‘Stay calm, lad’, a voice with a strong Italian accent said to me out of the gloom.

            ‘What–?’ I began, sitting up, wincing with the pain. I touched a hand to my head, where there was a receding lump and the makings of a vicious scar.

            ‘He was talking in his sleep again’, another voice came, from my left.

            ‘Where am I? What happened?’

            The first voice again, now matched with a grimy face, moving towards me. ‘You are in New Carthage—you were captured in battle. We all were.’ He gestured around the room. ‘My name is Balbus, from Capua.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not one of my shit-eating traitorous brethren.’

            ‘How long have I—have we all been here?’

            Balbus shrugged. ‘Some of us from the beginning. Domitianus over there was captured at the River Ebro when the Scipios first came over. Flavius’—here he pointed out a prostrate figure, looking half-dead in the murk—‘was on the run for weeks after escaping the defeat of Publius Cornelius. He was just brought in yesterday.’

            I slumped back against the hard, wet wall, dank with darkness and despair. ‘How many?’

            ‘There are about seventy of us. There used to be more, but… the water here, it’s not so good. Be careful.’

‘Anyone from the Glorious Second here? Any marines?’

            ‘I am from the Second, brother’, came another voice. ‘Cyprianus’, it said. A face came over mine. We clasped hands. I could not place him, but the presence of a fellow legionnaire strengthened my morale.

            ‘A few others from the Second came in with us, captured after the last charge. But all except Cornelius over there died within the first few days.’ I looked where he pointed at a man slumped in the corner, but it was not the Cornelius I knew from the battle against Hasdrubal. Cyprianus looked down at his feet. ‘I haven’t seen any of the marines.’

            It was Cyprianus, and then later, mostly Cornelius, when he emerged from his long sleep, who told me what had happened after I fell on the battlefield; of the end of our leader, and the almost total destruction of our combat unit. To my urgent pleas for news of Mattias and Crispus the men in the cell would only open their hands, and shrug. They did know, however, from the few times that they had been allowed to leave their cell, that there were numerous Spaniards also held hostage in the fortress. As to why, they could only guess, but Balbus thought that they were being kept as hostages. I asked if they had ever met them, but they shook their heads; however, one of the Spaniards they had seen was a striking young woman, perhaps only seventeen or eighteen years old.

            ‘How were you captured, brother?’ I asked Cyprianus one afternoon, as we tried to pass the time.

            He shifted uncomfortably. ‘There were only a handful of us left. A mere handful against thousands. All around us, our brothers were dead or dying. There did not seem to be any sense in joining them when it was so clear that the cause was already lost.’

            He glanced at me, before looking away. ‘We were offered terms—our lives would be spared. No mention was made of this place’, he added, looking upwards to the dim hole in the roof, through which a brief sunlight filtered. ‘For a time I thought we would be allowed to leave the battlefield with honour.’

            ‘Don’t be too hard on him’, said Balbus, sensing my anger. ‘We are hemorrhaging soldiers left and right in this bloody war. We need every man we can get our hands on. We will get out of this place eventually, and rejoin our comrades.’

            ‘But look what happened to the survivors of Cannae’, I shot back, all memory of my conversations with Mattias and my scepticism vanishing, and the roach taking over. I balled my hands into fists. No surrender.

‘They were sent to punishment battalions and have been virtually exiled to Sicily, prevented from regaining their honour. Or have you all forgotten that?’ I was seething with rage.

‘I would rather have died in combat than end my days here, or, worse, get out and have my fate known to the rest of my comrades.’

            I slumped against the wall, overcome with despair. The cell pressed in on us, and the darkness, broken only by the narrow hole in the roof, was nearly absolute. Unseen things rustled and scurried in the corners, while the smell from the single bucket for our natural needs assaulted my nostrils. Later, I itched at lice, while bed bugs ate me through the long, cold nights. Even though it was high summer, the dungeon was cool and clammy. I was constantly tortured by thoughts of Caelia, Mattias, and Crispus. Sometimes I would reach into my tunic and feel the outline of the metal figurine that she had given me, and tears would come. I couldn’t stop them.

