Cato smiled at the thought. That would be the end of any meaningful resistance to Roman rule, and both sides could get on with the task of turning this barbaric backwater into a civilised province. He had had his fill of killing the native warriors, who had far more courage than sense. They were good men and, given the right kind of leadership, they would become firm and valuable allies of Rome. All this was possible once Caratacus was defeated . . . Then the smile faded from Cato’s lips.

The enemy would only be defeated if Vespasian arrived in time to crush them against the Third Cohort’s defences. As Antonius had suggested, it was possible that Vespasian would not arrive in time. Indeed it was possible that the legate was not even marching towards them. It was even possible that Figulus might not have reached the Second Legion, let alone managed to persuade Vespasian to lead his men along a narrow track through the heart of an enemy-controlled marsh.

Cato realised that all along he had been counting on the legate’s willingness to take calculated risks to achieve significant results. Then Cato wished he had gone north to find the legate himself, not trusting his optio to make the case for him. But that would have meant sending Figulus back to the cohort and the much harder task of persuading Maximius to take on the enemy, or finding a way of replacing the cohort commander, if he proved obdurate. Cato could not be in two places at once and did not trust anyone else to do either job for him. It was just the kind of intractable problem that made being an officer such a nightmare. Indecision was bad enough, but endless hypothesising after the event was pure torture. If only he could accept the consequences of his decisions, thought Cato, and just get on with it. Like Macro.

He tried to push further thought aside. He trotted to the front of his century, and continued a hundred paces beyond, to scan the route ahead. The track followed the high ground, such as it was, and skirted round the dismal pools and mires that stretched out on both sides. Where the land was dry, stunted trees and clumps of gorse clustered together. Beyond that, sweeping expanses of rushes restricted the view, so that there would be little warning of the enemy’s approach. Cato irritably slapped his thigh with a clenched fist. The tense frustration simmered in his breast as he led his men deeper into the marsh, all the while expecting the next turn of the track to bring them face to face with Caratacus and his warriors.