It was the afternoon of what now passed for a spring day in North Africa, dry, dusty, cool. The battlefield had once been an extensive farm by the look of it, but after years of drought it was abandoned, the olive trees withered, the stubble of the last grain crops dry in the fields, the fences of the stockades robbed for their wood. It had taken the Carthaginian force half the day to ride out here. The scruffy Libyan rebels, numerous but disorganised, had showed rudimentary military thinking by clinging to a scrap of high ground in the hope of gaining some advantage. General Fabius had ignored this, had drawn up his army in the ruins of this farm, and had simply waited.

And as the Carthaginian command had evidently expected, the Libyans lost their nerve and attacked.

‘You see?’ Gisco had said, Nelo’s sergeant, always ready to draw a lesson to deliver to his ragtag troops of conscripts, levies and volunteers. ‘What have I told you? It is sometimes harder not to fight than to fight. Braver to wait than to charge in. You must pick your moment. Watch and learn, if you ever want to be a general like Fabius.’

Now it was only a question of time, as the Carthaginians steadily pressed. Nelo stood at the centre of his phalanx, with his sword and spear and the hand-me-down helmet that pinched his brow, hoping to be spared his first real action for one more day. Dreaming of the sketches he might make of the scenes before him if he got the chance.

At last the Libyan formation broke and the survivors started to run. The Carthaginians cheered. Fabius raised his sword, horns blasted, and a ripple of commands spread out through the Carthaginian army.

Sergeant Gisco grinned and raised his thrusting spear. ‘Our turn, lads! After them and finish them off!’ The men of Nelo’s phalanx surged forward after the fleeing Libyan survivors, running across a field already strewn with corpses.

But Nelo didn’t have a chance to move before a hefty shove in the back pitched him onto his face. Suniatus, of course. The big man peered down at him. ‘Too slow, aurochs!’ And he gave him a kick in the head for good measure, and ran on.

Naturally, in the midst of the advance, Gisco saw this and pointed his sword tip at Nelo. ‘Northlander! You’re on a charge! Get to your feet!’

Nelo struggled up, shook his head, hefted his sword and stabbing spear, and ran with the rest.