Two men came in from the street. Almost as if by prior arrangement, the stevedores got up and left. The arrivals were dressed as off-duty soldiers: boots, belts and swords. Yet the ornaments on their belts were not military, and their appearance was too slovenly for them to be serving under the standards. Most likely they were local toughs, hired as bodyguards by some town councillor or the like. Ignoring Valens and the bald man, they walked to the bar with the swagger of their kind.

A second jug would do no harm. Valens called the girl. She served him perfunctorily, eager to get back to the newcomers. Irritated, Valens half turned on his stool and studied them. One had a very long face. Its length was accentuated by a wispy pointed beard, an abnormally long nose, and high, receding forehead. The other made up for his companion’s lack of hair with a bushy, square-cut beard, and thick ringlets falling to his shoulders. The latter wore a pearl in one ear. They talked to the girl in Greek with thick eastern accents.

Valens turned back to the mirror. Behind him, the bald man, having finished his eccentric repast, was writing in a small hinged book. The stylus and writing block looked miniscule in his big fingers. Valens focused on his own reflection. All the effort to obtain the post of Deputy Tribune in the Horse Guards – the letters of recommendation wheedled from family friends, the badgering of his cousin, the Senior Tribune – and he had ended up in Zeugma. Instead of winning glory beyond the Alps, or even enjoying dinner parties and recitals in Rome, he was drinking alone in this fly-blown town at the edge of the empire. He doubted he would have joined the army if disaster had not struck. His life would have been very different were his parents still alive. It was not that the gods were cruel, simply that they did not care.

The man with the long face brushed against him as he passed. Valens bridled. Smiling, the man apologised. His teeth were like those of a horse.

The girl met the man at the far end of the bar, led him up the stairs. She was better at feigning pleasure than the other girl who worked in the bar. Valens had tried both. Celibacy was bad for the health. No one blamed a man for taking what was offered, for walking down a well-used path.

Valens stared into his cup. He did not see the wine, but the empty expanse of the high plains of Mesopotamia. The tent-dwellers were fierce, strangers to the laws of humanity. It was said their pitiless nature often led them to torture those they captured. Instead of holding them to ransom, they staked them out to die slowly beneath the merciless sun. As for the Persians, they were infamous for the refinements of their cruelty.