“Brian, but I go by Bear.” He touched the bristles of his thick beard and used the same two fingers to give a high-pitched whistle. At the answering yell, he altered his course slightly, and she heard the swift rush of water seconds before her torch picked out his companion crouching at the side of the river. Finding a burst of energy from somewhere, she sprinted toward the second man, and dropped her bags by the young lad he was attempting to shield from the worst of the rain. He’d used one of their sleeping bags to rig a shelter in some low branches and the other to cover the lad, but the wind was whipping across the nearby lake, driving rain in from all angles, and the river was swollen enough to have edged beyond the confines of its banks, saturating the ground she knelt on.

“Hey,” she said. “How’s he doing?”

“He stopped moaning,” the man whispered, the words choked and distraught. “He were moaning at first, but he couldn’t say owt.”

She lifted the sleeping bag and trained her torch on the lad’s face. He was younger than she’d expected, fifteen at most, scrawny and deathly pale, the visible parts of his body marred by bruises and lacerations. Twigs and strands of vegetation were tangled in his hair, and the rich smell of copper mingled with that of churned-up muck.

“Was he in the water?” She unzipped her response bag, her mind a whirl as she tried to order and prioritise her actions.

“Yeah, caught up on that tree.” Bear pointed at a stooped trunk, its branches skimming the river’s surface. “We couldn’t leave him in there.”

“You did fine.” She fastened a hard collar around the lad’s neck and secured an oxygen mask. On the monitor, his heart rate was sluggish and irregular at forty, and a flick of her pen-torch showed a blown left pupil. When she pulled her gloved hands from the back of his head, they were covered in fresh blood and small lumps of spongy tissue.

“Shit,” she said, her heart sinking. She took off her high-vis and spread it on less sodden ground. “Help me lift him onto this. Gently, good, that’s great.”

The men handled the lad as if he were made of bone china, hovering close by once they’d repositioned him but evidently floundering without direct instruction.

“Can one of you go back to Ellery?” she asked, using her fleece to dry the lad’s chest so she could attach the defib pads. “Wait for Mountain Rescue or whoever gets there first, and show them where we are.”

“I’ll go,” Bear’s mate said. He looked green around the gills, and when she nodded at him he scarpered as if afraid she might change her mind.