            I settled into a depressing routine, along with the rest of my broken cell mates. We were given a weak gruel for breakfast, whose principal contribution to our bodies was to loosen our bowels. One bucket, seventy men… it was hell. More than once one of us would slip on the rank mess and spend days stinking of other men’s shit. By lunchtime another meal was provided, and at supper we were lucky to get scraps of bread and moldy cheese. There was no wine, only water, which sickened most of us just as Balbus had said. My burning hatred of the enemy grew stronger in my soul, fed each day by the oppressive misery and total hopelessness of our situation. From time to time one of us would be taken, savagely beaten by a guard for no apparent purpose, and thrown back into the cell. Once, one of the weaker men, a poor fellow named Brutus, died after being returned to us, his life blood draining into the dirt of our communal hell hole.

            A week later, it was my turn. The door opened and three guards came in.

‘This one’, one of the guards said, pointing at me. They dragged me out of the cell and threw me against the wall, before pulling a hood over my eyes and chaining my hands in manacles. After a long walk up a steep flight of stairs, I was pushed into a sitting position and left for a long time. Then, the hood was removed. I blinked in the sunlight. Across from me, behind a battered table, sat an olive-skinned Greek-looking man, eyeing me thoughtfully.

            ‘Name?’ he enquired, in perfect Latin.

            I hesitated. Then, replied. ‘Marcus Tiberius Varus.’

            ‘Place of birth?’

            ‘Arretium.’

            ‘Unit?’

            I stared at him stubbornly.

            ‘Unit?’ he repeated, with an almost benign air of patience.

            ‘The Glorious Second. Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio commanding.’

            ‘Yes, the famous Gnaeus. We found his body, you know.’

            I could not conceal my surprise.

            ‘What did you do to him, you f—’

            Hasdrubal held up a hand, and I fell silent.

            ‘He was buried with full military honours, I promise you. Every care was taken in this matter.’

            I could only stare at him, anger mixed with surprise on my face.

            ‘I was the commander whom you faced. My name is Hasdrubal.’ He saw me start and smiled. ‘No, I am not the famous Hasdrubal, brother of Hannibal, rather, the son of Gisgo, a politician in Carthage.’ The man’s politeness was unnerving and for a moment I was worried that he would offer me his hand. I shrank into my seat.

            ‘You put up a hell of a fight. We had sixty-five thousand troops against your two legions and your allies.’

            No wonder we were beaten so soundly. I looked over the desk in front of me, and saw a Roman signet ring, of the sort carried by a consul. With a sickening feeling I wondered if it was taken from the corpse of either Publius or Gnaeus. My head began to swim. I was suddenly nauseated, and tasted the foul odour of the morning’s gruel in my mouth. I vomited onto the floor in front of me. Hasdrubal wrinkled his nose slightly and called in a guard.

            ‘Take him outside, and let him have some air. Bring him some clean water. And clean that mess up.’

            As I sat outside, looking out over the battlements of the Carthaginian fortress, I was slowly revived by the welcome salty tang of the sea. Overhead a gull circled lazily, while not far off I could see two fishing boats trying their luck on the morning tide.

            I gestured to the guard if I could stand. He nodded his assent.

            Taking a draught of water, I walked slowly backwards and forwards, feeling the air breathe new life into my aching limbs. The sunlight danced over my face; I closed my eyes and let its warmth take away some of the darkness in my soul. Then I looked around. From my vantage point in one of the towers of the citadel, I could see that the fortress was on the edge of a peninsula, with what looked to be a coastal marsh or lagoon protecting much of its northern and western sides, separated from the sea by a low reef over which water lapped lazily. The walls facing the lagoon were thinly manned, with only a few sentries visible. On the other side, a narrow strip of land, too thin for even a single maniple, connected the fortress to the mainland. Catapults and other light artillery were massed on the battlements facing this approach. A man would need wings to take this place.

            The guard took my arm, gently, and motioned for me to return inside. The floor was clean and Hasdrubal awaited me behind his desk.

            ‘Thank you for the water’, I said, trying to be polite.

            ‘We are not barbarians, no matter what your propaganda says. Indeed, there is much about us that you would find familiar. But the long conflict between our peoples has sown division where there should be unity.

            ‘There is room for Rome in a Carthaginian confederation. You may know little of what has happened in your native land, so let me fill the gaps in your knowledge.’

            Some of what Hasdrubal told me I already knew. That Capua had defected, bringing with it its subject communities, Mediterranean ports, and other valuable commodities. But I was aghast when Hasdrubal told me that Hannibal had signed a treaty with the king of Macedonia, Philip.

