I took a sip of the rapidly cooling stew, trying to think of something to say.

“At least they didn’t kill you,” was all I could come up with.

“Better if they had!” Poletes replied bitterly. “I would be dead and in Hades and that would be the end of it. Instead, I’m here, toiling like a jackass, working for wages.”

“That’s something, anyway,” I said.

His eyes snapped at me. “You are eating your wages, Orion.”

“This… this is our payment?”

“For the day’s work. Exactly. Show me a thes with coin in his purse and I’ll show you a sneak thief.”

I took a deep breath.

“Lower than slaves, that’s what we are, Orion,” said Poletes, in a whisper that was heavy with overdue sleep. “Vermin under their feet. Dogs. That’s how they treat us. They’ll work us to death and let our bones rot where we fall.”

With a heavy sigh Poletes put his empty bowl down and stretched out on the sandy ground. It was getting so dark that I could barely see his face. The pitiful little fire had gone down to nothing but embers. The wind blowing in from the water was cold and sharp. I automatically adjusted my blood flow to keep as warm as possible. There were no blankets or even canvas tarpaulins among the sprawled bodies of the exhausted thetes. They slept in their loincloths and nothing else.

I lay down beside the old man, then found myself wondering how old he could truly be. Forty, perhaps. I doubted that anyone lived much past fifty in this primitive time. A pair of mangy dogs snarled at each other over some bones by the fire, then settled down side by side, better protected against the night than we were.

Just before I closed my eyes to sleep, I caught sight of the beetling towers of Troy bulking dark against the deepening violet sky.