Marcus shivered at the memory of opening the watertight dispatch rider’s message cylinder and reading a few lines from his father’s message from the grave into the cold dawn air a few days before.

‘By the time you reach Britannia, I expect that Commodus and his supporters will have laid formal charges of treason at our family’s door. I will have been tortured for information as to your whereabouts, then killed without ceremony or hearing… Whatever the ugly detail of their ending, our kindred will be taken and killed out of hand, our honour publicly denounced, and our line almost brought to an abrupt full stop. You are almost certainly all that remains of our blood…’

He shook himself free of the momentary introspection, raising the cup of wine to his friends.

‘And enough of that, there’s wine waiting. Let’s have a toast, gentlemen. Tungrian comrades, living and dead.’

‘Living and dead.’

They raised their cups and drank.

‘Here’s a toast for you.’

Julius raised his cup and looked around the small group with a wry smile.

‘I’ll drink to that moment at Lost Eagle when Uncle Sextus started humping that chieftain’s severed head in front of twenty thousand wild-eyed blue-noses. That was the moment I was sure I was going to die.’

They drank again. Rufius nudged Dubnus with his elbow.

‘Your turn, Centurion.’

After a moment’s silent thought the young officer raised his cup.

‘To Lucky, wherever he is now.’

Julius drank and laughed sharply.

‘Not so lucky after all. All those years with never a scratch only to get his hair parted by a blue-nose axe. His loss, your gain.’