The following morning Marcellus emerged from the hut of Kanchankikiwana and went to fetch Radulf, but he was already waiting in front of the hut. At first Marcellus thought he saw a smile across the youth's lips, but as he drew nearer he realised that it was a scowl. His demeanour had evidently changed but little.

'Where are they, then? The men who will put me to work to earn my keep in this Godforsaken hell?'

Marcellus tensed his fists, sorely tempted to lay him out there and then and abandon him to his fate. But he was, after all, his countryman. From the left he saw Miki strolling towards them and wondered how she could have become attracted to one whose manners were so bad, one who was so thin in comparison to the well-muscled warriors of the Warikeewa, but then why was anyone ever attracted to anyone?

'I have come to take him to his tasks,' she said, smiling prettily.

'They have sent a girl to fetch me!' Radulf exclaimed.

'I am beginning to wish I had never brought you with me, Radulf.'

'I warned you that I would never capitulate!'

'You are not even a captive, you are a guest. You are my companion, and as such you are treated with a deference you do not merit. I wonder they do not execute you.'

'I am their guest because you, the greatest traitor to Horta that ever lived, is honoured by them!' Radulf said vehemently. 'I did not ask to be treated as anything other than a prisoner, and a prisoner of war at that! I do not wish to work for your filthy, stinking bronzeskins.....'

Marcellus' hand shot out and slapped the youth across the face with a stinging, hard blow that sent him reeling sideways a few paces. When he recovered his composure his face was already turning red. Miki placed herself between him and Marcellus.

'Do not hit him again,' she implored him. 'There are other ways to soften his hardness, to bring him to our way of thinking.'

'I do not believe you will ever change his attitude. He is ill-mannered, ignorant, and stupid. Despite the evidence of his own eyes, he refuses to believe what I have been telling him since I brought him out of Horta. I am finished with him. Do with him what you will. If he disobeys you, kill him!' Marcellus turned abruptly and walked away. Miki stretched out her small hand for Radulf to take hold of.

'Come with me, I will direct you to your tasks for the day. There is a hut to be built, a communal hut in which the children of the tribe will be taught. Come.'

She waited patiently, and still he did not take her hand. Eventually, after a minute or so, she reached further until her fingertips touched his, and inch by inch her hand slid into his until their palms were entwined.

'Come,' she said softly, and reluctantly he started to walk with her. They went through the village, past the large hut in which he had originally been incarcerated, and just beyond there was a large area marked out with chalk in the grass.

'This area has to be excavated to a depth of about six feet,' Miki said. 'There are shovels and picks over there, by the wall of the long hut. There will be others along to help you shortly. We did not expect you to be up so early.'

In silence Radulf went to the long hut and selected a shovel. He brought it back to the chalk mark and raising it high above his head brought it down hard onto the earth. The blade cut through the turf easily to a depth of several inches. He pulled back on it and an enormous turf, complete with several inches of earth, came out on the blade of the shovel. He turned to Miki.

'Where am I to deposit the earth?'

'Behind you. The women will be here after they have fed the men to move the excavated earth away from the area.'

It was on the tip of his tongue to remark that the removal of sods and turfs was hardly the work of women, but he realised that it might indicate a softening of his feelings towards the savages he believed himself to be among, so he held his peace, and brought the shovel down hard again. Miki laid her hand on his naked arm.

'You must eat first,' she said. 'There is a meal for you in the long hut. I prepared it myself.'

'I am not hungry.'

'You should not work like this without food inside you,' she said, marvelling at his painfully thin body.

'I am not hungry. When I am hungry, I will stop and eat.'

'Please.' She had not removed her hand from his arm. He turned his stony eyes on her and glared at her, then lifted the spade again, breaking her contact with him abruptly.

'If you have to talk to me to give me my orders, then that is how it shall be. Otherwise, please keep away from me and do not speak to me,' he said.

Miki turned away, and a casual observer might have been forgiven for thinking that she was crying, but when she turned back, her face betrayed none of her emotions.

'You are a stubborn fool, as Angry Wolf said you were. I thought, being from the city, you would be intelligent, and might have had some of his breeding. In future you can get your own food!' And she started to walk away, expecting him to call her back. He did not, and when she was perhaps a hundred paces away, she turned to see him again plunging the shovel into the earth. After a few minutes, more young men arrived at the scene of the excavations, and stood watching Radulf as he toiled. He, noticing them but paying them no attention, carried on with his work, stripped to the waist, and within a half hour had dug to a depth of around three feet over an area some ten feet square. Now he began to concentrate on removing more earth from the dig, so that he reached the required depth of six feet. After an hour he was standing in a hole ten feet square and almost six feet deep and a sizeable crowd, mostly of young women and children, in addition to the few braves who had originally come to watch him, were gathered around the site.

Makoma and Marcellus, seeing them, decided to investigate to see what all the fuss was about. Miki stood leaning against a post some few feet away, studying her feet with an expression of sadness and anger on her face.

'Is there something going on over there?'

'It is Running Scared. He is showing off. I think he is trying to impress me.'

'What makes you say such a thing?'

'He has refused to take any food before he started work.'

'He seems to eat very little,' Marcellus observed.

'He should not attempt such work without a decent meal inside him,' Makoma said. 'I will call a halt to the work.'

