As they walked on he was always aware of the wider city beyond the core of this military camp. In blocks defined by gullies for drainage or sewage, buildings were being put up, sod huts, occasional structures of stone perhaps robbed from abandoned Utica. The place was unfinished but had already taken on a kind of human life, with people coming and going, slave-women with baskets of washing going down to the river, old folk sitting on porches, children running and laughing. There were even marketplaces with a few dusty heaps of shoes, tunics, potatoes, cabbages for sale. He had seen the straight-line layout of the place from the rise. Evidently the new city had been planned and laid out before the first inhabitant had moved in, and set out like a sketch on the countryside. Now that outline was being coloured in by this muddy mass of people. But in this first rushed impression, Nelo thought there were few babies or old folk, few very young or very old, who must have been winnowed out by the March. He wondered how to capture all this on paper.

Then he saw two laughing boys, no older than five or six, mock-fighting with wooden swords, copying the soldiers. It had taken the Hatti a year to complete their March from New Hattusa to this place, and a year was a long time in the lives of these boys. Perhaps they barely remembered the great city they had left behind. And they were what Nelo chose to sketch, with the strange temporary city in the background, capturing their moment of innocent play for ever.

A group of soldiers sat beside a fire, with a pail of water before them. They set pebbles and olive pits on hot rocks by the fire, every so often prodding them to see how warm they were. They glanced up at the Carthaginian party with blank hostility.

Fabius said, ‘Tell me what these men are doing, sir.’

Arnuwanda said, ‘Just a little ritual our soldiers go through to boost their spirits. These men are scouts; they have seen Carthage, and your ferocious soldiers and your towering defences. These men must see the enemy truthfully, and report on his strength, truthfully. But truth crushes the spirit, do you see? And so we give them this. The enemy’s strength is like the heat of that olive stone. It spits and roars as the stones will when they are put in the water. But it will subside quickly, as will your resistance when the war comes.’

‘Our soldiers have rituals. Different, but the same idea.’ Fabius glanced around, squinting. ‘Sometimes I think that if you could put every soldier in the world in a tremendous camp like this one, and if you kept them all fed, and provided a little wine, a few whores, and let them burn up their energy in a few wrestling contests and such, there need never be war again.’