Cato cocked his head towards the forest. At first all he could make out was the steady rhythm of rain falling on leaves. Then he heard it: the long-drawn-out note of a horn, faintly in the distance. Other men looked up at the sound, grasped the shafts of their spears and made ready to move. King Verica turned his head and nodded towards the captain of his bodyguard. Raising his own horn, Cadminius drew a deep breath and blew a single powerful note. The line of horsemen walked forwards into the trees, out of view of the king’s bodyguard and the handful of slaves who had accompanied the hunting party with cases of fresh spears.

Inside the forest the dimness of the day was accentuated by the thick leaf canopy, and Cato found that he had to squint to see clearly. Through the tall ferns and saplings to his left rode Macro. To his right was Tincommius. Beyond him the king was already out of sight and beyond the king rode Artax. In a short space of time the dense patches of undergrowth separated the huntsmen. Cato could hear them well enough: a constant cracking of branches and the occasional curse from some rider struggling through a tangled thicket.

To Cato’s front the horns of the beaters were much clearer now, and he could hear faint shouts passing up and down the line. Somewhere between himself and the beaters lay the prey they had come to hunt. Besides boar there might be deer or even wolves, wild and terrified by the unaccustomed sound of the beaters. But it was the boars that caused Cato most anxiety. Besides the captured beast at Verica’s feast, he had seen the animals at the games in Rome. Imported from Sardinia, these great brutes had had brown bristling hair and long snouts from which wicked tusks curved. Nor were the tusks their only weapon. Mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth had made short work of the condemned prisoners in the arena that day. Cato had seen one boar close its jaws on a woman’s arm, and shake its huge head from side to side until it had ripped the limb away. The vivid memory made him shudder, and Cato prayed to the goddess Diana that the British boars were wholly unlike their terrifying Sardinian cousins.