20 their food or kill their baby. At the very least, you might make a nuisance of yourself and try to run away. If you don’t submit to fate, you will end up in the mines.” This mattered little to Faelan. He shrugged. “My family is gone, my tribe killed or enslaved by the Romans. What future do I have? None that I want. Put me in the mines.” He picked up a small stone and threw it against the warehouse wall. “No, no… you don’t understand. In the mines you will become sick. You will live a few years, and every one of them will be filled with pain. If you don’t die on your own, the Romans who oversee you will kill you once you become too weak to work. Far better, my boy, to become a house slave! That life is much easier, even with its troubles and nastiness. Of course, much depends on your master, whether you fare ill or well. So, pray to the gods! Pray for a good master! That is all you can do now.” She sat by him for a while before slowly crawling back to her corner of the warehouse. Faelan watched her through the corner of his eye. She was a pitiful figure—rags and filth and chains. But since his captivity, she was the first person, outside of Esselt, to treat him as a human being. Her words disgusted him: these Roman gods and their fate, which ground men, women, and children like grain under the stone wheel. He didn’t want to become worn out and used up like the old woman, but he did want to survive. He asked himself what his father would want him to do. The bit of him that wanted to survive surged up within him and cried out, “Live! Live, and find a way to make some corner of your life your own. Do not throw away your youth and inheritance.” But what inheritance had he? Chains and dirt, he thought, with great bitterness. Chains and dirt.
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