“Come on!” the lieutenant shouts, arm windmilling. Her beaters come forward; one prods me in the back with his rifle. We advance, while the flock beats off down slope, away; the lieutenant fires once more and another tiny, jerking body drops to the tufted grass. The low baseline of distantly thundering fieldpieces begins again, as the lieutenant spots some squirrels scooting up a nearby tree; she lets rip against these tiny targets and ends their comic scampering in a small explosion of twig, leaf, needle, fur and blood. We join her at the margin of a mixed stand of trees as she kicks through some thorn bushes and reloads again; her face is flushed, her breathing quick.
“Verbal, pick up the birds we get, will you?” One of the soldiers trudges off to retrieve the trophies the lieutenant has gathered so far. “How do you?” she begins, then goes quiet and raises one hand. “Verbal, down!” she hisses. The soldier picking up the dead birds drops, obedient as any hound. Another flock of birds is circling, curving down slope from a pass in the mountains; it wheels and dips above the pond, a single entity of brown black whirring dots like a swarm contained within a huge invisible bag, elastic sided, rushing over the trees, down to the pool, back up and then back down, expanding and reshaping, cleaving and then cleaving and then, with a final rush, settling. The lieutenant glances at us, nods, then fires.
Lead shot bursts amongst the waters of the pool, a thousand little splashes amongst the panicking flock's desperate flutterings.
The lieutenant glances at me, briefly frowning then smiling. “Bad form, eh, Abel?” she shouts. She breaks the gun, and cartridges pop smoking out. “But good fun!” she concludes, and laughs. I wait until the birds are in the air, then fire to miss, too low. You bag another one or two. The lieutenant, still laughing, has time to reload once more before the flock can fully escape; her targets fly up over us, above the trees, and her shots bring down a hail of leaves and twigs pattering through themselves. In amongst them the dying birds fall too; a petty debris death, committed within the echoes and re echoes though I think the lieutenant does not hear them of the greater conflict in the lower world.
An excited wait, hiding in the edge of the woods, then another flight of birds appears. I start to wonder if this is the same idiot bunch coming back each time, memories too short to remember their recent losses, but this flock is larger than the groups we've seen so far and I think the lieutenant has stumbled upon the migratory route for this species as they come southwards for the winter through the high valleys.
The lieutenant stands, fires, advances and fires again, blasting birds out of the air; you bring down another before the flock disperses. I leave my gun broken across my arm; no one seems to notice.
The lieutenant's men take the tiny bodies and stuff them in old cartridge sacks. You excuse yourself, stalking off into the dark forest behind. The lieutenant, breathless from her fun, smiles after you, then looks to me.
“Take part, Abel,” she says with a tight smile, glancing at my gun. “Mustn't be dead weight on this sort of outing, must we?”
“You seemed to be doing so well,” I tell her, disingenuous. “I felt positively peripheral.”
Her lips purse briefly. “I'm sure. But it looks bad, doesn't it? One has to make an effort.”
“Does one?”
She glances after you again. “Morgan's doing her best; she seems to be enjoying herself, as far as I can tell.” She frowns.
“She is of an amenable nature.”
“Hmm,” the lieutenant says, nodding, still looking after you. “She's very quiet, isn't she?”
“That is just her thinking aloud,” I tell the lieutenant, with a gracious smile.
I do believe she seems taken aback. Then she laughs lightly. “My, sir,” she says softly, “you are harsh.”
I look towards where you have disappeared in the sea dim depths of the tall tree trunks. “Some people appreciate a little harshness,” I tell her.
She thinks about this, then takes a deep breath. “Really? A taste for harshness?” She looks up to the sky and scans about. “What a lot of contented people there must be around then, these days.”
She breaks her gun, ejecting the cartridges, carefully emplaces another pair. “So,” she says, flicking the gun closed one handed. I wince. “Are you two married? Is she your wife?”
“Not as such.”
Still one handed, she sights down the barrels at the ground. “But in effect.”
“Quite. In fact, a closer relationship than most.”
I think the lieutenant wanted to inquire further, but at that moment you return, smiling shyly, gaze cast down, and take up your gun again. Above, another smaller flock rounds in, all unsuspecting.
We shoot some more. I aim to fail again, you have some success but never were a good gun, while the lieutenant seems to have discovered a gift, scattering dead and dying birds all about the fringes of the pool.
“You seem a poor shot, Abel,” she tells me, stern faced, while her men retrieve her haul. “I assumed you'd be much better.” She brandishes her shotgun. “Were all these guns for others? Don't you shoot at all?”
“I'm used to larger targets,” I say, truthfully enough.
“So's Lovegod.” She grins at one of the soldiers. “Let him have a shot.”
I have to surrender my gun. The soldier a stiff, awkwardlooking youth with a face a decade older than his frame requires a little instruction, but then quite takes to the sport. His comrade continues to reload your gun. The cartridge sack of feathered corpses is shoved into my hands and I am reduced to the gathering after their hunting.
“Good, Lovegod!” the lieutenant tells her charge as we wait between waves of birds. “Lovegod's doing very well, don't you think, Morgan?” You give a small smile which may be assent. “Pretty good for a wounded man. Show her your scars, Lovegod.”
The young soldier looks hesitant as he bares his shoulder happily not the one taking a hammering from the shotgun and shows you some grubby bandages. “And the rest; don't be shy!” the lieutenant growls, half scornful, slapping the fellow on his behind.
The young man has to undo his trousers, dropping them to his knees as his face flushes. Another thick bandage round one upper thigh (I had not even noticed he limped, though now I think about it, he did). His pants look even greyer than his bandages, and his face now darker still than both. I begin to feel sorry for the lad.
“Close one there, eh, Lovegod?” the lieutenant says, winking. The youth gives a nervous laugh and quickly does himself up again. You have looked away. “Lovegod had a narrow escape,” the lieutenant tells you, scanning the sky for more sport. “Shrapnel, wasn't it, Lovegod?” The soldier boy grunts, still embarrassed. “Shell,” the lieutenant informs us. “Could even have been fired by one of the guns we can hear now,” she says, eyes narrowing, nose raised to the wind. The two soldiers look puzzled and you give no sign. I concentrate, and there indeed, now I'm listening for it again, is that distant, nearly subsonic rumble of the faraway artillery. “Ah…” the lieutenant breathes, as another blur of tiny birds rush down from the higher slopes and circle in the air round the pool.
Several of the birds, only wounded. fall one wing fluttering, trapped in a tiny confusion of fallen, blasted leaves to land near your feet, hitting the ground to cheep and flap about with eccentric self concern, only to be stood on.
When you were younger, you would have cried to hear their tiny skulls crack so. But you have learned to look away and inspect your gun, or with those strands of spent smoke greyly curling against your worn up hair, break it and reload.
Ah, did I desire you at that moment; I wanted you for that night, unwashed, half dressed, in a tangle of clothes and rugs and boots and belts, anxious by an eager, open fire while that cartridge powder perfume lingered blackly on your skin and in your let down hair.