Sosius was nowhere to be seen after Nicopolis had fallen. Ferox said little about him, since he was not sure how much Cerialis or anyone else apart from Crispinus had been told about Hadrian’s agent. The letters so embarrassing to Hadrian were never made public, and since the houses of two officers were robbed and the men and several of their household found murdered by the thieves, most likely Sosius had arranged things in his usual style. In the longer run, there was far less peculation in the army in Syria, and that was something, although it probably had far more to do with Trajan’s presence in the region, and his close attention to military administration and discipline.

Domitius had told them what he had learned from Caecilius, and gone on his way. He married Sara, and they were happy. Ferox was never sure whether or not they had gone to Egypt.

In July orders arrived for Ferox and the remaining Brigantes to return to Britannia. They did not come directly from Hadrian, but there was little doubt that he was behind them. For the moment at least, Ferox was free. That did not mean that Hadrian’s schemes were at an end and Ferox was too old to believe that it was really over. Roman senators tended to stay ambitious as long as there was breath left in their bodies, so no doubt Hadrian would call on him again, whenever it suited his purpose. Yet if this was just a lull before more storms, then all the more reason to make the most of it.

The journey was slow and difficult. With so much of the army moving to support Trajan’s drive down the Euphrates and Tigris valleys, no one in authority was that interested in helping a ragtag irregular unit make its way in the opposite direction. Nothing was straightforward, but nearly all of them made it in the end.

Most Nicopolitans had lost their homes. Workshops and warehouses were destroyed, goods and tools lost or stolen. Few were keen on living under the eyes of a Roman garrison. A few years later when the legionaries left, they slighted more of the defences. No one ever bothered to repair them, for the population who had stayed numbered no more than a few hundred and it never grew beyond that. People moved to better, safer cities, sometimes far afield. A century later the city was abandoned altogether and forgotten.

In the lands around it, the farms and little villages remained and life went on. Folk spoke and lived the way their fathers and fathers’ fathers had done, tending their flocks, tilling the hard earth, and cherishing every drop of rain.

HISTORICAL NOTE

THE CITY IS a novel, and although I have done my best to depict the era and its setting as accurately as possible, it is only fair to give the reader an idea of where the history stops and the fiction begins. In the Historical Note to The Fort, the predecessor to this story, I explained that, in spite of the fact that Trajan’s Dacian Wars were waged on a very large scale and involved a significant proportion of the Roman army, they are very poorly recorded. Narrative sources for them are meagre, while the scenes depicted on Trajan’s Column are stylised and very hard to understand without knowledge of the story they tell. The situation with Trajan’s Parthian expedition from AD 114–117 is far worse, although it appears to have involved even more troops. Almost everything, from the most basic chronology of the operations, to routes involved, battles and sieges, has been lost and reconstructions vary immensely. What we tend to have are hints, such as a victory arch built by Trajan outside Dura Europos which might commemorate a battle fought and won there or nearby or more generally celebrate a victorious campaign.