'Half-rations for three days. Work harder!' The voice was close by.
Nish made himself as small as possible but felt sure he would be discovered. A thick pair of hairy calves went by, attached to the filthiest feet he had ever seen. They smelled like ordure.
The feet stopped. Something struck the bench above Nish's head so hard that small objects jumped. He did not dare to breathe. He could hear the heavy breath of the supervisor. The room was completely silent. Everyone else was as afraid as he was. Nish's nose began to itch but he resisted the urge to scratch it.
'Get on with your work!' the man roared and the dirty feet moved away. The clicking and tapping resumed.
Nish endured the day. Should he declare himself, or leave it to the boy? He waited. In the early afternoon the work stopped briefly while lunch was taken at the benches. Nish could smell the water by then and had begun to shake with hunger. He was practically fainting when a thin hand reached below the bench, holding a battered wooden mug.
Nish drained it in a single swallow and immediately regretted that he had not made it last. He put the mug into the waiting hand. Shortly it reappeared with a generous chunk of black bread.
Nish eked that out, taking the tiniest of nibbles, which was just as well since it was full of hard, burnt grain and grit he might have broken a tooth on. After that he pillowed his head on his arms and slept.
When he jolted awake it was dark outside but the work was still going on. What had disturbed him?
'Don't start that again,' Colm's father hissed. 'You're not too old for a beating, boy!'
'He's here,' Colm whispered.
'What are you talking about?'
'The man is right here, under the bench. His name is Cryl-Nish Hlar and his father is a perquisitor.'
The silence stretched out, then the man dropped a wooden spanner, bent down to pick it up and stared at Nish.
Nish held his gaze. 'It's true,' he said softly. 'He is Jal-Nish Hlar, Perquisitor for Einunar, and I have come all this way on scrutator's business. I beg your help in his name.'
The man ducked away again, forgetting his spanner. Reaching forward, Nish handed it up to him.
'Which scrutator?' Colm's father said out of the corner of his mouth.
'Xervish Flydd!'
The work resumed on the bench, and only some minutes later did Nish hear any more.
'You have ruined us, Colm,' his mother muttered. 'This will be the end of your family.'
'Why couldn't you mind your own business?' his father said. There was no anger in him now; just despair. 'Why, Colm?'
'You taught me to do what I thought was right, no matter how painful.'
'Those rules don't apply any more,' his father said in a low voice.
'Just look at the poor man! He's got wounds everywhere but it hasn't stopped him.'
Both mother and father bent down, inspected Nish, then stood up again.
'Of course you can't denounce him,' said Colm's mother. 'That would also attract attention.'
'We have to,' said the father.
'He's not much more than a boy,' muttered the mother. 'He doesn't even have a proper beard.'
'Tell him to go, boy,' said Colm's father.
'I won't betray him. You tell him.'
Again Nish heard a slap, but thankfully Colm remained defiant.
'If he is a perquisitor's son,' the mother quavered, 'and on scrutator's work, to refuse him will mean our deaths.'
A metal cover-plate was knocked off the bench. The father's face appeared in front of Nish. The mother and son closed up on either side. 'What business?'
'I can't tell you, but I carry information vital to the war. I must find a way to escape and meet a querist or perquisitor. Or failing that, an officer in the army.'
'Very well,' said the father. 'I know my duty. We will be leaving shortly to go back to our quarters for the night. When I give the signal, come out between me and Colm. Walk carefully, looking down. Show me your hand.'
Nish held it out and the man examined the bloody scratches. 'It may do, if they don't look too closely. We have no friends here, but people know us, and in this camp anyone will betray their neighbour for an extra bowl of fishhead soup.'
The call came. Nish ducked out from under the bench and stood up between Colm and his father, who was a big man, nearly a head taller than Nish. He took a sideways glance. The building had three aisles and a line of people was forming along each of them. There would have been hundreds. Most were as haggard, thin and dirty as the boy. Few looked anywhere but at the earth floor.
The line crept forward. Nish felt a fluttering in his stomach. He had saved himself several times, by his own initiative, assisted by a generous helping of good fortune. Fortune could turn against him just as swiftly, and then he would die.
They approached the door, where each of the workers was delivered a dollop of gruel into their mug, and a slab of black bread. Nish had no mug. He was going to fall at the first hurdle. Panic told him to run but he fought it. He looked back. The father had realised the problem but did not know what to do about it. Nish was going to be discovered with the family and they would all be punished.
It was too late to get out of the way; they were only half a dozen places from the end of the line. Nish leaned forward. 'I've no mug,' he whispered in Colm's ear.
Colm passed his own back, picked up a fragment of metal lying on the bench and, with an unobtrusive flick, sent it flying down the row. It struck a hairy man on his protruding ear. He whirled and swung a blow at the man behind him, who struck back.
The fellow serving the slops came out from behind his bench, flailing at the struggling men with his wooden ladle. Colm snatched a mug from the back of the bench and held it out.
The fight was over quickly. No one wanted to attract the attention of the guards outside. The line paced by, Nish received his ration of slops and his lump of bread, the serving man taking no notice of him, and then they were through the door.
He passed the guards and was halfway across the yard when one yelled, 'Hey you!'
Nish froze, whereupon a hard hand went down on his shoulder and squeezed. 'Keep going. Don't look around.'
Nish did as he was told, expecting the soldiers to come running after him, but no one did. As he rounded the corner he saw, out of the corner of his eye, an unfortunate fellow being beaten between three laughing guards.
'It's their game,' said the father. 'Some poor wretch always turns around, and then they beat him for it.'
It took an anxious ten minutes to cross through the labyrinth of huts, shacks and hovels to the dismal space Colm and his family called home. Built from scraps of timber and canvas, chinked in with grass and mud, it was meaner than the hut of any primitive tribesman.
Inside it was barely long enough for the father to lie down. The earth floor was covered in bracken and reeds. The walls were hand-smeared mud, the roof a piece of rotting canvas smaller than a single bedsheet. They had nothing else in the world.
Two girls crouched within. The older, who might have been fifteen, was a small, unattractive creature, her hair positively dripping grease, her face full of spots and scars, and her teeth horrible black stumps. The younger, no more than five, was pretty, with wavy chestnut hair and green eyes.
'This is Cryl-Nish Hlar,' said the father, whose name was given as Oinan. 'He is an important man. He will stay with us for a little while and we are going to look after him. No one will ever mention his name. Cryl-Nish, this is my wife Tinketil, my older daughter, Ketila, and my other daughter, Fransi.'
Ketila hid her face, and a flush crept up her throat. Poor girl, Nish thought, to suffer such a handicap, especially when her sister is such a beauty. He shook hands with Oinan, with Tinketil and with a solemn, staring Fransi. Ketila would not look at him. Her hands fluttered over her mouth.
'Ketila,' said Oinan sternly.
Putting one hand behind her back, she held out the other. Nish took it and she gave him a little shy smile that went all the way up to her eyes. It revealed perfect white teeth, and it quite transformed her. She must have been wearing something in her mouth to make them look so horrible. Perhaps the spots and the scars were fake too.