Immerez laughed his gravelly laugh. “The few we didn’t kill we left in the dust weeks ago. They’ll return home with their tails tucked between their legs.”

Zachary frowned. He would not have wanted his soldiers to blunder into Second Empire’s base, but it was unsettling that they’d been thwarted. That some had been killed caused his shoulders to sag. He thought perhaps he’d been forgotten until Grandmother and Terrik looked toward him, speaking to one another. Then Grandmother returned to Immerez, and Terrik motioned a couple of his guards forward. Zachary tensed.

“All right, Dav,” Terrik said, “Grandmother will finish up with you some other time, but if you are well enough to sit up, you are well enough to work.”

“Work?”

“Didn’t think we were just going to let you lie around all day, did you?”

The two guards grabbed Zachary’s arms and lifted him to his feet. The world spun too much for him to put up much of a fight. He was dragged outside, the cold like a slap to his face. Wood smoke was heavy on the air, and he saw a blur of shacks and people as he was pushed and shoved and pulled.

“Let me go,” he said, struggling to release himself from their grasp. “You’ve no right—”

He was smacked behind the head and all went briefly black and suddenly he was on his knees. They kicked him to get up and he staggered to his feet.

“Keep your mouth shut,” one said. “Whatever you were before, you belong to Second Empire now.”

They dragged him through a gap in the curtain wall and into the woods. Were they going to kill him? But then he saw people ahead who seemed to be working, carrying baskets filled with rocks and dirt, which they dumped in piles. There were other armed guards here. Zachary was thrown to the ground at the feet of a man with a spiked cudgel.

“Got you a new worker,” Terrik said. “His name’s Dav. Be careful, he’s a brawler.”

The man gazed down at Zachary. “Looks a little worse for wear.”

“That’s the way he came in. Grandmother figures he can still move rocks.”

Cudgel man grunted in what sounded like some kind of assent. “Git up, then.”

Zachary was grabbed by the collar and thrust toward the other workers, gaunt, half-starved souls who moved as though dead on their feet. They were silent but for gasps and grunts as they shifted heavy loads. He was put to work in a tunnel that burrowed into an earthen mound, with timber supports to keep the ceiling from collapse. He was directed to remove rocks and scrape up dirt and debris. If he did not move fast enough, one of the guards whipped a caning rod across his back, as if he were no more than a mule.

He was so in shock, his head still not right, that he stumbled about and dropped as much as he carried. How his fortunes had reversed. He’d gone from king to thrall, for thrall was what he’d become. He’d known hard work, had even known battle, but forced labor was different, and if this was how Second Empire would treat his people should they claim victory? No, he would not have it. When he paused to catch his breath, the cane whooshed down on him. He pivoted and caught it in his hand. The guard’s eyes widened.

Zachary raised his fist to smash it into the man’s face, but his feet were kicked out from beneath him. He hit the ground hard and boots kicked and kicked him. The caning rod came down on his side and ribs. He threw his arms over his head to protect it. The blows rained down hard and furiously until he felt he must be reduced to pulp. And then it stopped. He lay there panting, on the edge of darkness, unable to move.

“Your technique is lacking, Cole,” said a woman, whose voice Zachary recognized to be Nyssa’s. “You’re still more cobbler than soldier, aren’t you.”

Zachary gazed up through blurry eyes to see her looking down at him.

“Maybe that’s so,” Cole replied, “but these grunts don’t need technique. I reckon we’ll have him trained up just fine. Your training leaves strong workers useless or dead, and Grandmother wants the passage cleaned out.”

Zachary was not sure what passed for a time until he was roughly hoisted to his feet, his whole body screaming from the pummeling he had received.

“Get back to work,” the one called Cole ordered, and he pushed Zachary back toward the tunnel, or mine, or whatever it was.

He could barely move, barely remain upright when he bent to pick up rocks. He bumped into the walls, and when he stumbled into other workers, they pushed him away. The guards did not beat him if he moved too slowly. Not mercy, he supposed, but pragmatism that further beating would render him unconscious and useless.

He leaned against the mine’s wall to regain his balance. He rubbed his aching head. Deep breaths hurt. The other workers just trudged around him as though they were revenants out of some nightmare. It did not help that he’d only had some broth and no real food in who knew how long.

It was as he leaned against the wall that he realized it was, in fact, a wall, not just rough, natural stone, but blocks of granite shaped by tools. He did not linger, for Cole was fingering his caning rod, looking eager for a chance to use it again.

At midday they were allowed to take a break. Zachary eased himself down onto the floor of the passage and leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes.

“Here,” someone said, placing a bowl into his hands. It was warm. He forced his eyes open to discover it was gruel with a chunk of pan bread in it. His appetite was uncertain at best.

“You’d better eat it,” his benefactor said. “Still got a long day ahead.”