‘May I join you?’

Hadrian turned to see another horseman approaching. He was a slim youth, eighteen at the most, with the delicate features of the East, and his large brown eyes outlined with kohl, even if his hair and thin beard were after the Greek style. Lips a little too full, and inclined to pout by the look of it, while the little pearl earrings were truly barbaric. His trousers and long-sleeved tunic were silk, as was the trapper on his sprightly horse. Hadrian could see a gaggle of riders in eastern dress, no doubt the lad’s attendants, and since they were talking amicably with the commander of the singulares Augusti, the emperor’s own mounted bodyguard, he was clearly of some importance.

‘Certainly, if you give us your name? I am Aelius Hadrian.’ Lusius Quietus glanced back and did not appear welcoming, but nor was he inclined to intervene.

‘Your servant, my lord,’ the boy said, bowing his head, although Hadrian suspected that the name was entirely new to him. ‘I am honoured – and they call me Arbandes, son of Abgarus.’ That made his father the king of Osrhoene, so all the more interesting.

‘Welcome, lord prince. Shall I send for shield and javelin for you?’

‘I do not need them,’ the young man said, and gave the bowcase and quiver behind his saddle a complacent tap.

Trajan had started his run and was already at a steady canter. That was approved by the drill books, for good cavalry attacked in order and not in some wild charge. It was also sensible for a man of his years, his once pitch-black hair now a mottled grey and his forehead a good deal higher than it used to be. Come September the princeps would be fifty-nine, and he was beginning to look it. Today’s little show was all part of it, and something Trajan would not have done a decade ago in Dacia. A good commander was supposed to be as adept with sword, shield and spear as he was skilled at combining all the elements of his army and directing them to one purpose, but he did not need to keep proving it. Then a few nights ago, as they talked over dinner of the great generals of the past, someone had told of Pompey, a man by then as old as the emperor was now, training with his soldiers in Greece and outdoing them on the exercise field.

The emperor threw his first javelin some thirty paces from the six foot high post set up as target. That was a fairly long range, but his aim was true and the point struck, although it did not stick in deeply and dropped to the ground. Timing was the key, for the horse was pounding on across the dry earth, the distance closing every moment, and the idea was to keep up the pace while reaching back for the second javelin, hefting it and then throwing before coming level with the target. Trajan did it, loosing the missile when five paces from the post. This time the head of the lancea drove deep into the wood and stayed there, as the watching soldiers cheered.