‘We’re fighting in the morning, Roofa, my love. Fighting those Carthaginian pustules at last! Won’t you Libyans be glad to see the back of them?’

‘Never mind Carthaginian pustules. Look what you did!’ Still holding the pot, she stalked around the house, and pulled at the wrecked wall. ‘Now what’s going to keep the rats out?’

He laughed. ‘The rats are more at home in there than we are. Oh, I’m a fired-up warrior tonight and you’d better be ready for the passion that’s coming your way, woman!’

‘And you be ready for the pots and pans I’m throwing at your empty head. Get in this house. Get in!’ And she shoved him with the flat of her hand towards the crude gash of the door.

‘See you in an hour,’ Zida said to Kassu.

‘An hour.’

Roofa delivered one final mighty shove to the small of Zida’s back, and he fell into the house, weapons clattering, mail coat rustling.

Kassu walked on, grinning. But, as usual, he had lost his good humour by the time he had got home.

His own house was a marginally tidier, marginally better-built box of sod, in a rough street of similar properties. He stood before the house, looking at the old worn-out blankets that hung over the door, the patch of ground where they had tried to grow peas and beans but the plants had been devoured by rats and rabbits before they had a chance. It was hard to imagine a more depressing prospect, even if you hadn’t known what the atmosphere was like inside. Angrily he pushed indoors.

In the single room within, one lamp burned. Oil was expensive; all you could get was thick, gloopy stuff that was said to come from some animal of the sea. Henti was sitting cross-legged under the lamp, stitching an expensive-looking officer’s cloak, dyed deep purple. The cloak wasn’t Kassu’s, but that wasn’t unusual. The whole Hatti nation had pitched up on the plain before Carthage for this end-of-the-world war, and the whole nation was contributing to the effort. Kassu knew women who worked in the manufactories, even in the forges.

In the corner, meanwhile, Pimpira was grinding grain. He kept his head bowed, his eyes averted, subservient. He lived with Kassu and Henti as a slave once more, though he slept with his parents in a big barracks during the night, both of them having survived the March. The only sound in the room was the soft, repetitive, scratching rasp of Pimpira’s grindstone – and under that, a soft, breathy singing. Henti, murmuring an old Kaskan lullaby. Kassu had heard it before, it had been taught her by her grandmother on her mother’s side, who had come from that region. She probably didn’t even know she was singing it.