Brasus wondered whether he was different, but that was surely vanity, and instead once again wondered whether he was a fraud, pretending to be pure so that others would treat him with honour. The king had been very kind in his words when Brasus had gone to his stronghold, and also in his gestures. He had been permitted to meet his bride to be, the king’s youngest daughter, who had presented him with a tress of her deep brown hair, neatly plaited and tied with a ribbon. One day soon he would learn her name – her real name not the one that was used by others in daily speech – and he would know one of life’s great mysteries. A woman’s path was a different one, but in marriage he would glimpse a little of her world and hope to learn from it.

Thoughts of marriage, of a girl, round-faced with the wide nose and mouth of her family, had come into his mind often, and especially during the night. Brasus was not quite sure whether he had seen fear as well as anticipation in her eyes, and wondered about his own feelings. His father had once said that the best of wives made a man relish this life and cease to long for death and the transformation it gave to the pure. A mean-spirited part of him sometimes made Brasus wonder whether his mother’s death from fever months before the last war had done as much to inspire his father’s stubborn fight and the taking of his own life as his quest for a pure life.

Thoughts were treacherous, and brought doubt and suspicion. Brasus wondered whether the men who claimed to find emptiness lied and had spent the hours pondering one thing or another or whether he was the liar for pretending to be faithful and pure. So the night passed, with the water dripping and Brasus worrying about so many things.

Oddly enough, Brasus had spent less time wondering about the trial to come than other things. He was worried by some of the king’s choices. It was an honour to be tasked with leading the advance guard, the men who were to storm the fort and seize the bridge by surprise. Yet he wondered why the king had chosen Diegis and Rholes to command the main army that would follow. Diegis was said to be a man of great piety, rigorous in thought and life, but was also widely known as a fool who struggled to make up his mind and was sometimes timid and sometimes reckless in battle. Rholes was rare among the king’s advisors, one of the Getae rather than the Daci and a man who wore his hair long and piled into a ball on top of his head so that the cap he wore was tall, like a bag. He drank wine like a Thracian, ate all meats like a Roman, was crude of speech and an open whoremonger. Rholes was also a great warrior and an even greater leader, shrewd in thought and cunning in action.