of my face rolls over the strips of my gag and finds a gap and tastes good and metallic in its dried age. There is a sick adrenaline in the taste that tells me I can run. There is no guard by my box. It is early morning, past dawn. The sun is bold through a gap in the tree line. I make twenty long strides into the wood and run out of breath, clambering over the uneven ground at a bad and cramped sprint. I hear a shout far behind me. I run. I run without breathing. My legs and lungs burn and this is different to the fear and the blood on my wrists; I am rapt to feel the burn of action. I feel my body slowing, but I push. I bleed from my face and hands, still bound. I crash into trees and rub where I think it will help to rub and free me, but I have no time to stop and focus on cutting my bonds. I hear the forest and the men behind me. I hear them with clarity over the noise of the fatly dripping trees and the clamour of birds as I disturb their morning baths below the leaves that capture water. I hear men as though they are on me, but I know they are out of sight. There is a second hammer of flight, more than I could have known, and oh god I run.