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       Carthage,

      Ten Days after the Ides of March, AD238

      Faraxen lay on the roof of the warehouse. The smell of fish from the ponds and the gutting sheds was strong in his nostrils.

      Another centurion and Mauricius, the commander of the cavalry, were with Faraxen. They had left their helmets downstairs, where the other officers waited, and they had wrapped themselves in hooded cloaks whose colours were faded like the mudwalls of the compound. The roof was flat, and had a raised edge. If they made no sudden movements, the three men were near invisible from a distance.

      Off to the south-east, to the left, beyond the aqueduct was the necropolis, and beyond the tombs stood the gates and walls of Carthage. The tall battlements were crowded with spectators. It was a gaudy throng, as if at a festival. Musicians and food vendors made their way among them. The townsfolk were fools, Faraxen thought. Fools because they treated the coming battle as if it were no more than a spectacle, just another trip to the amphitheatre or circus, some entertainment put on for their amusement. Their minds and bodies had been corrupted by peace and security, by the luxury and vice of the city. If the Gordiani lost today, the people of Carthage would find that war was more than a show.

      Looking straight ahead, the plain immediately in front of the jumble of walls and buildings around the commercial fishponds was empty. The right flank of the army was some three hundred paces distant. The main body, a solid phalanx of infantry, stretched away from Faraxen, running parallel to the aqueduct, and facing west. Its left wing was anchored to the villa of Sextus far off in the south.

      Over eight thousand men, another two thousand armed with bows and slings out in front. If you did not know war, it would be impressive.

      It was more than a quarter of a century since Faraxen of the Mazices had left the mountains of Mauretania to join the army of Rome. In his six years with the auxiliary cavalry on the northern frontier, he had survived pitched battles in gloomy forests when the Emperor Caracalla campaigned against the Alamanni and the Carpi. Back here in Africa, during the next two decades patrolling the desert, rising up the ranks of the speculatores, he had come through innumerable skirmishes and raids. Faraxen knew war; what it took, and what it needed.

      Gordian the Younger was a brave man. Faraxen had served under him at Ad Palmam and at the storm of Esuba. Gordian was not a stranger to war. The young Emperor was aware that less than two thousand of his army were real soldiers. The rest were a rabble from the backstreets of Carthage, a mob unaccustomed to the makeshift weapons put in their hands. Gordian had taken his place in the centre of the line. Gordian must know that if his stratagem failed, he would die along with thousands of those who followed him. The death of his father and co-Emperor, Gordian the Elder, who watched from the gates, would follow not long after. Faraxen himself would be unlikely

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