Well, it was the noises I noticed most, above the soldiers’ marching, and after a few minutes I found them so interesting I nearly forgot to be afraid. The short raucous barks, so resonant, infrequent but, when they did come, dominating all the other noises of voice and metal and crackle spread all through the whole huge encampment, interested me most. I couldn’t think what made them. The guards challenged us as a formality and our leader, I mean the leader of the soldiers escorting me, did something with his hand and we marched past. Once, when we passed a guard-officer he knew well he delayed us for ages while they talked together. There were tents and red fires everywhere, and in addition lots of men had torches. Almost all the men were eating by then, sitting round the fires, talking in their way (soldiers all talk mainly in growls and laughs), and turning meat to roast on the fires and cutting off bits to eat, and drinking. Nobody took much notice of us. Hostage after hostage must have been passed in that day. I passed the first birds in the shadows away from some fires, and I hardly noticed them because all the shapes everywhere were so odd with all those shadows round. Then some more were barking when we got to them, right close to me. I nearly jumped out of my skeleton when I saw them. Their necks were stretched out and their big narrow eyes were looking down at me. Yet in the dim red and black light they were less hideous than they are in ordinary daylight. Their general shape was monstrous, the flat body and the two strong legs with the eager inverted knees and the spurs and the spreading feet-claws, but we were past in a moment and it was only a horrible impression. The sound lasted longest, the barks, right from their horrible chests, vibrated and reverberated in my ears after they were left behind us. It’s a bad sound from the distance but horrible when close. So their shape alarmed me but I did not see till the next morning all their scars, the knotty tendons, the vicious characteristics, the fearsome petulance, the feather-raising, the ugly, yellow-mottled, black feathers, the big, curved, dented, battle-grooved beaks.

Well, we got to this tent and our soldiers all did the thing with their hands and left us in front of it so I knew it was ours.

The leader started to smile at me but I suppose I looked utterly tired and afraid and unresponsive so he finished the smile on Ooldra.

“Well, this is it. This is yours,” he said, as if congratulating us.