‘Rise, boy.’ Decebalus had come to him again. ‘I shall have need of you.’

Brasus shivered, feeling the cold, and his eyes were so glassy that he could barely see. He heard a dull grunt, then another, but did not see the axeman standing behind the two Roman soldiers swing down or the merchant staring wide-eyed at the corpses beside him.

Decebalus walked over to the black-clad priest and the man raised his arms and called in his hoarse voice. ‘The Lord of the Air has spoken. The pure shall live free!’

‘Then it is war,’ the king shouted. Brasus thought that he looked happier in that moment than he had seen his ruler for many months. The waiting was almost over, the pure would ascend, some to glorious blessedness and those left to freedom.

I

The fort at Piroboridava, Province of Moesia Inferior

Three days after the Ides of Februarius, in the consulship of Julius Candidus and Caius Antius (AD 105)

SNOW STARTED FALLING again as they reached the top of the tower, the big flakes tumbling slowly through the still air to settle on the timbers. Two sentries were on watch, their drab cloaks dotted with flecks of white, and the men stiffened to attention when their centurion appeared. Sabinus, round faced, looking far younger than his twenty-seven years, was a relative newcomer to the legion and indeed the army, commissioned after several years on the council in his home town in Baetica, but was well liked. He grinned at the two legionaries, and gestured for them to stand at ease.

‘All well, boys?’ Sabinus asked them, knowing the answer already.

‘All well, sir.’ The ‘boys’ were both veterans, only a couple of years away from the end of their twenty-five years with I Minervia, and glad not to stand on ceremony. They pulled their cloaks tight and assumed the well-practised stare of sentries doing their job, apparently oblivious to the centurion and the officers with him, while making sure that they heard anything that might be useful or worthy of gossip. Rumours that they were to be relieved and allowed back to civilization had been doing the rounds of the garrison for weeks, and the arrival of the four riders at noon today was taken as a good sign. It was happening. No matter that it seemed odd to change garrisons before the winter was out, and no matter that it seemed even odder to replace a predominantly legionary garrison with a band of irregulars from the wilds of Britannia. If it meant that the vexillatio of I Minervia could return to their base – or anywhere other than here – then what did it matter if the army was making even less sense than usual. They were going, and soon by the look of things, and that promise helped to keep a man warm as he paced up and down on top of this tower.

One of the Britons’ boots skidded where snow had been trodden into sludge. The man next to him steadied him and then nodded as if to reassure his comrade. They were clean shaven, smart and might easily have been decurions in a regular ala of cavalry, true auxiliaries rather than half-barbarian irregulars. Each had a fine iron helmet with the shallow neck guard safer for a horseman than the wide ones on an infantry helmet. Both were slim, rangy men, with a stiff yellow plume atop each helmet adding to their height. The third was built along the same lines, but taller, the skin on his face so taut that even with his drooping moustache it looked skull-like. He seemed to sneer at the man who had almost fallen, although that may simply have been his usual expression. Swathed in a thick tartan cloak, with an old-fashioned army issue helmet, but no mark of rank, he struck Sabinus as more bandit than soldier.