‘You would target the ramps?’ Memnon asked.

‘This time, yes. They’re what’s most important. After that maybe the camps. A small one if you want to hit them where they are weak, or one of the big ones if you want to shock them even more. Then vary your targets to keep them guessing.’

Memnon and his colleague exchanged glances. ‘We shall see. Tomorrow morning we will do this again. Otherwise you will return to your confinement.’

‘And if I need him?’ Simon asked.

‘Go to the prison whenever you like,’ Athenodorus told him. ‘But he does not leave those walls without our permission.

‘Of course.’ Simon turned to Domitius. ‘Seen something else?’

Domitius was gripping the parapet, knuckles white. It was a good half a mile away, and he could not be sure, except that he was. No one else rode quite like that or gestured in that way. Caecilius was with the besiegers.

‘No,’ he lied. ‘Thought that there was some digging over there, but it’s just shadows. I wondered whether they were starting another fort or even connecting them with a wall as I mentioned. It’s nothing though.’

Simon stared at the spot where the Roman had pointed. The earth seemed to have been turned, but that was all he could make out. A party of Roman officers were riding past it. ‘Then time to be off.’

Domitius went with him. Sorry, old friend, he thought to himself as he wondered whether the Nicopolitans would guess that the Romans were most likely mining. His old friend would surely be involved and he did not want to provoke an attack on the works. Still, he could not keep Caecilius safe all the time and just had to hope that the old man would not be in the wrong place at the wrong moment.

XV

Up country

Thirteenth day before the Kalends of May
The eighth day of the siege

THERE WERE SIXTY carts and waggons in the convoy and hundreds of pack animals. On the way to the river most of them had been empty, the rest carrying no more than enough food for the animals and the soldiers of the escort. The return trip was different, after a day spent at the ferry crossing, loading up with supplies from the great stockpile on the far bank guarded by a cohort of VIIII Hispana and other detachments. On the way back, wheels cut deep ruts in the trackway and all the slog of getting the army to Nicopolis had to be repeated. They were better prepared this time, for the workshops had made little wooden ramps to lay in front of wheels and make it easier to haul the waggons out of each patch of soft sand. Yet the work was still hard, and there were fewer hands to do it.

Ferox had watched the dust approaching from the north west, the thin, straggling clouds churned up by vehicles. There was no way of hiding the movement of a convoy like this, unless it travelled at night, and the chaos of that did not bear contemplation. Oxen were dim beasts, and had a nasty habit of walking into the cart in front. Apart from that, it would be all too easy for a few raiders to sweep in and kill or steal. So the convoys had to travel in daylight, and everyone for many miles around would see them coming, which, given that there was only one path they could take without going many miles out of the way, did not really matter. This was the lifeline of Crispinus’ army, the link with the empire and its bounteous supplies, and it was perilously thin and horribly vulnerable. Crispinus hoped that their enemies would not realise this, at least not yet, and would keep their gaze fixed on his army and the siege works. A man might as well hope to leave his purse on a bench in the bathhouse and find it still there and still full an hour later.