An army camp meant filth and stink, and everyone knew that. So many men and so many animals meant the reek of sweat and dirt, of urine and manure, both human and animal. The patches where the deserters pitched their tents were neater and cleaner than the rest, and one of their leaders kept urging Diegis to make the rest of the army copy.

‘We are not Romans but free men,’ was all that the man now in sole charge of the army would say. So the filth piled up, and men drank from the river downstream from where hundreds relieved themselves, and more and more were falling sick, adding to the piles of excrement and the appalling reek. By now the whole camp smelled like Rholes’ tent and more men were bound to die. Brasus could not help wishing that Diegis would be one of them for the man was a dangerous fool.

The siege towers had been Rholes’ idea, and two of them were rapidly taking shape, but it took constant prodding to remind Diegis that they would need the Roman ditches to be filled in and the earth well enough packed and supported to hold their weight.

‘There will be time enough the night before we attack,’ he declared. Brasus ignored him, and had some of the deserters and one of the Black Sea Greeks with the army making covered sheds and extending the attackers’ rampart ever closer to the outer ditch so that it could be filled properly. Diegis mocked but did not stop him, and seemed uninterested in supervising the siege, and instead let each chieftain or leader act as he willed. Some did nothing, others were busy, but all too often did not speak to the rest so that they did not help or even hindered each other’s efforts. Brasus managed to get a few to work with him, persuading because he could not order.

The army was restless, the animals’ bellies swelling from eating too much grass as they were left to pasture all day, and more and more men began vomiting or spent half the day squatting over their own filth.

Diegis revived with the arrival of the captive Roman tribune and the news of the death of Longinus. He spoke openly of his hatred for the man, and the number of insults the Roman had directed at him in councils, and did not seem aware that the king’s plan had been to use the man as a hostage.

‘This will show them that it is hopeless to resist,’ Diegis declared after an hour spent alone in his tent save for his bodyguards, one or two advisors, the captive Piso and – strangest of all – Ivonercus. ‘We will send the tribune to speak in his own voice so that they know the truth.’ There was much that Brasus did not understand and rumours passed through the camp that the Roman tribune had sworn an oath to Decebalus and was now his man. Someone else said that the tribune had murdered the Legatus Longinus, or had it arranged, for some dark scheme of the king’s to outwit the enemy.