“Wet,” the tribune said. “Cold. Blood. No thank you. My dearest wish is to go home and become a thoroughly dull little public servant. The kind who never gets out from behind his desk and is always home in time for a good supper.”

“At least you won’t be cold and wet,” the centurion conceded. “Plenty of that in the legions, sir, sure enough.”

“And how did you come to the legions, Centurion? A Greek, I can hear that in your voice—”

With the two of them nattering, I saw the smoke first. It should have been the centurion—he prided himself on his eagle eyes—but he was too smug at being flattered by a tribune to see the wisps of black rising suddenly beyond the next bend in the road.

“Wait!” My voice cut sharply across the cheerful chatter at my side.

“I thought you said the garrison was just ahead,” the tribune said, but the centurion was already barking orders and I dug spurs into my horse and cantered down the road. Black smoke, never a good sign, but I was expecting a granary fire, perhaps at the worst an attack on the outer walls from some Dacian skirmishers.

The entire garrison was aflame.

I pulled up swearing, my sword leaping out of its scabbard along with six others as the legionaries and the officers caught up with me, but it was no good. A quartet of sentries lay dead in the road, and not newly killed either. Their bodies had already been rifled and stripped, and the roof of the principia smoldered fitfully, its tiles still damp from the night’s rain. Even from a mile distant I could hear the howls, the sounds of smashing tiles and smashing statues.

“The round shield,” I snarled. “I should have known, I should have bloody known—” There were shaggy men with round shields darting through the broken gate now, holding sacks of loot.

“What is it?” the tribune shouted from where the centurion had bluntly ordered him to stay back.

“Dacians,” I yelled back. They’d likely attacked the fort under cover of the rain last night—the three who jumped the tribune would have been advance scouts up the road.

“What can we do?” the boy called.

“Prayer might work.”

One of the other soldiers was swearing helplessly, hand at his sword hilt, but he didn’t attack. None of us did. The granary would have been looted by now, the records room put to the flame, the barracks emptied, and the men slaughtered. The statue of Emperor Trajan would have been toppled from its plinth and smashed into shards of marble. All done last night, while the rain whipped down. Now that the skies had cleared this morning, the rest of the garrison was being put to the torch.

Too late.

“Back to Moguntiacum,” the centurion rapped out. “Now.”