‘I am sent here to help you, your highness, so will do all in my power. Now stand, for you are the daughter and granddaughter of great kings.’ He lifted, as gently as he could, and she rose. Crispinus was a short man, yet even so the top of her head barely touched his chin. Her hair was soft and lightly perfumed. Presumably her maid had brought the essentials with her, or somehow obtained them in the unlikely setting of a camp.

‘I was a prisoner,’ she whispered and her voice now was husky. ‘I came to free my people and the magistrates locked me up in the palace.’

‘Then they will be disappointed.’

She moved her head, eyes large in that small, delicate face as she stared up at him. ‘They do not know. I left a girl to pretend to be me, and a household to give all appearances that I am still in the palace.’ She gave a thin smile at her own cleverness. ‘The same girl learned of the way out used by the women of the night, so I came out in disguise, while they were all distracted planning their attack. They do not suspect a thing.’ Her chuckle was that of a small child, very pleased with herself.

Crispinus wanted to know whether she brought any word of weaknesses in the defences, and whether they might sneak men in through this side door, but concentration was not easy as her eyes widened even more and her lips parted, moist and welcoming. He kissed her, and just had time to hope that those bastards from the city did not attack tonight.

Nicopolis

Late on the fourteenth night of the siege

DOMITIUS WRESTLED WITH his soul. He had killed another man – at least almost certainly, for his aim was true and the bolt had struck the face and flung the soldier back behind the wicker barricade. They said that Philip of Macedon, Alexander’s father, had lost an eye to an arrow shot by an engine, and yet had lived on for twenty years, leading his army and fighting on foot and horseback. Domitius had always wondered about the story ever since he had first seen a ballista operated on the practice range and driving its bolts through thick planks to burst out the other side. Those were modern machines of course, and the instructors liked to show off so chose targets whose destruction would prove most spectacular – there was not much practical purpose to shooting at a melon, for instance. Perhaps in Philip’s day, the early ballistae had far less power, being little more than glorified bows, or the king was at long range or the missile bounced first on cover and lost a lot of its force. People could be lucky, but he did not think that was true of his target; that man was dead or perhaps worse dying a slow and painful death.

Whatever had happened, it was done and nothing could undo it. Most days, Domitius was taken around the walls to advise about the use of the artillery, and to repair engines when there were problems. The Nicopolitans were keen, but most of the engines were old and there was no one who had any experience of shooting them at real targets. Domitius knew the theory, and it had not really bothered him to instruct these men just as in the past he had learned and then instructed legionaries. Pride, his sense of what virtue meant, far more than the threats, made him do the job to the best of his ability, and his pupils were improving, not least because they got plenty of practice. They were still poorer at hitting a moving target, or the briefly appearing head bobbing up from cover. It was always a hard thing to drum into anyone’s head, that the trick was to guess where the enemy would be and aim there, not at where he was.