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empire again. With the oxen freed, the boy came to him, holding out a hand.
     
    ‘I have done as you asked, sir,’ the boy said nervously, holding out his cupped hands, screwing up his eyes at the shadows.
     
    ‘Aye, you have done well,’ the dark figure replied.
     
    The boy gulped as the dark figure leaned forward just a fraction, so a sliver of sunlight sparkled on three bronze hoops dangling from an earlobe, then dropped a pair of coins into his hands.
     
    The figure watched as the boy led the animals away, a dark cloud passing over his mind as he thought of his men further up the trail that would slit the youngster’s throat. But destiny required ruthlessness and a jealous guarding of knowledge, and that destiny beckoned.
     
    Yes, he mused; the Roman borders were weaker than ever.
     
    It was time to begin.
     

Chapter 2
     

     

     
    ‘No,’ Pavo growled, ‘take my hand!’ He stretched every sinew in his arm, his fingertips shaking as they hovered only inches from Father’s. The dunes all around them shimmered in the white heat of the placid but never-ending desert. The figure in front of him was barely recognisable as the powerful legionary Pavo had looked up to as a child. This man was haggard, his hair wiry and patchy, skin lined and features tired. But most horrifically, his eyes were gone and only empty, cauterised sockets remained. But he was still Father and now, stood only paces from him on the lip of this dune, he just wanted so much to embrace him once more.
     
    ‘Please, take my hand!’ Pavo cried out, but his own voice sounded distant and weak. That was when it always started. First, the sun darkened, then the dunes turned a sickly grey, and then the roaring began. Like a pride of lions at first, then like the cry of a thousand titans, the desert wind engulfed them and the still dunes were coaxed into a ferocious wall of stinging sand. Pavo struggled to resist the urge to blink as the boiling grains stung his eyeballs, but it was no use; the outline of Father grew faint in the storm. Only as he was about to fade completely, he lifted his hand towards Pavo’s. But it was too late.
     
    ‘No!’ Pavo sat bolt upright in his bunk, his skin bathed in sweat and his bedding soaked through despite the winter chill in the barrack block. He saw his breath clouding in the air before him in the faint sliver of moonlight that shone through the crack in the shutters above. All around, the exhausted men of his contubernium lay in deep slumber: Centurion Quadratus, Optio Avitus, Sura and the four recruits, Noster, Nero, Sextus and Rufus. He sighed, annoyed that the nightmare had come to him for the second time that night. Then he realised that his hand was trembling, clutching the bronze phalera. He slipped the leather strap from his neck and examined it in the moonlight. His mind drifted back to that day in Constantinople’s slave market, all those years ago, when it had first come into his possession.
     
    Then, his thoughts crept to the years of servitude and abuse that had followed. The echoes of slaves screaming in the basement of Senator Tarquitius’ villa poisoned his mood and quickly brought the chill through the skin to his bones.
     
    He shook his head and wiped the thoughts from his mind. Then he reached to the bedpost and untied the strip of scarlet silk Felicia had given him. He held it under his nose; it still carried the scent of her perfume. It cleared his mind of troubles, conjuring up fleeting images of her in an inviting pose that finally dissipated into blissful sleep. But only moments after he started snoring, a wail of buccinas filled the fort, the Roman horns sounding for morning wake up and roll-call.
     
    Pavo’s eyes shot open, the whites bloodshot. He groaned and sat up.
     
    ‘Bloody Mithras, keep the noise down,’ Avitus groaned from the bunk opposite. Then he looked down to Quadratus on the bunk below. ‘Mind you, it’s less of a din than your farting,’ he cackled.