Cato leaned over the breach and stared at the bodies piled before the inner wall. There had to be more than a hundred of them, and maybe twenty or thirty more shot down outside the gatehouse.The losses of this first assault had been terrible and Bannus would have a hard time trying to persuade his men back into the breach, Cato reflected. He raised his head and glanced towards the enemy camp, wondering what Bannus would be thinking as he beheld the failure of the first attempt to overrun the fort.

‘Sir!’ One of the archers beside him anxiously gestured to Cato to get down. ‘Once those bloody slingers see the crest on your helmet you’ll draw their fire like bees to honey.’

As if on cue, the air was filled with the zip of slingshot and Cato ducked down. He nodded to the archer gratefully. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

‘Warning?’ The man’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Wasn’t warning you, sir. Just didn’t want them all aiming my way.’

‘Oh.’ Cato laughed. ‘Thanks anyway.’

The archer shrugged and then notched another arrow and looked cautiously over the rampart for a suitable target. Suddenly he bobbed up, loosed his arrow, and ducked down. An instant later a lead shot cracked into the other side of the rampart.With the walls still bathed in the fading light, and the desert before them swallowed up by shadows Cato realised that the advantage would be with the slingers until the last rays of the sun had died away.

He turned to the archers. ‘Keep it up until they’re out of range. Pick your targets! I don’t want anyone to waste arrows. We’re going to need them.’

They exchanged a quick salute and then Cato climbed back down into the fort to rejoin the men on the inner wall. So many of the enemy had died right up against the base of the wall that they were already providing the basis of a ramp and Cato decided to deal with that straight away. He looked for Centurion Parmenion in the gloom and beckoned him over.

‘We need to get those bodies away from the inner wall.Take two of the reserve centuries and get the enemy dead out of the fort. Put them in view of the attackers. Make a pile of the bodies, something they can see. Once that’s done pick up the serviceable javelins out there and bring them back inside the wall. Got that?’

‘Yes sir,’ Parmenion replied. ‘After what they did to Sycorax we’ll show them that two can play games with morale.’

Cato clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That’s the idea. Get our men to work.’