The brigands had killed one man, not the mission. The gods knew, he did not want to, but now he must find other means.

The jug was empty. He called for another.

I was born as nothing

Shall be again as I was;

Humanity is nothing. Pour out

The pleasurable drug of choice, the wine

That is antidote to all our miseries.

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Arbayestan

TWO DAYS OUT OF RESAINA they left the road, and set out east into the wilderness. This was Arbayestan, the land of the Arabs; a harsh place of sand and rock, inhabited by no one except the nomadic tent-dwellers.

With no clear path to follow across the flat emptiness, they were guided by Quintus the navigator. On the second day, mountains loomed in the distance to the south. The Singaras range was a sudden wall of grey rock, fissured and cut by deep ravines, running parallel to their progress. Clouds hung over the crests, bringing a promise of rain that was never fulfilled. Away to the north, a hint of green along the horizon would have been taken for a mirage, if wildfowl had not marked it as wetlands. Where they journeyed, between the mountains and the marshes, there was nothing except bare rocks and rippled sand, dotted with desert shrubs blanched by the merciless sun.

Over their armour, they wore loose robes, bought in Resaina. Even so, the sweat ran copiously under their mail. The straps and fittings chafed their shoulders, their belts rubbed their waists raw. Some wrapped cloths around their helmets, most slung the stifling headgear on a horn of their saddle and wore a turban or a broad-brimmed hat. As the days went by, without conscious design, they came more and more to resemble their pretence of mercenary guards of a merchant caravan.

The evening was a blessed relief. With the animals rubbed down, fed and watered, all except the two on sentry duty were free to shrug off the heavy, stifling war gear, to sit and eat in the delicious cool of the night.

Yet it was at this, the best part of the day, that Valens felt most keenly the loneliness of command. In Rome he had been Deputy Tribune of the Horse Guards. He had been able to take problems to his senior, his cousin, and there had been officers of other units in whom to confide, as well as civilian acquaintances at dinner parties or in the baths. He wondered now if perhaps, after the death of his parents, he had strained the patience of his listeners. Misery had encouraged him to drink too much. Know yourself, the Delphic Oracle commanded. But in a city of a million souls there had always been someone – if only a passing stranger – to whom he could open his heart.