Plautius stared across the shallow valley towards the fortifications Caratacus had prepared on the far ridge: a shallow ditch and, beyond, a small earth rampart with a crude wooden palisade. It would not present much of a challenge to the first wave of assault troops forming up on the slope in front of the Roman camp. Behind them were arranged several small batteries of bolt-throwers, preparing to lay down a terrible barrage of heavy iron shafts that would smash the flimsy palisade and kill any man standing directly behind it.

‘Should be over long before the day’s finished!’ grinned the weathered prefect of the Fourteenth Legion, the unit Plautius had chosen to lead the assault.

‘I hope so, Praxus. Go in hard. I want them finished once and for all.’

‘Don’t worry about my lads, sir. They know the score. But there won’t be many prisoners . . .’

There was no mistaking the disapproving tone and Plautius had to bite back on his irritation. There was far more at stake here than enhancing the retirement fund of a legionary prefect.

That bloody man Narcissus had announced to all and sundry in Rome that Britain was as good as conquered when the Emperor had returned from his sixteen-day visit at the end of the last campaigning season. A triumph had been held to celebrate the conquest of the island and Claudius had made an offering of spoils from his victories in the temple of peace.

Yet here the army was, nearly a year later, facing the same enemy. An enemy who was quite oblivious to the fact that they had already been defeated, according to the official history. And now the imperial general staff in Rome were getting a little uncomfortable about the discrepancy between the official account and conditions on the ground. Elsewhere in Rome, the families of young officers serving in Plautius’s legions were increasingly perplexed by letters they received that recounted the endless raids of the enemy, the daily attrition of the army’s strength and the failure to bring Caratacus to battle. Veterans and invalids returning from the distant front only confirmed the details in the letters, and the talk on the streets of Rome was starting to turn quite ugly. The dispatches General Plautius was receiving from Rome were getting increasingly impatient. Finally, Narcissus had written a terse and brutally frank note. Either Plautius finish the job by the end of the summer, or his career was over, and more besides.