            ‘Hannibal and Philip, and Hannibal and Capua, have agreed that following Rome’s defeat—and believe me, young Marcus, Rome’s end is close and as inevitable as your return to your cell—Capua will be the mother city of Italy. Rome will be left untouched, and inviolate; there is no desire to sack its temples, harm its people, or destroy its proud heritage. King Philip has committed his navy and his army to the cause, and every day there are new defections of your so-called allied communities in Italy.’

I slumped in the chair, devastated. Hasdrubal gave a pale smile.

‘Yes, Marcus. Rome is losing this war. We will need men like you—experienced Romans, with knowledge of our ways and methods—to form… a bridge between our cultures, in the period after the Senate recognises the its inexorable irrelevance and capitulates. You have covered yourself with honour a thousand times over, as have your countrymen.’ He leaned forward and looked at me seriously.

            ‘It is time to choose’, he said.

            ‘Choose?’ I repeated stupidly.

            ‘Yes; you must make a decision. You can die with the others in the dungeon, or you can leave here a free man.’

            My mind swam with the stories of my youth, and unbidden, the roach swam into view, talking to us of Cincinnatus and Pyrrhus.

‘Tell me of your government’, I blurted.

            Hasdrubal was surprised. ‘Our government? We have a Senate, just as you do. Here, in Spain, we operate under the guidance of our Senate, although since we came here Hamilcar, and then Hannibal, his son, have been granted a degree of independent action, much like your consuls on campaign.’

            ‘What of the rumours we heard?’ I persisted. ‘Of Hannibal, a new Hercules, as an Alexander, as a Pyrrhus?’

            ‘Tell me what you have heard, Marcus, and I shall tell you if it is true or not.’

‘Well’, I began, ‘before the war, the Roman Senate sent embassies to Spain, to try and stop a war from beginning between us. They came back saying that Hannibal cast himself as Hercules. Later, after Hannibal came to our shores, people began to talk about the journey that Hercules himself made, from Spain, over the Alps, and into Italy.’

‘Yes, that’s a fair assessment. What else have you heard?’

‘Well—in the story of Hercules, he stopped off in Rome, at the Aventine Hill, and slew a giant named Cacus. I’ve heard, too, that Hannibal has been spreading propaganda in places like Tarentum and the other Greek colonies that he has come to free them from the Romans.’

            ‘What you say is true, Marcus. Hannibal has indeed been guided by the heavens; the Mediterranean needs new leadership’, Hasdrubal said. ‘You Romans cannot be allowed any longer to make everyone else in your image. You may think of Carthaginians as barbaric Africans, but our government traditions are as ancient as yours, and our links to the Greek world and the vastness of the countries of the East, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and as far as India, make us the natural leaders of a Mediterranean confederation. Alexander, Hercules, Pyrrhus, all are one and the same. All are Hannibal. He is just, he is wise, and when your Senate accepts the inevitable, you will find him to be enlightened. Rome will prosper under his leadership, and the wars between us will end.’

            I felt drained. ‘My father—’, I began, and then stopped. What if everything I had been told by men as educated and honorable as my father was a lie? Was duty to my nation just a form of slavery, built on an all-encompassing, pervasive falsehood?

‘Take me back to my cell’, I asked weakly.

            Hasdrubal called the guard. ‘We will talk more, Marcus Tiberius Varus. For now, think on what we have discussed this morning. And remember your crushing defeat that brought you here. That was just one of our three armies in Spain; you cannot win.’

Back in the dungeon, I talked with my fellow captives.

            ‘He’s made the same speech to all of us’, said Balbus, laughing. ‘Give the man a bee and within a minute he will be dripping honey into your ear.’

            ‘This has become a propaganda war as much as anything else’, said Cyprianus. ‘Before I shipped out for Spain, I fought in Italy with the Nineteenth. We had a large number of Italians in our ranks. In one engagement one of our maniples was cut off, and captured more or less intact by Hannibal’s forces. It was said that he executed the Romans, but freed all the Italians, telling them to go home to their cities and tell their people that his fight was not with them, but with Rome. The Carthaginians are trying to divide us all, brother from brother.’

            ‘I have heard much of the same’, a new voice added. ‘Attilius, from Teggianum, lately of the Forty-Sixth. Welcome, brother.’

