‘Good gate,’ Vindex called out to him. ‘Some of these Romans are getting smarter.’ Even the Brigantes made sure there was no direct path into one of their forts, and the tribes of the south had gone to even greater lengths to confuse any attackers.

‘Think before you speak, man,’ Ferox said as quietly as was possible while still being heard about all the hubbub. They were using the language of the tribes, and had been all day, and it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone in these parts would understand them, but there was no sense in taking the risk. Still, he had known Vindex for more than twenty years and not yet found a reliable way of keeping the man quiet.

‘Only saying.’

‘Then don’t,’ Ferox told him. ‘And these folk aren’t Roman. We’re outside the empire, remember.’

‘They’re not Carvetii, I know that, so what’s the difference?’

‘The difference is they might see us as enemies,’ Bran suggested, then blinked as they came through the smaller gate, leaving behind the shadowed courtyard and coming into the bright sunshine. ‘You know, might want to kill us.’

‘That’s true wherever himself goes,’ Vindex pointed out, gesturing at Ferox. ‘Remember Scythia?’

‘When I get bad dreams.’

‘Or Moesia, Pannonia, Thrace, Germania? Taranis, we even went back home to his country and within days they all wanted to kill him.’

‘There is a pattern, I’ll allow,’ Bran said. ‘Might be just bad luck though. After all, we’re still here.’

‘Wherever here is.’ They were on the cardo now, and the press eased a little, until the hawkers and idlers from the city itself started to swell the numbers again. ‘Anyway,’ Vindex concluded, ‘we’re still here because we’re better at killing than most folk.’

‘True.’ Bran did not boast, and merely stated a fact as he saw it. ‘And you have to admit that taking a strong dislike to the centurion tends not to end well for most who try it.’

Ferox glanced back at the walls. They looked wide, far wider than he had expected, so that the walkway at the top offered plenty of room. There did not seem to be any stairs, so they must all be in the towers. A row of well-spaced and open windows ran along the curtain walls, perhaps a little higher than the ones in front, which suggested that there were rooms inside.

‘Don’t think you can afford me, lass!’ Vindex called to one of the prostitutes standing where a side road fed into the cardo and there was a break in the canopied stalls set up all along the colonnade. There were shabbier ones on the side roads, along with other services.

Nicopolis was a tough nut to crack, and even though some of this was the market, Ferox reckoned that the Romans were underestimating the number of people who lived here. There might not be any proper soldiers, but even an old man or woman could tip a rock off the top of a parapet onto someone’s head. From that height it would crush any helmet, not to mention the skull inside. No doubt this had happened to one of the Greeks at Troy – everything seemed to have happened to one of the Greeks at Troy as far as educated Romans, let alone the Greeks themselves, were concerned.