‘There is no fat on me.’

‘You will get stuck, or slip and fall.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’

Valens did not.

‘I have my hunting horn,’ Aulus said. ‘If I make it, I will get behind him and sound the horn. When you hear its note, rush the bowman. I will take him from the rear. One of us at least should reach him.’

Dumbly, Valens nodded. An ignoble part of him experienced a flood of relief that he did not have to attempt the climb.

‘After I am in the shaft, take my torch and go back. I may need to use the pitons. Make some noise. Don’t let him hear what I am doing.’

They uncoiled the ropes from their shoulders, then Valens got down in the slime, so that Aulus could clamber onto his back. Grunting with effort, Valens hoisted him aloft. Bits of moss and gravel pattered on his head as Aulus cleared handholds. A titanic lurch, and the weight of his companion’s boots was lifted.

‘Go now!’ Aulus whispered, his voice barely audible from the natural chimney above. ‘Sing him a song to cover the sound of me hammering in the spikes.’

Taking the torch, Valens warily retraced his steps. Every moment he expected their unknown attacker to rear up before him.

It was with an incredulous relief that he returned to where his own torch burned. Steeling his nerves, he hastily looked around the outcrop. Nothing had changed in the gloomy expanse.

From far away came the ting of a hammer on metal.

‘You still there, Cyclops?’ Valens shouted.

His words were swallowed by the silence.

Again the faint ring of metal.

Feeling both unnerved and ridiculous, Valens racked his brains for something to say, anything would do. The lines of Homer’s poetry beaten into him by his schoolmaster came to mind.

But I was already plotting . . .

What was the best way out? How could I find

Escape from death for my crew, myself as well?

My wits kept weaving, weaving cunning schemes –

Life at stake, monstrous death staring us in the face . . .

His voice gained strength as the words flooded back. The schoolmaster had made him learn much of the epic by heart.

The torches were burning low. Still reciting, he put one of them out. When the still burning torch guttered, he could relight the other. He had a primordial horror of being left here in the dark.

Nobody . . .

Who’s not escaped his death, I swear, not yet.

Oh if only you thought like me, had words like me

To tell me where that scoundrel is cringing from my rage!

On and on went his bizarre recital. Every so often he stopped to listen to the resounding silence. But, when he resumed, was there anyone still listening to him? Did he still have an audience, crouched in the opposite passageway, bow in hand, murder in their heart?

The torch began to fail.