In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers by Simon J. Townley Page A

not see him again.” He pulled free of Jonah and ran between beds across the dorm room. Argent was right, the door was locked. He shook it. Listened. A woman sobbed outside while men stood around talking. He shook the handle again.  
    The door was pushed open from the other side and a light shone in his face, a Russian voice shouted at him. Two of the guards advanced on him, one with a club. The man raised it above his head, brought it crashing down towards Conall’s skull. He dodged just in time, span away, and scurried into the darkness. The guards shouted after him but didn’t follow. The door slammed shut and he heard the key in the lock.  
    He lumbered back towards his bed, defeated. The woman needed help but in the end he’d done nothing. He’d been helpless, in the face of it.  
    “Can’t do anything, alone,” Jonah said.  
    “But I’m not alone.”  
    “There’s only two of us.”  
    “There’s hundreds. Together, we could have stopped that. They couldn’t kill us all.”  
    “Try getting these to help,” Jonah said. “It won’t happen.”  
    “Guess not, I couldn’t even get you.” He sensed Jonah bristling in the dark, but the first mate said nothing. Conall curled into a tight ball but sleep wouldn’t come, and he spent the night lying awake, on the edge of action, listening for screams.  

    ≈≈≈≈

    A Russian guard strode through the dorm ringing a bell. He shouted orders at the new slaves, telling them to get outside, into a courtyard formed by four of the low wooden buildings. The men stripped off their clothes and walked under a stream of water from a collecting tower. The water was icy, and the early morning air carried a chill, as cold as the depths of winter back on Shetland. Conall stood with the water cascading on his head, goosebumps on his skin, washing off the dust and sweat from their long walk.  
    Clutching their clothes while they waited to dry off, the men queued for a chunk of bread and a mug of water. The guards took names, gave them numbers to memorise. They stamped the numbers onto metal strips and pinned them to the collars around the necks of their captives. The men were divided into work groups, Jonah ordered one way and Conall another.  
    “Keep your head down, do as you’re told,” Jonah said, as he was led away by the guard.  
    Conall’s group was taken up the dusty road towards the lip of the quarry. As they reached the top, Conall saw an immense pit, a mile or more across, hundreds of feet deep. Bare earth, exposed rock, an open wound, bleeding and raw. The sides were almost sheer and a winding road zig-zagged into the quarry pit. A line of slaves marched the road, carrying buckets laden with rocks. In the depths of the pit hundreds of men toiled with hammers and chisels, breaking rocks, pounding at the earth.  
    The guard led them down the road, a half hour’s walk to the bottom, the noise of the miners growing louder with every step. Slaves passed them, heading uphill, struggling under their heavy loads, the buckets of rocks balanced on their shoulders. A foreman took control of the new arrivals, gave them tasks, and tools, and places to work. Some mined rock from the earth, others broke and sifted the rocks or carried buckets.  
    The foreman, himself a slave and wearing a metal collar, called Conall forward. “English?” He frowned as he looked Conall over. “Help wildman.” Another slave pressed a wooden bucket into his hands, pointed towards the rock face where teams of men toiled with pickaxes and chisels. “Bring rocks, there, there. Watch him, he’s crazy.” The slave prodded his temple three times with the end of his finger.  
    The wildman was easy to spot, with his long hair half way down his back, wearing no shirt, shorts made of sacking, clogs carved from wood. The man was big. Not as tall as Jonah, but broader, the kind of strength that comes from a lifetime of work.  
    But what had this man done to be called