"Quitters!" he yelled. "Lazy, worthless, work-dodging goldbrick
artists!" He knelt in fury, thumbing back the eyelids of the corpses.
There was little need for the test. They were too limp, too waxen to be
pretending.
The overseer cut them out of the chain and kicked at Hanson. "Move
along!" he bellowed. "Menes himself is here, and he's not as gentle as I
am."
Hanson joined the long line, wondering what they were going to do about
breakfast. How the devil did they expect the slaves to put in sixteen
hours of work without some kind of food? There had been nothing the
night before but a skin of water. There was not even that much this
morning. No wonder the two beside him had died from overwork, beatings
and plain starvation.
Menes was there, all right. Hanson saw him from the distance, a skinny
giant of a man in breechclout, cape and golden headdress. He bore a whip
like everyone else who seemed to have any authority at all, but he
wasn't using it. He was standing hawklike on a slight rise in the sandy
earth, motionless and silent. Beside him was a shorter figure: a pudgy
man with a thin mustache, on whom the Egyptian headdress looked
strangely out of place. It could only be Ser Perth!
Hanson's staring came to an end as the lash cut down across his
shoulders, biting through to the shoulder-bone. He stumbled forward,
heedless of the overseers' shouting voices.
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