'Whatever you say he will do the opposite.'

Marcellus permitted himself a small grin. He threw his arm around the young girl and walked to the crowd with Makoma. A path was made for them.

'Running Scared!' Makoma called down to Radulf. He paused for a moment and looked up, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun.

'Yes?'

'It is the requirement of this work party that you join us in a meal before continuing.'

'I am not hungry.'

'It is a requirement.'

'I do not require food at this time.'

'Nevertheless, food will be brought. All of the work party will eat and then the work will commence.'

'I do not wish to stop.'

'It is an order, Radulf,' Marcellus said softly. 'You have been invited to join a work party to assist in the building of a new communal hut. You are part of a work force. They will not start work until they have eaten properly, and you should take them up on their offer of food. Soon you will grow weak, and faint. To my knowledge you have had neither food nor drink this morning.'

'I do not need anything!'

Marcellus dropped lightly into the hole to stand next to Radulf.

'Do this for me,' he said, taking the shovel from Radulf's hands. 'Do it for me.'

'You are a fine example to the work party, Running Scared,' Makoma called down. 'With you at their side, the hut will be completed swiftly indeed.'

'Eat their food, drink their drink. Consider it a wage for your toiling,' Marcellus said. Radulf considered briefly. He glanced up at the sky and saw the silhouette of Miki standing directly before him.

'I now feel a little hungry and thirsty,' he said. Marcellus clapped him on the back and together they were helped out of the excavation. Food and drink was brought and the work party, Radulf included, sat cross-legged on the floor next to the hole he had dug single-handedly.

'What is the purpose of the communal building again?' he asked, and Miki, who had been serving the men with food, came immediately to his side.

'It is where the children will be taught to read and to write,' she said.

'Read and write?' Radulf said, in astonishment.

'Did you think we were just ignorant savages?' she demanded.

'I did not think you had such..... intelligence,' he stammered in reply.

'You did not think!'

'I apologise.'

'I believe that is the first time you have apologised for anything since you arrived in Warikeewa camp,' Marcellus remarked.

'What is the plan?' Radulf asked. 'The work party is to excavate the foundations, is that it?'

'Yes, that is it.'

'It will take some time.'

'It will indeed. You had better finish your drink if you are to get the building up before dark.'

'Before dark? It will take the best part of two days to dig the foundations! There is all of the earth to be removed, the foundations to be laid, the timbers to be cut.....'

'Did you think that there would be only one work party involved in the erection of the communal building, then?' Makoma asked, smiling.

'Soon the women and children will come to take away the earth you have dug from the ground,' Marcellus said. 'Other work parties are already cutting and shaping the timbers whilst others are bringing the rocks for the foundations. Soon after midsun the foundations will be laid and then the timbered upper structure will be hoisted aloft and secured in position. Then the roof will be set. Have you never assisted in the building of a communal hut before?'

'You know that I could not have done. Such ventures do not take place in Horta,' Radulf said.

'Ah, yes! I forgot. This is a camp of ignorant, backward savages. They could never compete with the types of edifices that are erected in the great cities.'

'Back to work!' an overseer called, and the other members of the work party, who had so far done nothing except observe Radulf at his labours, jumped down into the hole he had dug and began to dig themselves. Radulf would have said more, chastened as he now felt, but Marcellus pushed him gently and he too dropped down into the hole and took up his spade. By mid morning he and the other youths, of whom there were ten, had excavated a hole some forty feet long by twenty feet wide, and ten feet deep. Women and children had arrived soon after the dig began, Miki included, to take away the dug-out earth in buckets, bags, anything that would hold an amount. Leaning on his shovel, Radulf watched the extraordinary community effort begin to unfold. He could just see, from where he stood on the floor of the excavation, that the earth was being deposited carefully on top of the earth from which the crops were beginning to grow. It was not so much a human chain as an army of volunteers, moving in unison almost, as older women and unfit men sang and chanted rhythmic work songs to encourage the labour force.

From a different direction altogether, more young men were dragging sleds containing the roughly-hewn rocks which would form the walls of the edifice, but first there was the matter of laying a foundation. Barrow-loads of broken rock and shingle were tipped into the excavation as the diggers scrambled out, then they jumped back in and began to stamp and pound the fragments of rock into a flat surface some two feet deep. Then more women arrived with buckets and bags of cement which they had recently mixed, and this was tipped into the hole whilst the youths still stood there, Radulf included, and again they stamped it into a smooth surface and finally levelled it with the blades of their shovels. By midsun the foundations were done and it was time to eat again.

This time Radulf sat with the others and was content to observe that none of the other youths who had excavated the hole with him made any comments about him but accepted him as one who had assisted in the communal building. The meal over, they resumed work. With the cement almost dry on the floor, more was poured around the edges of the excavation and the first of the smooth white stones was passed from one group of youths to another. Finally, it was lowered into the hole where Radulf and two others waited, for it to be sunk into six inches of the cement and held in position whilst it dried. In this way the first layer of wall stones was set in the cement all around the building with the exception of the entrance, where a gap of two stones was left. This operation seemed to take forever, but when the first layer was complete, Radulf noticed that the sun had barely moved. More and more youths and men joined in as the time passed and more layers were added, two window openings some six feet wide being left on either of the north and south faces.