We were arrayed in a double hexagon with my father alone between the two groups. Chance had it that I drew the point of my hexagon closest to him, but it was more than a feathered shaft’s toss from his place to mine, and all the morning long the septarch and I exchanged not a syllable. He stood with feet planted firm, watching the skies, his weapon at ready. If he drank at all as he waited, I did not see him do it. I too studied the skies, until my eyes ached for it, until I felt twin strands of hot light drilling my brain and hammering against the back wall of my skull. More than once I imagined I saw the dark splinter of a hornfowl’s shape drifting into view up there, and once in sweaty haste I came to the verge of raising my gun to it, which would have brought me shame, for one must not shoot until one has established priority of sighting by crying one’s claim. I did not fire, and when I blinked and opened my eyes, I saw nothing in the sky. The hornfowl seemed to be elsewhere that morning.

At noon my father gave a signal, and we spread farther apart over the plain, maintaining our formation. Perhaps the hornfowl found us too closely clustered, and were staying away. My new position lay atop a low earthen mound, in the form almost of a woman’s breast, and fear I took hold of me as I took up my place on it. I supposed myself to be terribly exposed and in imminent peril of hornfowl attack. As fright crept through my spirit, I became convinced that a hornfowl was even now flying its fatal circuits around my hammock, and that at any moment its lance would pierce my kidneys while I gazed stupidly at the metallic sky. The premonition grew so strong that I had to struggle to hold my ground; I shivered, I stole wary peeks over my shoulders, I clenched the stock of my gun for comfort, I strained my ears for the sound of my enemy’s approach, hoping to whirl and fire before I was speared. For this cowardice I reproached myself severely, even offering thanks that Stirron had been born before me, since obviously I was unfit to succeed to the septarchy.