‘I reminded him that he was a Persian: born to ride, shoot and abhor the Lie. I told him that Barbad had died for him, and that of the ten of us who had come to rescue him, three had already given their lives. He owed the dead the dignity of silent grief.’

Before they slept, they resaddled their horses.

The boy moved off to relieve himself. Clemens went to follow. Narses said Persian decorum demanded privacy. Someone should keep an eye on the child, Clemens said. Narses assured him that Sasan would do nothing foolish. Anyway, Aulus was on watch, and out on the Steppe the old hunter could see anything coming twelve miles off.

*

Valens was woken by someone shaking him. He had not been asleep long, and it was hard to drag himself awake, to force his tired eyes to focus.

It was Aulus. Fatigue had further sunken his cheeks. The skin under his eyes was veined and purple, like bruises.

‘They are coming,’ Aulus said.

‘Who?’ Valens was still stupid with sleep.

‘The Kindly Ones. Who the fuck do you think?’ Aulus said. ‘Sassanid horsemen, three columns of them spread out across the Steppe.’

‘How far?’ Valens ached all over from sleeping in his mail.

‘A couple of miles. The rain laid the dust. I caught a flash of sunlight on steel. When I knew the first column was there, I could find the others. There may be more further east. They are dragging the Steppe for us.’

‘Wake the others. We will move out straight away.’

Valens went over to Decimus. The horse master was already awake. ‘We will fit a blanket and girths on the two spare horses. If a mount goes lame, there will be no time to change saddles.’

As he tacked up the horse, Valens looked at the sun. It was directly overhead. Noon, the horses had had three hours rest. It was not enough. Six hours until darkness. That was too long. Despair seized his mind and limbs. All this way to end in failure on this featureless, empty plain. Severus, Quintus and Zabda had died for nothing. Unless some god intervened, the rest would soon be joining them. But if at last it all ends in sleep and quiet, why worry?

‘We are ready.’

Narses’s words jolted him back to his surroundings.

‘Is the boy enough of a horseman for this?’

‘He is a Persian.’

‘Mount up.’

As they came up out of the watercourse, they were seen. The Sassanids were much closer, little over a mile. They had been going at a trot. Now, spying their quarry, a trumpet brayed from the nearest column and they went straight up to a gallop. Other trumpets took up the call. The notes were repeated across the face of the Steppe.

The fugitives rode hard, in a clump, in no human order, but like a herd of wild horses.