            ‘So what is the point of this charm offensive? Here we are, bottled up in this impregnable fortress. I saw it with my own eyes.’

            ‘That is part of his strategy also’, confirmed Balbus. ‘Every one of us was allowed to “take a walk outside” and clear our heads. Did you get some water, too? Sweet and pure, isn’t it! It’ll be wine later, and maybe some meat. Maybe a dancing girl and a night outside this stinking dungeon. All part of the act.’

            ‘You will remember Regulus from the first war’, said Cyprianus, prying a louse from under his tunic.

            ‘Of course’, I said irritably. ‘We all know the story. But what does that have to do with Hasdrubal?’

            ‘Regulus’, Cyprianus replied, ‘was captured in Africa after his grand invasion went to shit. The Carthaginians treated him with honour, and persuaded him to open peace talks with Rome. They showed him their defences, paraded their armies in front of him, even took him around their farms where war elephants were raised and trained. Gave him a demonstration, they say, of how good they were at crushing prisoners of war with just a single word of command. They wanted a Roman voice to end the war—to convince the Senate that it was theirs to end if they wished, and that continued aggression was pointless.’

            ‘This is all true’, Balbus cut in. ‘But as we all know, Regulus was not some lily-livered shit. He told the conscript fathers to keep fighting, and then returned to Carthage to be executed. He kept his word, and died with honour. Hasdrubal’s job upstairs’—he jerked his head upwards—‘is to try this stunt again, but with better results. They want one of us to turn traitor—to volunteer to go to Rome with the same message. They’d like someone senior, like Regulus, but they killed them all in battle. So we’re what they have to work with. They want us, their enemies, to tell the world, under flag of truce, that they aren’t barbarians. That they have a proud Mediterranean heritage. And so on. That life in a Carthaginian confederation is preferable to annihilation. Don’t believe a fucking word of it. I know the mettle of the men in this room. We’d all rather dig our souls into the walls of this dungeon, die here and go to Hades with honour than debase ourselves and our families by doing the enemy’s dirty work.’

            There was a murmur of agreement. But in my mind, somewhere in the dim recesses of myself, a plan was forming. A daring plan. I couldn’t do much about being captured, but I sure as hell could do something about remaining under lock and key. And maybe I could do something to erase the shame of my imprisonment, and restore my honour, even if doing so meant giving up my honour first.

In the night, the voice of the roach sang to me in my dreams. When the track ahead seems clear, look to your flanks. Consider the landscape. Are you fighting with a lake to your backs? Expect to be driven into it. Do you have mountains to each side? Do you have to cross a cold river in the snow? Expect that the mountains, the cold river, are part of the plan, conceived to sap your strength and will to fight. Over the weeks that followed my initial meeting with Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, I was called several times to his office, high in the eyrie of the citadel. Always I was called at the same time of day, and on my walks on the battlements I saw again the impenetrable lagoon, the narrow strip of land, the impregnability of New Carthage. And yes, there was wine, and meat, just as Balbus said. There was even a dancing girl, but I silently felt the figurine in my tunic, and shook my head, sadly, and she was led away.

Only once was I hauled away to be beaten, and when I was dumped back into our louse-ridden cell, Balbus and the others cared for me. But they grew suspicious when increasingly I was led out, hooded, my arms bound, only to return without a mark on my body, and without wincing in pain.

‘Hasdrubal’, I told them, ‘just wants to talk. He just talks… it never ends.’

‘But why you, brother? With us, he gave up rather quickly.’

‘You bastard!’, one of them said. ‘You’re turning, you little shit!’

‘Fuck off’, I countered. ‘I was only captured after I was shot in the face with an arrow, and given up for dead! If I had my way, I would have died with my comrades on the battlefield. I didn’t choose this fucking hell of an existence’, and before I knew it I was sobbing uncontrollably.

Hasdrubal had sensed some doubt in me, of that I was sure. He clearly thought that Rome was on the verge of surrender, but as the months passed and nothing happened, his irritation grew and so did his desperation to find a way to bring the Senate to heel. Our conversations became adversarial, studded with clashes over politics, culture, and government.

            ‘Hannibal is a demi-god, like Pyrrhus’, I argued one morning. ‘He courts Hercules, pretends freedom for those he oppresses, rules by personality cult. The Senate will never stand for this nor will the Roman people accept a system of rule in which they cannot participate.’

