The two centurions walked quickly down the track towards the depot gate where the fort’s small garrison was hurriedly forming up. Men fiddled with straps and belts while Centurion Veranius, commander of the garrison, screamed abuse into the entrances of the barracks, swiping at the tardy few stumbling towards their comrades as they struggled with their equipment. Macro exchanged a knowing look with Cato. The garrison had been made up from the dregs of the Second Legion, the sort of men Vespasian could not afford to take with him on his lightning campaign into the heartlands of the Durotrigans. The soldiers’ poor quality was readily apparent to an experienced eye, and mortally offended Macro’s professionalism.

‘Fuck knows what the locals make of this mess. One word of this gets out of Calleva, and Caratacus will realise he can walk in here any time he wants to, and kick Verica out on his arse.’

Verica, the aged king of the Atrebatans, had been allied to the Romans since the legions had landed in Britain a year earlier. Not that he had any choice in the matter. He had agreed to an alliance in return for being restored to power over the Atrebatans even before the legions had advanced on Caratacus’ capital at Camulodunum. Once the campaign had extended to the hostile tribes of the south-west Verica had eagerly offered Calleva to General Plautius as a base of operations. So the depot had been constructed. Besides winning the goodwill of Rome, Verica had provided himself with a readily accessible bolt hole should the Atrebatans succumb to the appeals from the tribes still resisting the invaders, to change sides and turn on the Roman invaders.

The two centurions made their way down to the gateway leading through the rampart and into Calleva. Although Vespasian had left a mere two centuries of legionaries, under one officer, to defend the depot, the area enclosed by its ramparts was large enough to hold several cohorts. Beyond the parade ground was the hospital and headquarters buildings. To one side of them stood a few rows of timber barracks. Beyond that stretched the granaries and other stores, which the Second Legion needed to draw on as they marched west. The Britons’ leader, Caratacus, had laid waste to the land before the advance of Plautius’ legions, hence the Roman columns’ dependence on long lines of communication leading all the way to the vast supply base at Rutupiae, where the legions had first set foot in Britain.