“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.