He was confused as to why his chest was slick with blood until he realised it was his own and felt sick as he acknowledged the flap of skin hanging at his jaw. But it was superficial.

His head spun. He looked up at a lifted patch of bank beyond the pipe that seemed almost liquid itself in the sun and his only thought was to go to it and sit. Then his corporal’s shout reset him.

The water came endlessly as they dragged the bodies from the pools. They were barely able to hear themselves. The corporal screamed into the comms to cut the flow. But even if they had, the bombs were timed to detonate as far as possible from the stop-gate.

When eventually the water died it did so suddenly. Lost ferocity; and the roar of it ebbed. From the white hissing force, it turned at the same time rich and brittle, a smooth ribbon dropping from the torn mouth of the pipe.

And as it slowed, they heard the rattle.

A clatter coming closer. Clanging and echoing in the emptied pipe.

Then silence. Relatively.

The tap of spilled water losing urgency. The breath of the men.

A clear metallic ping as whatever travelled their way came to rest at a section junction of the pipe.

What were they to do?

The tap now, of the dripping water, tap tap, like a timer.

There were still men in the water.

The pools that formed were dark with soil and thick with leaves and debris.

They left the shrapnel in the wounds. Where the bones had slipped effortlessly from the muntjac’s meat, the iron had seared itself into the soldiers’ flesh.

Behind closed doors they felt the sharp end of Command’s reprimand for disobeying orders. They’d been ordered to retreat.

Publicly, they were given medals.

Six had died. Two drowned, and four died of their wounds.

Everyone else they saved.

It would have killed them too, the third device, had it not malfunctioned.

She talked about this as she stitched him up, her eyes filled with concentration. And, ‘You’re my first,’ she said. He had to force himself to look away from her. To look at anything but her.

Never the obvious things that caused the shell around the memory to crack. Not the cordite smell of the firing range. The cool metallic echo of the transport vehicles. Nor even the surgical cleanliness of her ward.

Just this time, on a rooftop, the wing of a bird.

For a split second the falcon had sharply gleamed; then was a dark object hurtling for a brief eternity away. And the compressed roar. The discreet detonation somewhere deep within the pipe.

A quiet force he’d felt loudly in the centre of his body.

The shrapnel winging through the sky.