I was tucked in behind the leader at the front of the train. The excuse was that a new boy didn’t know the way. Really, until you proved yourself a trusty it was a precaution against escape.

No one would ever be a trusty who worked as a slave in the mines. Still, I had learned by then to look as much like a trusty as anybody else.

There was one final check to stop anyone thieving the Empire’s loot. On leaving the mines we drove past the fort, where the soldiers counted every ingot and drew up a manifest. This manifest remained with the silver all the way to Rome. There was one good road out of Vebiodunum, the road back to the frontier. Every cart capable of carrying bars had to pass along that road, for the crossways were too narrow and too rough to bear the weight. That meant every single ingot that ever left the mines was registered on an official manifest.

Our destination was the military port at Abona. To reach the great Estuary, we first turned our backs on it, drove ten miles east to the frontier highway, followed it northwards to the sacred springs of Sul, then west again along another spur round the third side of a square—say thirty Roman miles in all. Heavy barges drew up the Estuary for the ingots, which they hauled round the Two Promontaries and then, under guard from the British Fleet, right along the Channel to cross Europe overland. Most of the silver went south through Germany, where the dense military presence guaranteed its route.

I knew Abona already.

Nothing had changed. The place where Petronius Longus and I once spent two drizzling years in a customs post. It was still there, still manned by teenage soldiers with the dye brilliant in their brand-new cloaks, striding about like lords, ignoring the sad slaves who brought in the Empire’s treasure. These lads all had pinched faces and runny noses, but unlike our private weasels in the mines all of them could count. They checked off our manifest, counting the ingots carefully into their pound; when the barges arrived, they counted them back out. Heaven help the contractor Triferus if ever anything failed to match.

It always matched. But it would. After we first drove the waggons out along the road from Veb, we always stopped for the drivers to relieve themselves at an upland village just before the main frontier. We stopped at this village whether anybody needed to or not.

The manifest was altered while we were there.

Now the end lay in sight for me.