The cardo rose ever so gently upwards as it ran through the city and, with the tall houses on either side, was like a tunnel. Ahead, Ferox saw the steps and high roof of a temple.

‘Hey, reckon it’s one of those cities?’ Vindex asked, for once with wonder in his voice. Soldiers talked, as soldiers always will, and years ago the Carvetian had first heard someone talking about the fabled cults of the east, of temples where maidens from the finest families went to lose their virginity in honour of the gods. Men could just wander into the precinct and take their pick, or so the wide-eyed soldiers claimed. Ferox had heard the stories many times, but never seen a place where such a temple existed and wondered whether it was no more than an army myth, like nymphs living in the forests or tribunes who knew what they were doing. Vindex had fixed on the idea, so that it became a favourite dream.

Still, he did not know Asia at all, and was still learning about Syria, let alone the lands beyond. He guessed Hadrian and Crispinus had sent him – and thus the other unfortunates – to spy out the city because they saw him as a clever and capable officer, and because he could not refuse them. He knew Britannia, especially the north, and had spent enough years in Moesia and beyond the Danube to understand how the peoples there thought and reacted. Out here he tried to listen well and see straight, but much remained strange to him.

Nowhere had he seen fortifications quite like these, and whoever had planned and built them had done a good job. They had come through the western side, the easiest to approach, and it did not strike him as easy to attack. The ground sloped enough ahead of them to suggest that it would be even more formidable on the far side, assuming the walls were of similar size. At the end of the cardo the land rose sharply, and he could just glimpse a wall whose battlements faced towards him, suggesting an inner citadel.

The Greeks, or whoever had laid these walls and towers down, had done a fine job, and they looked to be in decent repair. Yet the same people, and all who came after them, had not felt the urge to cover the sewer which ran down the middle of the cardo, and presumably found a way through the walls, even if he had not seen any sort of culvert. The slope made the water flow and carry the waste with it, although in high summer there might not have been enough to move it at all. Then and now it reeked, and woe betide anyone who fell into it. The gully was a couple of feet wide, and every few yards they had thought to put a stepping stone in place so that people could cross, but it still seemed so rudimentary, even squalid, compared to the walls and the grander buildings in the city. While most of the houses were mud brick, usually whitewashed and sometimes painted decoratively, a few were of stone and this was true of all the temples and public buildings.