“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.