Then he heard a rumble of many voices, barked commands from the soldiers, and a shuffling tramp, a clink of iron that settled into a steady, slower rhythm. Shackled slaves being marched away. The line passed by his pit, and he cowered, fearful of discovery. There was a lot of weeping. He strained to hear his father’s voice, his mother, but the weeping drowned them out. The shuffled steps, the rattle of the shackles, the occasional crack of a whip, receded.

Now there was only the soft murmur of voices from the group that was left. A child crying. The priest’s steady voice. Pimpira imagined him walking from one to the next. Maybe Pimpira’s grandmother would be cradling Mira, his baby sister. But the voices were sparse sounds against a greater silence. It was a spring of silence, no frogs croaking in the ponds, no songbirds calling for mates.

Then it began. He heard the sigh of steel, swords being withdrawn from scabbards.

The priest’s voice again. ‘Kneel. That’s it. Gather in a circle. Hold hands if it helps. No, Nala, it doesn’t matter that Mira’s crying. Just hold her. You’ll see, soon she’ll be smiling for you in the afterlife, in the eternal light of Jesus Sharruma, and bathed in the tears of the Holy Mother Mary. No – don’t struggle. It helps if you just kneel up and keep still. The soldiers know what they are doing . . .’ The little children were crying, afraid. ‘Now, I would suggest, Sergeant.’

And there was a noise like a pig being gutted, like meat being sliced. Harsher scrapes, like a butcher’s cleaver on bone. People tried to cry out, to pray, but their voices were drowned by a kind of gurgling, as if they were drowning. Somebody screamed, and Pimpira heard running footsteps. ‘Oh, no, you don’t—’ Heavier footsteps, a tumble, a brief struggle, a hiss of steel.

Soon it was done, it seemed, and he heard swords wiped on cloth and slid back into scabbards. Low soldiers’ voices – a rumble of laughter.

Henti stormed, ‘How can you laugh? How canyon laugh? The bodies at your feet – the children—’

‘Hush, hush,’ said the priest. ‘They did it so you didn’t have to. It’s the Emergency Laws, remember. Think of it as a kindness. It’s not these soldiers’ fault, Henti. It’s not anybody’s, save the winter’s. Now they will burn the bodies for you, and tidy up.’

‘But they laughed.’

‘Let it go, Henti. Without humour how could any man’s mind survive such acts?’

‘So what now?’

‘The March begins in the morning, from the Lion Gate,’ Zida, the soldier, said. ‘Not that I’m expecting a prompt start. It will take a long time before thirty or forty thousand people are formed up and ready to go, no matter how willing they are. Believe me, I know; I’ve been on booty-people marches.’