His fingers were clumsy with apprehension as he untied the laces of his bow case. As he fumbled, part of him cursed his caution. Yet the damp of the night air might have loosened the string of his bow had it not been protected. At last the weapon came free. The smooth leather of the grip calmed him a fraction. Opening his quiver, he selected and nocked an arrow.

The noise swelled, echoing back off the walls.

The first rays of the sun struck the western lip of the cliff.

Down in the lingering gloom, a murky shape flowed into the entrance to the canyon a couple of hundred paces from where he waited.

Valens got into position, half screened by the boulders.

They were coming fast. In the gathering light, individual riders emerged from the dark mass; men on horses, taller figures on camels. Thirty, perhaps forty of them, too many to count.

Valens part drew his bow.

A hundred paces. The thunder of their coming filled the canyon.

Surely now they must notice the lack of movement in the camp.

Valens’s left arm was trembling with the strain. Everything in his being screamed to shoot, to get this over. He did not move.

Fifty paces out, the nomads yelled their war cry. The ululating and unearthly sound was terrifying. Valens fought the urge to turn and run. Scrambling up the rocks offered no safety, only certain death. A coward dies a thousand times, a brave man only once.

The tent-dwellers swept into the camp. Long lances stabbed down at the humped shapes in cloaks. When they failed to bite into flesh, the Arabs finally realised the deception. They had been duped into slaughtering rocks and sacks masked by cloaks into the forms of sleeping men. Their war cry died to be replaced by a jabber of angry and alarmed shouts. The nomads were hauling on their reins. Horses and camels milled in confusion.

From high above came the call of a hunting horn.

The bearded faces of the tent-dwellers looked up.

The first arrow from the heights took one of them in the shoulder. He reeled, clutching the wound. An incredible shot into the shadowed ravine. It could only be Narses. More shafts hissed down. A horse reared as it was hit. Spear discarded, desperately its rider clung to its mane.

‘Now!’

Iudex loosed as he shouted. His arrow plucked a rider to the floor.

Like creatures from the underworld, Clemens and Zabda rose from concealment. While their bows still twanged, they reached for another shaft.

For a moment Valens watched, as if at the arena, a spectator detached from his surroundings.

Two more tent-dwellers howled in pain.