There was a surprising grimness in the legatus’ voice, as well as something harder to pin down. ‘Yes, sir,’ Ferox said. Trajan, or someone close to him, must have decided that Crispinus was sane enough and trustworthy enough to be given a legion. It might be a test, for the emperor was fond of giving aristocrats one more chance to prove themselves. Half the trouble during the siege in Moesia had come from someone given just such an opportunity. Ferox wondered whether Crispinus was facing the same prospect of vindicating himself by distinguished and loyal service or utter disgrace if there was any hint of unreliability. There was also the third option of dying heroically and adding posthumous laurels to the family name. In many ways that was the most convenient from the point of view of the emperor and his advisors.

‘I am proud of the Hispana,’ Crispinus declared, the orator’s love of the dramatic taking over once more. ‘Soon we shall add to its reputation. I say we, because you are to be placed under my command – you and your ragamuffin band of cut-throats from Britannia. They are on their way because I suspect that I will need them and you.’

That was news, for the last he had heard of his men they had been in Thrace. Just before the siege he had been placed in temporary command of an irregular unit of Brigantes. There had been almost six hundred of them in those days, and by now barely eighty were left, even though the temporary appointment had stretched on and on. Sometimes they were with him to do yet another dirty job, and sometimes he was on his own. It would be good to see them, but that suggested something nasty was waiting for them, even if it was hard to think where they were going.

‘Why, my lord, if I am permitted to ask? I understood that the war was to be waged in Armenia.’

‘You understand too much.’ Crispinus was smiling. ‘But then you always have. And in this case you are only half right. The war will probably start in Armenia, but where it will spread after that is a page yet to be written.’ Trajan was known to be concentrating a large force ready to move against Armenia if its king chose not to behave himself, and Ferox suspected that the Romans would make sure that he could not because he sensed that they wanted war. Yet that was all further to the north, and Legio VIIII Hispana was not part of it. Founded by the divine Augustus, it had once had a fine reputation, and had served in Britannia from the time of the invasion under Claudius. Still, the empire never had enough soldiers and a few years ago someone had had the bright idea of stripping Britannia of a legion for use elsewhere. In Ferox’s opinion the decision was sheer folly, but it had been made and the Hispana chosen. After that things had not turned out well. They went to the Rhineland just when plague broke out, costing them a lot of men. Afterwards a thousand of the fittest legionaries were taken from them and posted as permanent reinforcement to legions ground down by the wars in Dacia. Then Hispana went to the mouths of the Danube, and hundreds more men fell ill with swamp fever. The survivors were moved again, this time to Syria, to take over duties from other legions earmarked for the war in Armenia. Another cull saw more men and officers posted to bring those legions up to strength and Hispana was flooded with new recruits to replace them. Outside Antioch a new disease met them and many more died, shivering and fouling themselves. In the last few years, Legio VIIII Hispana had become known as a sickly, unlucky unit. Crispinus’ new command was scarcely a prize.