He didn’t know why he was digging this hole. It wasn’t as if they were likely to need more storage pits any time soon. He had a sneaking feeling that what the pit might end up storing was not grain but bones. People were dying, his own brother had been taken during the winter, leaving his mother clinging to his little sister, Mira. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t his decision. To Pimpira life was simple; a hole was a hole was a hole. He got on with his digging, and he watched the pale sun climb in the sky. Like every other day the hours would stretch long and empty until the evening, when the slaves would huddle in their shabby huts, and speak of better times, and pray to their gods and prophets, Jesus or Mohammed or the little mothers of Northland or the sun god of Egypt, and Pimpira’s father would relate the calm sayings of the teacher Zalmoxis from the old country. They would talk endlessly of food. People would describe the very texture of the meat as it was cut, the way the juices pooled on the hard bread that served as your plate, the feeling as your teeth cut into it, the spurting of blood and fat, and Pimpira’s empty stomach would gurgle and twist.

And they would seek news of the future from the oracles – not the way the sages did it in the city, studying the writhing of snakes in boxes or the way sheep entrails fell from an opened bowel. The slaves had no snakes, and any entrails went straight into the pot. But they had their own ancient ways, studying the flight of the birds in the sky – not that there were many birds this spring save crows and buzzards – and dropping oil or blood in bowls of water, to see how the fluids flowed and spread. They argued endlessly about the meaning of each sign, and it seemed to Pimpira that they never agreed, but it comforted everybody.

This dull routine was the whole of Pimpira’s life.

And it ended, cut off as if by the fall of a blade, when the slave boy came running from New Hattusa.