Ajax knew it was the truth and he nodded wearily. ‘Then I must not be taken alive. I shall die here, if not by a Roman sword, then by my own hand, or by yours, my friend.’

‘No,’ Karim interrupted. ‘While there is a chance of you continuing our fight against Rome, you must live. With Ajax at large, no Roman can sleep easily. That is what matters. That is all that can give hope to those who are still in chains, General. You must live. You must escape.’

‘He’s right,’ said Canthus. ‘And I’m the only one who can get you out through the Roman lines. There is a way, and if we are challenged they will recognise me.’

‘Escape?’ Ajax shook his head. ‘You would have me shame myself.’

‘There is more at stake than your pride,’ Karim insisted. ‘Sometimes a man becomes more than himself. He becomes an inspiration. His name is a weapon in the hearts of those who follow him, and a threat to his enemies.’

‘This is true even if he dies,’ Ajax countered.

‘If you die, then all that you might still achieve, all your name might yet stand for, is lost.’

Ajax lowered his head and thought for a moment. Earlier that evening he had set his mind to meeting his death here in this obscure temple on the fringe of trackless wasteland. He was tired of running from Rome. Yet, as Karim said, there was more to be wrung out of the situation. He looked up at the dark figure of Canthus. ‘What is your plan?’

There was still an hour or so before first light when the small party of men flitted across the gap between the temple and the curtain wall. On the far side of the temple they could hear the uproar as Hepithus led a strong force of the defenders in an attack on the Romans guarding the breach and the bolt throwers and their crews beyond. The Nubian had volunteered to remain behind and cover his leader’s escape and Ajax silently pledged to honour his companion’s memory with the lives of ten Romans as swiftly as possible.

The ropes that Canthus had used to scale the wall were still in place and one by one the handful of gladiators and the best of the Arab warriors that Ajax had chosen to come with them climbed carefully up the mud-brick wall, keeping flat as they heaved themselves over the top of the wall and then quietly descended to the ground outside. As the last man dropped into the shadows, Ajax tugged the sleeve of Canthus’s Roman tunic.

‘What now?’