            Hasdrubal opened his mouth, but I cut him off. ‘We are proud citizens. Each of us has a vested interest, can run for office—our Republic is where our strength lies. How is it, sir, that your armies have failed to bring us to heel? Our strength is in our collective, in our commonwealth, in our institutions, that all of us rule together, where we grant our consent to the elected consuls to make decisions on our behalf.’ As I finished the sentence, I realised how much I sounded like the roach and my father. I sensed Mattias, rolling his eyes at my pretensions.

            Unfailingly polite and well-mannered, Hasdrubal listened carefully to my arguments, but always countered them.

‘Strong, sole rulership, immersed in divine sanction, underpinned by a counsel of advisors, is the natural form of government for the Mediterranean’, he would say. ‘Look at Alexander, the greatest conqueror and leader that ever lived! By the time he was your age he had destroyed the mightiest empire the world knew, and he did it with the force of his personality. He had no institutions, no popular voice granting him consent to lead. He was the son of Zeus incarnate, a relative of Achilles, and a descendant of Hercules. And now consider the men who have followed him: Seleucus, his general, a god in his own right, founder of a new Syrian empire; the king of Macedonia, Philip, bearing the name of Alexander’s own father himself, and Ptolemy and his descendants in Egypt—rightful heirs to the pharaohs of old. Living gods. Are they not great rulers?’

            ‘I concede the point’, I said. ‘None can doubt the brilliance of Alexander, the richness of Egypt, the power of Syria.’ I thought back to the conversations of my youth with my father, and smiled inwardly. ‘But who is to say that this is the natural course of leadership? Did not the ancient Greeks build their empire on the demos, the people—a voice for all, all involved in allowing Athens and her people to soar to glory over Persia and control of the whole of the sea?’

            ‘Yes, Marcus, you are right. But who then prevailed over Athens, over the great cities of Greece such as Thebes and Sparta? It was Philip and his son, Alexander. Recall that it was Alexander himself who crushed the glory of Thebes on the battlefield at Chaeronea, where the Athenians were also vanquished. It was Philip whose brilliance undid Athenian power in the Chalcidice and Thrace, and who freed the Greeks from Persian tyranny.

            ‘Hannibal is the natural successor to Alexander and those who followed him. Your propaganda paints him to be an animal, a mere African barbarian. Yet Hannibal is fluent in Greek and Latin; on his expedition, he has Greek historians, naturalists, botanists, scientists, just as Alexander was schooled by the greatest teacher of them all, Aristotle, to bring savants with him to explore the vastness of the East. Hannibal, his family, our Senate, and even I, here in the wastes of New Carthage’—he smiled grimly at his well-appointed study—‘are conversant with the histories and the cultures of your people and their brethren.’

His intensity was exhilarating, and I’ll admit, I came close to being seduced. But the roach’s warnings echoed through the afternoon and into the evening. Expect that the mountains, the cold river, are part of the plan, conceived to sap your strength and will to fight.

Before I was returned to the cell, this time, I explained to Hasdrubal that my cell mates were becoming suspicious about our conversations. He nodded, understanding, and with a nod to the guard, I was given a thorough working over which left me bruised and battered. As I tumbled into our dark hellhole, Balbus was dragged out screaming, his head covered in a dark hood, his arms pinioned behind his back.

‘Are you alright, Marcus?’

It was Cyprianus. I understood now, after weeks of talking with him, that he was no coward. He was a survivor, and as he had made his peace with his surrender, so I had to make my own peace with the plan that was slowly coalescing in my head. I would turn the enemy’s ruse against him, for it was I that were the mountains, the cold river, and I wove them into my plan to sap Hasdrubal’s strength and will to fight.

One evening, I engaged Cyprianus in conversation.

            ‘Tell me, brother—tell me more of the end. I am so desperate to find my friend, Mattias. Tell me anything you remember.’

‘As I said, I didn’t see him—neither dead, nor alive. I was over on the far left flank; Gnaeus, you remember, was in the centre. You were behind him, you say, with your friend. We charged the enemy line, and the front of our group went down immediately. The arrow fire was incredible. I think I saw three, perhaps four volleys in the time it took me to move twenty feet. Our shields were studded with the missiles, but they came in high, from the backs of the elephants, and from the rear ranks of the enemy. There was neither time nor the defensive mindset to call for a testudo, so the plunging fire got most of us.

