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Caesarea; seven on the south side of the path that led to the closed gates, six to the north. Old bodies hung there, desiccated, scentless bones held together by tags of tendons, too dry now for the vultures.
    Before the front riders reached them, the gates opened and a detachment of the city Watch rode out; fifteen armed and armoured men on fresh horses, who spread out in a row across the sand.
    Ibrahim’s train halted, smoothly. Even the camels, who had smelled water, made no effort to forge through the line of polished iron.
    At the rear of the column, Mergus and Pantera leaned forward on the pommels of their saddles showing every sign of weariness, hunger and thirst – all of which were genuine – and of boredom, which was not.
    ‘If Saulos knows we’re here …’ Mergus murmured.
    ‘He will clear one of the crosses for each of us,’ Pantera said. ‘Try to get one facing the sun. Death comes faster that way.’
    Pantera kept his quiet gaze on the camels ahead; in this guise, he was a Nabatean archer of limited imagination and noparticular fear of Rome. Mergus, who had seen the scars on his body, and had spoken to some of the men who had made them, cursed and spat and hunched his back against the dead, and made sure he knew the fastest route to freedom.
    Best to go left, he thought, south, towards Jerusalem where the Hebrew zealots, however mad, might take in a renegade centurion and his half-breed friend if they could prove themselves useful with weapons.
    But no shout came, no hands fell on their shoulders, no blades were thrust in their faces with threats and menace. The camels, horses and men of Ibrahim’s train were inspected by a decurion, who introduced himself as Gaius Jucundus, commanding officer of the city Watch. He greeted Ibrahim affably enough and commiserated with the men for their wounds as he rode slowly down the line.
    ‘There’s still time to leave,’ Mergus said, as he came closer. Just. Maybe. If their horses were not too tired. If the Watch were slow to see them go.
    ‘Not yet,’ Pantera said. ‘Let your sleeve come up. See if they know who you are.’
    Obediently, Mergus made as if to stifle a yawn and, in doing so, let his right sleeve rise a little. On his forearm above the centurion’s baton, the twinned XX of the Twentieth legion had recently been extended by new lines to form the double Vs of the name Valeria Victrix, given after the bloodbath of Britain’s rebellion. Above the legion-sign, older, a lion stood over a bull, and both were topped by a raven.
    The inkwork of the god-mark was poor, blued almost to invisibility against Mergus’ olive skin, but a man did not rise to the rank of Watch captain without sharp eyes and a sharper mind and a working knowledge of the gods who held the legions close.
    Jucundus spun his horse neatly, bringing it to stand just in front of Mergus. His men might have been Syrian, but he was a Roman of equestrian stock, with the hooked nose and prominent brow that marked such men, as if they were all castfrom the same mould. His eyes, when he raised them, held a frank, friendly curiosity.
    ‘If I tell the men what you are,’ he said, ‘they’ll drag you from your horse and ply you with wine and whores. Shall I?’
    ‘Later, maybe.’ Mergus shrugged a shyness that was only partly feigned. His past with the legions was the reason he had been taken on as outrider in the first place; he had no intention of hiding it. ‘I’ve given my oath to see Ibrahim’s camels safely sold and we’ve already lost the best to bandits. I’d hate to be carousing while the rest were stolen.’
    ‘Camels are hard to hide,’ Jucundus said. ‘In Caesarea, small men steal small things; the coins and gems that can be swallowed and retrieved two days later, or denied with plausibility. If anyone steals your camels, it’ll be the governor claiming them as tax.’
    A brief pause held them a moment. ‘He’ll take a tax on the beasts before they’re sold?’