As Quintus sets the anchor on board, the Bachoi smoothly begins to turn into the current, putting its broad shoulder into the raw momentum of the river's course.  The wind wearily pushes at the well-tacked sail, and the barge's bulk is soon gliding away from the corpse of Kumyurt.<br/><br/>Back on the docks, pirate yells mingle with the brays and barks of animals.  An attempt to apprehend livestock seems to have gone horribly awry, as goats, lambs and a smattering of swine storm the wood with wild eyes, followed by a growling band of outlaws.  As this goes on, one pirate among the others lights a girl doll in a periwinkle skirt aflame.  Attached to a bolo, the doll is whirled around his head as he laughs, standing the midst of his cussing comrades while they chase the animals.<br/><br/>The waxy figure of the bled-out young girl is bumped by a goat, and goes tumbling headfirst into the water.<br/><br/>Distance draws out more.  Over the coarse, cheek-burning curses and yells of dismay and laughter rises the sound of a fiddle.  Lurid and melancholy, it plays a tune - one quick, but so raw as to seem its strings were still wet, freshly pulled from some beast's belly.  It fills the air with a fine foam of teary sound, melody rapid, demented.  It smothers Kumyurt like the smoke does, meandering in a black and cancerous pall over the lip of the Red River.<br/><br/>And distance draws out more.  Soon Kumyurt is merely a sore on the rim of the water - some encrustation, spilling smoke like bile, in the middle of a chapped landscape.  The chaparral on the hard-baked hills and the patchy forest filter the spreading smoke, the sound of the fiddle, the screams and laughter.  Char and chaos dissolve into the rough land, the terrain drinking it in with the same dry throat as it does the river.<br/><br/>And the river rushes on, and Kumyurt becomes just a memory.  There is only memory like a wound, glistening with bright laughter and tears.  Memory, and the endless, raw momentum of the Red River.<br/>