Now they needed to dispose of the corpses.

‘Look!’

Forgotten by everyone, the driver must have hidden under the wagon. Now he ran across the road and started to scramble up the slope.

One of the soldiers started in pursuit, then they stopped. The face of the cliff the wagoner was attempting was sheer and could not be scaled.

An arrow snapped off the rocks above the man’s head.

‘Come down,’ Hairan called.

‘Please, don’t kill me,’ the man pleaded in bad Greek. Another arrow splintered closer to where he hung. ‘Don’t shoot me. I am coming down.’

‘And stop wasting my arrows,’ Narses said, retrieving his bow from Hairan.

Clemens and Decimus disarmed the wagoner, then brought him before Valens and pushed him to his knees.

‘I am just the driver. By all the gods, don’t kill me.’

‘Death is the last thing that you have to worry about,’ Valens said. The words of crafty Odysseus to the Trojan scout he had captured on the windy plains before Ilion.

‘I will drive the wagon wherever you want.’

‘We can manage the wagon ourselves.’

‘But I can help you. I know things.’

‘Such as?’

‘A rider passed not long ago. A messenger of the King. He will have riches, even the harness of his horse has a gold chain.’

‘We saw him pass.’

‘Take me with you.’

‘Do you always drive the supplies to the castle?’ Valens asked.

‘What?’ In his fear, he was distracted by the question. ‘No, this is my first time.’

‘And do the same soldiers always escort the wagon?’

‘No, they were complaining about it. They had done it last year. They were moaning that it was not their turn to go to the horrible place again so soon.’ A look of cunning came into his eyes. ‘You will never get in there without me.’

‘Why not?’

‘I know the password. I will drive, say the word at the gate. I will not betray you.’

Valens looked at Narses.

The Persian shrugged. ‘There were no passwords in my day.’

‘It is the warden. The soldiers were saying Naduk is a daemon. Always thinking of new things, making the life of the garrison hell.’

‘You had better tell us.’

‘Then you will kill me. Please, I don’t want to die.’

Valens pointed at Iudex. ‘You see this bald man here, the one with the face of a baby.’

The wagoner gazed over fearfully.

‘His looks are deceiving. He is skilled with the knife, good at making people tell secrets.’

Iudex smiled, and fished a long, wicked blade from his boot.

‘No, not that.’

Iudex stepped forward. Clemens and Decimus tilted up the man’s head, gripping him so tight that he could not move.

‘He takes pleasure in his work,’ Valens said.