Cato stood up and crossed the room and stood at the side of the Thracian officer. He stared down at the top of the prisoner’s head for a moment before he began.

‘I know you can understand Latin. Like your brother. You both speak it fluently. Your teacher must have been good.’

‘Our teacher was a Roman prisoner . . . We put him to death the moment we understood enough to do . . . without him.’

‘Why did you choose to learn our tongue?’

Maridius drew a deep breath and looked up, his good eye glinting with malevolence. ‘Our father taught us that the first step in defeating your enemy is to understand him. And I understand all I need to know about Rome.’

‘Oh?’ Cato smiled thinly. ‘And what do you understand about us?’

Maridius ran his tongue along his dry lips and thought a moment before replying. ‘That you have an insatiable hunger for the land, property and liberty of others. You scour the earth and create a wasteland and call it civilisation. Some civilisation!’ He snorted. ‘You are a greedy people. You are like a great, fat leech sucking the blood out of this world. Your soldiers kill, rape and burn everything before them. Like these Thracian scum who you pay to carry out your dirty work. They are not warriors, not even men, but scum.’

Quertus leaned forward and casually backhanded him with a powerful slap. Maridius groaned, blinked and shook his head.

‘Keep a civil tongue in your head,’ Quertus warned. ‘Or my lads will see to it that your tongue parts company with your foul mouth.’

‘Fuck you . . .’

Quertus balled his hand into a fist but Cato intervened before he could strike. ‘No. That’s enough, for the moment.’

He returned the prisoner’s glare calmly and then spoke again. ‘You say that we hunger for the lands of others, but tell me, Maridius, how is that different from the wars you, your brother, and your father fought to conquer the tribes that surrounded the Catuvellauni? Correct me if I’m mistaken but your tribe crushed the Trinovantes, and took their capital as your own. You’ve also taken land from the Cantiaci, the Atrebates, the Dobunni and the Coritani.’ Cato paused and shrugged. ‘Seems to me there’s not that much difference between the ambitions of the Catuvellauni and Rome, only that my people happen to be rather better at it.’

Maridius curled his lip and spat a gobbet on to the toe of Cato’s boot. ‘Fuck you!’

Cato glanced at his boot. ‘And we happen to be somewhat more refined and imaginative in our use of language and invective as well, it seems.’

‘You fucking tell that cunt!’ Macro added emphatically.