Rufus had good reason to be nervous, and there was a vulnerability about the man that helped Crispinus not to lose his own temper. He had not truly warmed to Caecilius, but the man had done his job well and spoken his mind. What the damned fool had been doing at the front of the assault was hard to tell, for up until then he had been so cautious. Yet he did care about the soldiers, and perhaps had hoped that he could get the job done at less cost if he was right in the thick of things. Men said that the primus pilus had led a party into the city, using the edge of the breach, but they had vanished and none of them had come back. Two other centurions were missing, although someone claimed to have seen one of them on the enemy rampart, fighting until he was cut down, so he was either dead or a wounded prisoner. Three more centurions were most certainly dead, along with one hundred and forty-three men. Some seventy wounded had got back on their own or been carried by comrades, and almost as many were missing, which meant dead or captured. Somehow staring at the piles of bodies in and around the breach, it was hard not to believe that the losses were even heavier. They were heavy enough, and this was a defeat, which made so much difference because the losses became waste instead of noble and necessary sacrifice. No one ever won an award for a defeat.

Ferox had also vanished. No one had seen him fall, and although the bodies of a couple of his Brigantes were clearly visible, the centurion was not among them. Crispinus hoped that he was not dead, for all the man’s irritating habits. Now and again he had a wild thought of the Briton somehow at large in the city, and finding a way to open the gates to the Romans. He was a tough man, but everyone’s luck ran out eventually, and the odds were that he was dead or a prisoner, which would be tough on his captors.

Crispinus gave a signal and a tubicen sounded a fanfare. Arrian strode out of the cover of a musculus on the ramp, his hands raised to show that he was open and wished to talk. Behind him came Arbandes and, for the first time, his sister. The stink of death was foul enough from this distance, so Crispinus could only imagine the reek up there, and picture that pretty little nose wrinkling in revulsion. No one would see, for she was wearing a veil, although she had offered to lower it if the Nicopolitans did not believe her when she told them who she was. Azátē had not been keen to go at all, and he could understand that, and some of that was fear for the people she had left inside, once it was known that she was not among them.