“But first let him get this poor old slave some water.”
“Yes, Centurion.” He turned fiercely to the overseer. “You heard the centurion. Go! And bring a cloth, too, to bathe his face.”
“O Zeus, mercy. Water.” The old man’s plea was hardly a whisper. “Mercy, O....”
Longinus pointed. “Water will do him no good now, Cornelius.”
The wizened, gaunt slave’s eyes, wide-open, were setting in an agonized, frightened stare; his head was stretched back, and Cornelius, looking into his blackened and bony face, saw that it was pitted and scarred from innumerable small burns; the eyebrows and eyelashes were completely gone, singed away in the intolerable heat of the glass furnaces.
The overseer returned with the water and a smudged cloth.
“No need now,” the plant superintendent said. “He’s dead.”
The overseer nodded. “Shall we....?” He paused. “The usual way?”
“Not for the moment. Put him over there under the shed. Later, when....”
“When we have left, eh?” Cornelius was pointedly sarcastic. “What is the usual way?”