There was no sign of any danger. The enemy had finished their work many hours ago and left with their victory and their spoils. All that remained was the ruins of the fort, the wagons and the dead. That, and the crows feeding on the carrion. As the horsemen approached down the track, the birds lurched into flight, their raucous cries of alarm filling the air as they were forced to abandon their grim feast. They swirled overhead like strips of black cloth caught in the wind of a storm and filled the ears of the legate with their ugly sound.

Quintatus slowed his mount as he reached the ruin of the main gate. The timber towers of the fort had been the first structures to be built. Now they were reduced to charred frameworks from which thin trails of smoke still rose up against the background of rock and tree covered hillsides before merging with the grey clouds pressing down from the sky. On either side, the ditch ran out to the corners of the fort where the remains of the towers stood. With a click of his tongue the legate steered his horse past the ruined gatehouse. On the far side lay the rampart and the cordon of open ground inside of the defences. Beyond that lay what was left of the tent lines, and the first of the bodies heaped together in a small knot. Stripped of their armour, tunics and boots, they lay twisted, bruised and streaked with blood that flowed from the dark mouths of the wounds that had killed them. There were smaller cuts and tears in their flesh where the beaks of the crows had been at work and several of the corpses had bloody sockets where the birds had plucked out their eyes. The heads had been hacked off some of the corpses and the stumps were caked with dried, blackened blood.

As Quintatus stared at the fallen legionaries, one of his staff officers edged his horse alongside and nodded grimly.

‘At least it looks like some of our men put up a fight.’

The legate did not acknowledge the remark. It was easy to visualise the last moments of these men, fighting back to back as they stood their ground to the last. Afterwards, when the last of the wounded had been finished off, the enemy had stripped them of their weapons and equipment. What could be used by Caratacus and his warriors would be kept, the rest hurled into the nearest river or buried to prevent the Romans from returning it to the stores of the Fourteenth Legion. Quintatus lifted his gaze and looked round the fort. More bodies lay amid the destroyed tents, singly and in small clusters that told of the chaos that had ensued once the enemy warriors had broken through the half-completed defences.

‘Shall I order the men to dismount and start burying the dead, sir?’

Quintatus looked round at the tribune, and it took a moment for the question to penetrate his gloomy thoughts. He shook his head. ‘Leave them until the rest of the legion comes up.’