‘Scuto, you find us what we need for our journey. I’ll meet the pair of you by the old Draywain spoil foundry just east of the city. I have a reinforcement to fetch.’

It was not at all as she had envisaged, but in retrospect she supposed that her beliefs about her own importance had been misplaced.

She had fully expected to be rushed into Helleron, thrown into some dungeon, questioned, even tortured. She had been ready, in her defiance, to spit in their faces.

The sun shone bright on her and the air was full of dust. No secluded oubliette was set aside for her or Salma – at least she still had Salma. When she glanced at him now he was still able to muster a smile for her benefit.

There were a dozen of them now as prisoners. Thalric’s soldiers had joined up with another squad guarding a single line of roped-together captives, and they had promptly set out across the scrublands east of Helleron. There was to be no talking between the prisoners, a rule enforced by the fists of the guards where necessary, but Che was not sure that they would have had much to say. They were Ants of some unfamiliar city, Beetles who did not look Helleron-born, a couple of Fly-kinden, a lanky, sallow creature with a distinctive high forehead that she could not place. Most were men, only a couple were women, and uniformly they looked even more dispirited than Che herself felt. They bore their captivity with a sense of inevitability.

The first evening, the soldiers built a staked palisade about them, as crude a piece of handiwork as Che had ever seen. The prisoners were kept roped together, and watched over at all hours. Some of the Wasps carried crossbows, but she knew that none of them was without a means to punish their prisoners at range. Thalric kept himself separate from his men, having found a flat rock to perch on some distance away, and was intent on reading from a scroll whilst he ate.

She had thought that she would be somehow special after they had gone to such lengths to take her and Salma into their custody. Now it seemed she was considered just another slave.

She was woken past midnight by the approach of another group, but it turned out to be more of the same. Her eyes settled first on the string of listless captives and only then shifted to their captors. These latter were Wasps of a different stripe to Thalric’s soldiers: a half-dozen men in open-sided tabards, lean and muscled and bestial. They seemed almost faceless in full helms, T-shaped slots showing narrow slices of hard faces, and they had clubs and whips fastened at their belts. Slavers’ weapons, Che quickly realized: enough to keep the livestock in order, yet nothing too dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands.

There was a shifting among the Wasp soldiers as they arrived, and she saw that these newcomers were not exactly well loved. Her fellow prisoners plainly recognized them, and a tremor ran through them at the sight.

Thalric came pacing over. ‘Someone light a lantern,’ he directed, and a soldier obediently struck the flint on an oil-lamp. The glow it cast across the rough ground was anything but cosy.

‘Captain Thalric.’ The foremost slaver gave him a halfhearted salute. ‘This season’s harvest.’

Thalric looked over the new prisoners, about twenty in all. ‘More runners, Brutan?’

‘Why not?’

The officer gave the slaver a narrow look. ‘You’re sure you haven’t been exceeding your brief?’

‘You think they’ll care?’ replied the man Brutan. ‘A slave’s a slave. In the long term, what difference will it make?’

Thalric shrugged. ‘I’m sure you know your business. Nineteen bodies added to your tally then, Brutan. I’ll see the count is passed on.’

‘We’re coming with you, Captain. I’ll pick the bounty up myself.’

There was a definite murmur of distaste amongst the Wasp soldiers, but Thalric shut them up with a glance. ‘As you will, Brutan. I’ll put the whole lot of them into your care, then. As I said, you know your trade.’

The new prisoners were much of a muchness with the others, plus a scattering of half-breeds and a single man that Che decided could even be a Wasp himself. This realization came paired with the fact that two of Brutan’s slavers were clearly Ant-kinden, possessing the pale skins of Tark. These slavers obviously either operated by different rules, or they paid little heed to whatever rules they were given.

The regular soldiers were only too glad to give up their charges to the newcomers, and quickly left to huddle round their fire. The palisade was soon being widened, and the new slaves packed in so there was barely room for them all to sit. The slavers kept a close watch on them, but many of the prisoners seemed to sense that the regime had now changed. A low, cautious murmur was struck up, a halting exchange of names and places. Where did they take you? How far did you get?

‘Salma,’ Che whispered. ‘I’m frightened.’

‘I think you’re allowed to be,’ he encouraged her, squeezing her hand. ‘Just be calm. Stay calm and wait.’

She tried to be calm, but it was like meditating. She simply could not concentrate. The Beetle-kinden man sitting next to her turned and asked, ‘Where did you break from?’ in a hollow, weary voice.

‘Break from? They caught us just outside Helleron,’ Che replied.

‘No, no, where did you escape from, to reach there? How far did you manage?’

She understood, then. ‘This is the first time. I’ve never been a… a slave before.’

He nodded in sudden understanding. The man looked about Stenwold’s age, but Stenwold made thin by a very harsh life. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Well, I’m sorry for all of us,’ she replied.

He shook his head, would not look at her. The tall, sallow man beside him took up the slack. ‘His meaning: we are escaped slaves and the Empire has harsh lessons for those who attempt to flee. You are with us now so you will suffer as we do. We are sorry for you because by being with us we have included you in our future suffering.’

‘You were slaves,’ Che said. ‘You can’t blame yourselves for escaping.’

‘You will learn.’ The sallow man of unknown race shook his head. ‘We are blamed. We are the lesser race.’

Che stared at him. In the dark it was hard to tell how he meant this fatalism, but she had a feeling that it went deep, that it had long been pounded into him.

‘I am not a slave,’ she announced stubbornly. ‘I will never be a slave. Not in here.’ She pointed at her forehead. ‘No matter how often they tell me it.’

None of them seemed able to look her in the eyes. She singled one out, a ruddy-skinned Ant-kinden woman. ‘You’re a warrior? I thought all Ants were warriors. Tell me you don’t think like this.’

The woman’s agonized expression implored her to keep her voice down. ‘I took part in the rebellion at Maynes,’ she replied. ‘We were warriors then – for the space of two tendays. Then their army returned from the front and they crushed us. They crucified four hundred men and women around the walls of the city. Not revolutionaries, just anyone – anyone they didn’t like the look of. They took hundreds of our children away to become slaves in other cities. The survivors, any who had fought, they branded in the face. I ran away. I am not a warrior any more. I have seen what misery it brings. Now they will kill me when I am taken back to them. They will kill me where the whole city can see it.’

‘Then why not fight?’ Che demanded. ‘What have you got to lose?’

‘You do not understand,’ the Ant woman said flatly.

The man of unknown race hissed suddenly, and they fell quiet as one of the slavers passed alongside the palisade. After he had gone, the high-browed prisoner leant over towards Che.

‘Tomorrow, if you still live, you will learn how to be a slave,’ he said, almost as though he was encouraging her.