‘Dress your lines!’ Cato bellowed out to his men and the century commanders immediately started to shove and kick their men into order. A pounding of hoofbeats announced the arrival of the tribune.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing, Centurion? Get your men forward!’

‘Sir, there’s something wrong about this.’

‘Get your men forward! That’s an order! You want that lot to escape?’

‘Sir, the wagons. Look at them.’

‘Wagons?’ Quintillus glared at him. ‘What about the bloody wagons?’ He thrust the point of his sword towards Cato. ‘Get forward, I say!’

‘Those aren’t wagons,’ Cato insisted. ‘Look at them. They’re chariots.’

‘Chariots? What bloody nonsense is this?’

‘Chariots tied back to back, to look like wagons,’ Cato explained quickly, and stepped over to one of the bodies. ‘And these men, dead long before the chariots were set alight.’

Macro came running up, breathless and angry. ‘What’s going on? Why’d you call a halt?’

Before Cato could reply, there came the distant roar of a war cry. The raiders at the end of the vale had seen their pursuers stop. Now they turned and were charging back towards the Atrebatans, screaming like madmen.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Quintillus said softly. ‘They’re attacking us.’

Cato tore his gaze away from the enemy bearing down on them, and swept his eyes over the hillsides.

‘There! There’s your reason,’ he said bitterly, thrusting an arm towards the trees on the hill to their left. Durotrigan warriors were pouring out from the shadows beyond the trees and forming up in a dense mass barely two hundred paces from where they were standing. Cato turned to the other hill. ‘And there!’

For an instant the tribune’s well-mannered façade crumbled as the deadly nature of the situation he had led the two cohorts into was thrust before his eyes. ‘Oh, shit . . .’

‘Wolves!’ Cato quickly turned to his men, hand cupped to his mouth. ‘Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Centuries! Refuse the left flank!’

As Macro sprinted off to join his men, the three centuries at the extreme left of the Atrebatan line folded back to face the Durotrigans massing on the slope above them. Unlike the natives in the two cohorts, the enemy were heavily armed, many with chain mail protecting their bodies. Already Cato could see that the Atrebatans were outnumbered; the tables had been completely turned on them and their Roman commanders. Cato spared their enemy an instant of grudging admiration before he turned to Tincommius and spoke to him in Latin.

‘Get out of here! Get back to Calleva, as fast you can. We won’t be able to hold them for long.’

‘No,’ Tincommius replied. ‘I’ll stay here. I’d never make it.’

‘You’ll go.’

Tincommius shook his head and Cato turned towards the tribune.

‘Sir! Take him. Get him out of here!’