‘Bugger,’ Rufus said softly and pushed himself up, nearly slipping again, and started to follow the tribune. The numbness was spreading to his limbs, and he panted as he forced himself onwards when all he wanted was to sit down and rest. No, that was not true. What he really wanted was be two thousand or more miles away at home in Tarraco, with his father – his dear, indulgent father – once again telling him not to be such a damned fool as to take a commission in the legions and having the sense to listen this time.

Soon the centurion was leaning forward and using both hands because the slope was getting steeper. The ground felt different, harder and much stonier, and sometimes he had to go around stretches where it was almost vertical. He could see more, and once or twice glimpsed a few stars between the tears in the clouds. It must be well past midnight, and less than half an hour, even if it felt like days, since the legatus had sent the centurion and tribune on this climb in the hope of working out where they were. With a final effort, Rufus scrambled up to the crest. The tribune was waiting, reaching down with his hand.

‘Ah Rufus, my dear fellow,’ he said and hauled the centurion up. ‘Beastly climb, isn’t it? And beastly night too, for that matter. Who’d join the army, eh?’

Rufus managed to straighten up. ‘Only the hopeful and the hopeless,’ he just managed to say, repeating something he had seen written on more than a few walls. ‘And I’m no longer sure that I am either.’ He decided not to add any of the riper sentiments that usually followed the slogan.

The tribune grinned, his teeth very white. Lucius Flavius Arrian was a short, stocky Greek from Bithynia. Rufus was twenty-six and guessed that the tribune was a similar age, or perhaps even a little younger, which made his air of cheerful competence as impressive as it was exasperating. Still, Arrian was an eques and had spent several years commanding an auxiliary cohort somewhere on the Danube before becoming one of the five equestrian tribunes with the legion, so he must have been through his share of hardships in the past.

‘Hard to be sure of anything in that storm. At least we’ve seen the end of that. Look, there’s the Moon herself!’ Arrian was pointing up at a thin crescent. The clouds were scattering, the great fields of the Heavens appearing and washing the hilltop in a pale silvery light.

‘It really is quite beautiful here,’ Arrian declared brightly, sweeping his arm across the horizon. ‘And the foulness of that storm makes us appreciate that loveliness all the more… Rarely known worse weather,’ he added, now shaking his head, ‘or a worse place to be in such a storm. Enough to make a man wish that he was home – or anywhere other than here.’ He sniffed and then rubbed his face with his hand. Rufus’ skin was still numb from cold and the hours of hammering rain. ‘And yet…’ The light was good enough to see the tribune’s brow crease as if he was in deep thought. ‘And yet we must consider whether such wishes are truly justified or even rational. After all, wherever you are, are you not wet when it rains?’