Hands still bound, Cato rolled on to his knees and struggled to his feet. Immediately he was thrust forward, away from the pen, towards a group of horsemen mounting up a short distance away, a handful of shadowy figures in the pre-dawn twilight. As they got closer Cato recognised Caratacus sitting silently in his saddle. Their eyes met briefly and before Caratacus glanced away Cato saw the cold, bitter hatred in the man’s expression and felt a chilling tremor of fear trickle up his spine. Something had happened. Something dreadful, and now any hope he might have had that Caratacus was considering coming to terms with Rome had been swept away. There was pure murder in the eyes of the enemy commander now. Cato looked round, and saw the other six men who had been dragged from the pen being herded away into the shadows at spearpoint. He turned back to Caratacus.

‘Where are they being taken?’

There was no reply, no sign that he had even been heard.

‘Where are-’

‘Silence!’ his guard roared, slamming his fist into Cato’s stomach. The breath was driven from him and he bent double, gasping for air.

‘Get him on a horse,’ Caratacus said quietly. ‘Tie him over the saddle. I don’t want him escaping.’

As Cato wheezed painfully, strong arms raised him and tossed him across a woollen saddle, face down. A rope was bound tightly around his ankles and then secured to the bindings between his wrists and secured with a knot. Cato was looking down the side of the horse towards the dark ground beneath. He twisted his head and tried to catch Caratacus’ eye, but there was no sight of him from this angle and Cato let his head hang down, resting his cheek against the coarse, bitter-smelling, saddle-cloth. At once someone clicked their tongue and the horse lurched forward, at the tail end of the small party of horsemen.

They trotted out of the camp, across the narrow causeway and on to a trail whose details slowly became clearer as the light strengthened. Cato’s mind raced as he tried to work out the reason for this sudden shift in the mood of Caratacus. Where was he being taken, and what had happened to the other prisoners? But there were no ready answers, only a growing fear that he was being delivered to his death, and that soon the rest of the Roman prisoners would be following him to theirs. From the chilling hatred he sensed in the men around him, Cato was sure that death, when it came, would be a welcome escape from the torments these warriors had planned for their captives.