St Paul’s Labyrinth. Jeroen Windmeijer

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       PROLOGUE

      Mérida (Hispania), 72 AD

      The executioner draws his sharpened dagger across the convict’s belly, slicing it open with a single cut. A torrent of blood gushes out, like water breaking through the walls of a dyke. The man screams in agony as his guts spill like skinned snakes down to his knees. Then the birdmen come, their eagles balanced on their leather armguards. The birds’ sharp beaks take great, greedy bites of the man’s exposed liver. The three other men, lashed to wooden stakes and doomed to the same fate, struggle hopelessly to escape.

      The audience is ecstatic. This amphitheatre, built during the reign of Caesar Augustus, is big enough to hold sixteen thousand. Today, every single seat of its three tiers is occupied.

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