‘I was punched hard in the face with the shield boss of an enemy soldier, and went down to the ground. I took a spear through the flesh of my thigh, here’—he showed me his wound, for the second time, as if I might still doubt him—‘and after that I couldn’t continue. I saw Hasdrubal on the battlefield afterwards, and it was clear that he wanted prisoners. And so that is how I came to be here. I never saw what happened to your friend, Mattias.’

Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought, searched for my brother in the mists of my memory. Nothing came to me after being struck by the arrow, and my mind was hollow and dark until I found myself here.

Forgive me, Mattias, I thought to myself, wiping the tears from my eyes. Forgive me, for what I must do. And desperate for a sounding board, and finding myself strangely drawn to his candid openness, I told Cyprianus my plan.

In the months that followed, my meetings with Hasdrubal became more intense; we argued passionately, but increasingly I let him sense that he was winning. I gave ground on Rome’s inadequacies, the danger of giving the people a clear voice in government.

‘Only a fraction should vote’, he would say, and I would nod thoughtfully, as if agreeing with him. On other days I asked him who would rule after Hannibal’s death.

‘The crown would go to the strongest, the man chosen by the army’, he answered.

‘Like Alexander’, I said, and he smiled. I was beginning to realise how clever the Carthaginians were: they had turned Hannibal into a marque, a class all of his own, an idea that could be sold all over a Mediterranean world that was already deeply saturated with the legend of Alexander, already familiar with the idea that they should be ruled by a man of divine ancestry. All they needed was the elegance of a single word. Hannibal. Anyone, rich or poor, Greek, Roman, Italian, Egyptian… stupid or clever. Anyone could understand it. The greatest enemy of Rome, the greatest conqueror the world had ever seen. It was brilliant.

            ‘You see, Hannibal surpasses all others, even Alexander. It is not likely that Alexander could have beaten your legions’, Hasdrubal offered.

            ‘How so?’ I ventured. I actually wanted to know the answer.

            Hasdrubal leaned forward, eagerly. ‘Your power lies in the attack. Your maniples offer an ingenious use of manpower, but tell me, how often have you seen a maniple wheel in an arc, or be concealed in ambush, or used to make a feint attack?’

            ‘Rarely’, I conceded, and this was true. Our victory over Hannibal’s brother, Hasdrubal, so many moons ago, was more of a lucky effort than a deliberate movement of the sort that Hasdrubal had just described to me.

            ‘So consider Alexander’s phalanx. It could only move forwards, or backwards. The infantry pikes it used were so long and heavy that the men wielding them could barely carry any armour. It was only because of Alexander’s genius with his horsemen—his means of splitting the enemy line and punching holes in it—that he prevailed on so many occasions.’

            ‘As he did against Darius at Gaugamela’, I said, ‘when he charged the centre and drove the king to flight.’

            ‘Exactly. Now consider: maniple against phalanx; strength matches strength, but no flexibility, and no flanking movements or ambushes. Hannibal beat you three times in Italy by outflanking your maniples, and, in his great triumph at Cannae, he allowed your army to move so far and so quickly in the advance that you trapped yourselves without any real effort on his behalf.

            ‘Hannibal’, Hasdrubal concluded, ‘is a byword for victory. Victory over the impossible: with twenty-five thousand men and a handful of elephants he has destroyed consuls and entire armies. People already speak of him in the same breath as Alexander, as Pyrrhus, as Ptolemy, as Seleucus. Once Rome is beaten, he and his force will have killed the cancer threatening the Mediterranean—your upstart Republic, with its hollowed-out institutions, feckless leaders, and dangerous ideas about rule by the people.’

            Hannibal. An idea that could be sold. I will bend, just enough, I told the roach in my head. We had talked long, much longer than usual. It was late afternoon. The tide was out, and there was a stiff breeze that brought the delicious scent of salty water into the room. And then, as I stood to be led back to the dungeon, I saw it: behind Hasdrubal’s head, the lagoon, which had seemed an impassable element of New Carthage’s defences, had partially drained with the tide. As I gazed into the impossible freedom beyond the window I saw that the centre of the lagoon had gone dry, creating a path that could be forded by infantry.

            ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

Next Chapter: Chapter Nine - Betrayal