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purchased him a small estate. He talked of planting vines and olive trees, but it is difficult to imagine a wolf pushing a plough.’
    ‘You have heard nothing from him?’
    Valerius shook his head. ‘For all I know he could be dead.’

IV
    Serpentius clawed his way up through a dark pit of insensibility like a swimmer struggling towards the surface of a pitch black sea. Gradually it returned to him. The room with the scrolls. The spreading pool of darkness beneath his friend’s bowed head. The triumphant, malignant faces. And finally the explosion of light he thought had ended it all. He opened his eyes and a soft whimper escaped him at the terrible finality of eternal night. He was blind.
    ‘Quiet,’ a voice hissed at his side. ‘If they hear a sound they’ll beat us all.’
    The Spaniard drew in a ragged breath, the air thick as sludge and warm as blood. A wave of fear washed over him and he had to dig deep into his soul to rediscover the courage that had sustained him through the long years of slavery.
Remember who you are and who you have been. You are a man and a warrior. Whatever it requires you will endure. Whatever you must endure you will survive.
Gradually the panic faded. He turned in the direction of the voice and felt a familiar weight on his arms and legs. Heard the faint chink of metal on metal that sent a new chill of terror through him.
    ‘Where am I?’ he whispered to the blackness.
    ‘In a deep mine under the mountain somewhere south of Baeduniense.’
    ‘Mine?’ Serpentius’s reeling mind struggled with the reality even as he tested the iron chains that bound his wrists and ankles.
    ‘Yes,’ the voice choked on a sob. ‘And you’d best get used to it, friend, because you’re never going to see the light of day again. We are the Lost and they don’t call us the Lost for nothing. Condemned to be worked to death in a place that is worse than Hades.’
    ‘How can I work when I’m blind?’
    ‘You’re not blind.’ A soft snort of bitter laughter. ‘Though it would make no difference to them if you were. A blind man can carry his weight in ore the same as a sighted one. They douse the oil lamps at the end of the shift and don’t light them again until they serve the slops at the start of the next one.’
    Careful not to make any noise with the chains, Serpentius raised his hands and rubbed his eyes. He could see? Yes, there was definition in the blackness. In places less dense, and in others more so, as with the deep shadow that identified his unseen companion. Suddenly he understood exactly where he was. Trapped in a tiny wormhole in the earth with an entire mountain pressing down on him. He felt a moment of sheer, irrational panic, returned for a heartbeat to the slimy depths of the Conduit of Hezekiah beneath Jerusalem and the terror which had unmanned him in front of his friend Valerius. The scarred face of the one-handed Roman swam into his mind and he clung to the image like a drowning man until the new panic faded.
    He took a deep breath. What would Valerius do? Valerius would bide his time. He’d watch and he’d wait, and once he’d watched long enough he’d make his plan. Then, when the time was right, he’d fight. And he’d win.
    ‘Tell me everything,’ he hissed to the man chained to him.
    He was ready when the first oil lamp flared, burning its image into his eyes. The jailer passed down the line throwing each man a small chunk of stale bread and hesitating just long enough before each prisoner for him to dip it into the foul broth in the bucket he carried. Serpentiushad forgotten how hungry he was, but even so his stomach rebelled at the bitter liquid.
    When his eyes adjusted to the glare he was able to see his companions for the first time and the sight quailed his heart. The men crammed the sopping bread into their mouths with an animal ferocity as if it was the last they’d ever see. His closest companion was a skeleton in a ragged tunic, eyes sunk deep in a