I might like to hear more of our captor's story, but seeing my opportunity I drop my precious cargo. On the first bridge across the stream I slip and clutch at the damply greasy rail, letting the bulky sacks drop from me, with the gun, so all the lieutenant's catch goes flying down to the rapids far below. The gun just disappears without a fuss, its own splash lost within the endless foaming rush of that steep stream. The sacks fall more slowly, hit a swirling pool and let forth their dead. The birds sail out, the foaming water fills with feather, lead and flesh, and the wet birds water skinnied even further float and circle and peel off and race away in that airy torrent.

I rise slowly, wiping green slime from my hands. The lieutenant comes up to me, grim faced. She glances over the side of the bridge at the noisy, eddying surge below, as all her booty speeds away. “That was careless, Abel,” she tells me through lips like a grey pink wound and teeth which seem disinclined to part.

“Perhaps I chose the wrong shoes,” I offer, apologetic. She looks down at my brown brogues; reasonably rustic in aspect but with poor soles for such terrain.

“Perhaps,” she says. I do believe I am frightened of her, just for this moment. I could believe that she is capable of blowing a hole in me with her shotgun, or putting a bullet from her pistol through my head, or even just having me thrown over this wooden parapet by her men. Instead she takes one last glance at where the birds have disappeared within the rocky race and, in that cataract losing sight of them, has the soldiers load me with the remaining guns. “I really wouldn't lose those, Abel,” she says, sounding almost sad. “Really.” She turns away. “Watch our friend carefully,” she tells the man behind me. “We don't want him slipping again. That would be too terrible. Eh, my lady?” she asks as she passes you. We tramp on, and leave the river's roar buried in its chasm.