It was an evil thing to watch the morale fall from such heights. He’d given orders to the groups of sentries to kill any man who tried to desert, but even more had disappeared the night after, and he still didn’t know if they were dead or had run away. Sometimes he would see just a pile of their armor, as if they had shrugged off the metal with their honor, but occasionally the piles were spattered with blood.

Mithridates the king rubbed his tired face roughly, bringing color to his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept, not daring drunkenness now, with the chance of attack at any time in the night. They were like ghosts, he thought leadenly. Deadly, quick-moving spirits that left white flesh on the grass behind them.

His sons had worked out units of reinforcement, so that there were always fresh fighters in support, but it hadn’t worked. Mithridates wondered if his men were hanging back, unwilling to be the first to reach the enemy and be killed. When the Romans had vanished, the reinforcements would arrive with a great roaring and crashing of shields and swords, forming rings around the wounded and shouting insults into the night, but it seemed like a futile kind of spite, a coward’s final blow or sneer when safe.

The mist began to thin and Mithridates pinched his cheeks with his powerful thumbs to ward off the cold. Soon he would receive the night’s report of sentries lost, and he hoped it would be one of those times when every man arrived back dazed at their good fortune, staggering from the relief after hours of tension and fear. Those were rare nights now.

On one occasion, he had tried to ambush the enemy with a force of a hundred hidden near two of the sentry positions. Every one of them had been found long dead and cold the following day. After that, he hadn’t tried again. Ghosts.

A breeze lifted around him and he pulled his cloak even tighter. The mist swirled and boiled away in minutes, revealing the dark plain. Mithridates froze in fear as he saw the lines of soldiers waiting in silence. Perfect ranks of legionaries, their armor glittering painfully in a silver blur. Two cohorts. A thousand men. Two thousand feet away, waiting for him.

His heart thudded painfully under the wide muscles of his chest, making him feel light-headed. He heard the shout go through the camp as his surviving officers roused the men to stand and run to their positions. Panic touched him then. A thousand men on one side. Where were the rest?

“Send out the scouts!” he bellowed. Runners raced to the backs of horses, galloping through the lines of the camp.

“Archers to me!” he continued, his order passed down the line. Hundreds of bowmen began to converge on the cloaked figure. He gathered their officers around him.