They were forbidden to talk and Bastian passed out under their clubs after begging for water. His accosters were prisoners too, but trustees with special privileges who hated the police as much as the Party. News of the new prisoners had travelled fast.
They travelled to an outpost on the edge of the desert, were stripped and then thrown into a bamboo cage, whereupon two men in yellow overalls sprayed them from canisters marked ‘Warning DDT’. Afterwards they were hosed down, given grey swimming trunks, and still spluttering and wheezing, pushed into a much larger cage, as their clothes were burnt with others on a bonfire. There were other cages, all made of bamboo, and some of the men inside were going mad trying to bite their way to freedom, either that or chewing the bars to placate the constant hunger. They would hurriedly take sips from the wooden cups of water offered them three times a day, at sunrise, midday, and sunset. The biggest amongst them would have taken more than their fair share but for the commissars, who were keen to see no new arrival died without first repenting through toil.
Every captive treated the other with suspicion and often embarrassment for their own predicament. Occasionally, one man would strike another for no other reason than a look, or he had spurned his advances.
As sundown approached, the heavy wooden bolts slid across the outside and the gate to the cage opened.
‘That’s the one, commissar,’ said the hunchbacked taskmaster.
The powerfully built commissar marched in, pushing anyone in his way aside. He held a large hammer and walked to the cowering man at the back. The trustee held him down as the commissar smashed his ankles with the sledgehammer. No one present would ever forget the screams or the sound of bone being irreparably crushed and splintered.
‘Let that be a lesson to runaways,’ the commissar bawled, and Bastian and Jambit learnt what lay ahead.
The new day began with the sound of whipping. A prisoner had refused to kiss a new commissar’s camel on the mouth. He was tied to an oak tree and beaten until the zealous commissar tired, his face as red as the impudent criminal’s flayed back.
‘That prisoner in the cage, he dares to look at me!’ roared the taskmaster, as a trustee dressed in yellow silk trousers and waistcoat cleaned his boots for the final journey inland.
Trustees wore yellow, taskmasters red, and commissars were always in white whatever the occasion. Prisoners wore grey if anything.
The taskmaster had a pistol tucked into his red silk breeches. He walked up to the side of the cage and shoved it in the mouth of Bastian who had dared to look him in the eye.
‘You shall take his place on the chain-gang if you kill him too early,’ said another taskmaster.
He looked into Bastian’s eyes and smiled before walking back to his chair.
‘Prepare the prisoners,’ shouted a commissar, ‘for the voyage into the sea of sand.’
There were ten taskmasters at the outpost, all with pistols, and several trustees with wooden clubs whom never dreamt of leaving. For if such effrontery were attempted, they could expect a slow and painful death upon capture; staked to the ground in the desert whilst looking up at the sun with their eyelids removed. Those that survived the daylight awaited the hungry baboons that would march down from the desolate hills.
Forty prisoners in trunks, leg-irons and manacles shuffled forwards in single-file. Those that cried were beaten with a club until they no longer made a noise. The final indignity was met upon their hair, quickly shorn by trustees with long scissors who often cut the scalp in their haste. Blood matted to the hair fell in large clumps on the path to hell. But at least Bastian had lost the pretty fragrant locks that were gaining unwanted attention.
They walked past a convicted priest wearing his red silk shirt and grateful for his relative freedom. He threw a handful of holy water over them from a wooden barrel and a trustee handed them a lama poncho to cover their bodies from the sun.
‘Christ has forsaken you,’ he said, ‘and for now you must forget Him. Only through penitence and hard work can you return to His fold after death. I shall pray that all of you survive the journey.’
The young man ahead of Bastian spat on the ground and received a blow in the stomach from a wooden club which doubled him over and forced him to cough up blood. He glared at his attacker.
‘Fool, the taskmaster would have flogged you to death,’ snarled the trustee.
‘Listen up, scum,’ shouted a commissar. ‘Ahead of you lies the hardest part of your new life. I hope all of you survive but be warned, we will leave any man that falls by the wayside to the sun and the scorpions. Taskmasters, remove their chains.’
Crying and wailing, the prisoners walked into the desolate black sands ahead, the waggons and horses deemed unnecessary. At their side were trustees with clubs and taskmasters on camels with buckets of precious water and wooden spoons. Riding at the front and rear were two commissars with rifles and a compass. There was a spare in the saddlebags plus a flare-gun to signal help in case a magnetic storm sent their bearings haywire.
‘We are dead men,’ whispered Jambit in Bastian’s ear.
‘We have to remember who we are,’ said Bastian.
‘What’s the point?’
‘For when we escape. We must hope, Jambit, and remember why we are here.’
‘Perhaps you can. I have lost all hope, my friend, and only fear what awaits us.’
‘You’ll regret
