‘Oh it does,’ Salma confirmed. ‘The Empire is built on their shoulders. Slaves work in their fields and build their houses. Slaves go down their mines and attend their every need. The Empire is built on slaves’ backs and on their bones, Che. And as for the Wasps themselves – fortune forbid they should take up any work but soldiering.’

Che glanced up at him. ‘Does the Commonweal have slaves?’

His smile grew wry. ‘We don’t call them that, but I suppose if you have paid slaves in your factories, then we have slaves in all but name working our land. What an open-minded man the College has made of me.’

Their column was now stopped and she saw Brutan and Thalric, a careful distance between them, go and speak to the leader of the automotive-riders. The big, pale southerners were concluding their business. Their hands looked so vicious, made for nothing but fighting, that Che stared at them in awe. In the flickering firelight there was nothing about them that did not speak of casual violence. Their clothes were a mishmash of leather, hide and chain mail. They had axes at their belts or else huge swords slung across broad shoulders. They looked at the Wasps with brash and measured expressions.

Brutan had returned to his own men and was giving out some orders. Che caught only the occasional word, but enough to understand that they would be camping here for the night, and would be moving on with the machines in the morning. She looked around for Thalric but he was still with the machinists, discussing something in close detail with their leader. Apparently in the absence of any other instructions, the convoy crew winched down the cage doors of the automotives and began to herd the slaves out.

There was another palisade, two in fact, but this time pitched in a semi-circle about the rear of each of the automotives, where the only place to go freely would be the inside of a metal-barred cage. The convoy drivers secured all the slaves to the palisaded stakes, their human bounty now numbering over seventy souls.

The slaves stayed hugging the perimeter, not venturing into the central space for fear of calling the slavers’ notice, until the Wasps decided to feed them, long after they themselves had eaten. With a practised swing one of them hurled a cloth bag into the very centre of the pen, and immediately sheer chaos erupted. Che herself stood no chance. If she had even moved it would have been into a maelstrom of elbows and knees and fists as the slaves fought over the meagre fare.

I always did want to lose a little weight, she reflected as she pressed back against the palisade until the melee broke up, leaving only a few scuffling bodies locked in combat over the remaining crusts and crumbs. With a weary sigh, Salma dropped down beside her. She had not even realized he had joined in. Wordlessly he handed her a mangled handful of broken biscuit, hard waybread, a ragged fragment of cheese.

‘You’ve got some for yourself?’

‘Enough.’

‘Then thank you.’

A shadow fell across them. Expecting a slaver, Che looked up to find a burly Ant-kinden looming over them.

‘Yes?’ she asked, and he lunged for her, or rather for the food in her hands. Even faster, Salma was in the way, lurching up from his sitting position to put a shoulder in the man’s hip, toppling him to the floor. Salma remained standing as the Ant got to his feet. He looked about twice as broad as the young Dragonfly, whip-scarred and well-muscled. The slaves on either side of Che were shuffling sideways, hastily trying to get out of the way. Salma shifted his footing, waiting for the Ant to make a move.

‘Oh now, listen!’ Che shouted, or at least she intended to shout, but it came out more as a squeak. ‘There’s no need for any of this. We’re all slaves here. Why fight amongst ourselves?’

Everyone was gaping at her as though she was mad, slaves and slavers both. She even caught sight of Thalric, ten feet beyond the gamblers, staring at her.

‘We’re better than that,’ she told the slaves, turning her back on the Wasp captain. ‘We might be in chains, but we don’t have to amuse them by behaving like animals.’

The Ant made his move then, because Salma had been distracted by her outburst, but he underestimated the Dragonfly’s speed. Salma was in the air at once – for the four feet of extra height his leash allowed him, and he savagely kicked the big Ant across the face twice before coming down on the other side of him. Furious, the Ant rounded on him, and then made a dash for Salma’s leash as it stretched taut across the pen. Even as he yanked on it, Salma was already moving for him, and got an elbow into the side of his head and then a fist into his chin. The Ant swayed but he still tugged viciously down on the leash, almost dragging Salma off his feet, and then got a hand on the Dragonfly’s wrist and twisted, hard.

Salma grimaced as his arm was bent back. He hit the Ant twice, three times with his free hand, but the Ant absorbed the blows stoically. Che looked around at the slaves nearest her but it was obvious nobody was going to step in.

She jumped up and hurtled in herself. No sword here, and she had never fought bare-handed before. That was not an art the College taught. Still, she threw her entire weight forwards in a lunge for the big Ant.

She had been hoping to strike him in the side or the waist, to topple him and break his grip on her friend by sheer momentum. In the dark, though, he was further away than she had guessed. She felt herself falling short, had a frantic impression of the ground rushing towards her, and then her shoulder, and her weight behind it, slammed into one side of the man’s knee.

The Ant howled in sheer agony and rolled onto his back, twisted into a ball. Che found herself sprawled at Salma’s feet, staring upwards. He did not even look at her at first, eyes on his fallen opponent, but the Ant’s howls of pain were now fading into wretched sobbing. There would be no more threat from that quarter any time soon. Salma finally extended one hand and then the other, and with a wince helped her up to her feet. Both of them feeling bruised, they retired to their little patch of earth.

The rest of the slaves were watching them narrowly, in case they would make themselves the new tyrants of the dispossessed. Che and Salma ignored them, huddling together for warmth as the chill of the night descended.

Tisamon was waiting for them at nightfall, just as promised: a whipcord-lean figure caught in the sun’s last rays at the crest of a low hill, angular even under a cloak. His travel habits had not changed. There was a long bag slung on his back that must be his bowcase, and he wore a rapier alongside it that Stenwold had never seen him use. He might have been waiting there for ten minutes or for a hundred years.

Stenwold screwed the fragments of his courage together, halting the awkwardly lumbering automotive just before the hill’s incline and clambering down. It had not exactly been the most amicable of journeys so far. The machine itself was clumsy and long overdue for scrapping, while Totho and Achaeos had instantly developed an intense dislike for one another, making any conversation difficult.

‘They’re picking up company.’ Tisamon’s voice reached him as Stenwold ascended the hill. ‘Another half-dozen soldiers. Another score of slaves. It’s going to be interesting when we come to extract them.’

Extract them? Like a barber pulling a tooth? Stenwold looked at the mess of tracks Tisamon showed him, that held no secrets for his eyes.

‘I can go on tracking all night if you want,’ Tisamon offered, and briefly the spectre of hope, of another stay of execution, raised itself.

‘No,’ said Stenwold, more firmly than he had intended. ‘I don’t think our transport could manage to keep up in any event. There are parts of it that definitely need tightening before we go further.’