Maximius threw his arm forward along the track and shouted the order to advance. The sweating and panting legionaries broke into a run behind him, boots thudding down on the baked earth. Ahead, Macro’s rearguard and the scouts fought a desperate withdrawal back across the ford, pursued all the way by growing numbers of the enemy. The men who had already reached the near bank were forming up, two deep, across the entrance to the ford. Even so, that thin scarlet line would not hold the bloodthirsty flood of Britons back for more than a brief moment.

The men of the cohort streamed along the track towards their comrades and soon the fittest and fastest of them began to join the Third Century, bolstering their small formation. Cato was close enough to the ford to make out more details of the unequal struggle being fought out midstream, and his heart rose at the sight of the transverse red crest of a centurion’s helmet bobbing about above the heaving figures locked in bloody conflict. Macro still lived then. Even in the face of almost certain annihilation that thought was of some comfort to Cato as he charged down the last slope towards the legionaries hastily being thrust into position at the edge of the ford. Massively outnumbered as they were, they still enjoyed the tactical advantage of occupying a position that could only be assaulted on a narrow front. There was some hope, Cato told himself. Some hope that they might hold Caratacus back.

‘Sixth Century!’ Cato called out. ‘Form up to the right of the line!’

His shattered men shuffled into place at the end of the cohort and could barely stand, coughing and gasping for breath as they leaned on their grounded shields. There was not much fight left in them, and wouldn’t be until they recovered from the forced march under a blistering sun. But the enemy was almost upon them and in a moment they would be fighting for their lives.

The survivors of Macro’s rearguard and the squadron of scouts fought their way back into the shallows, shields locked together as they thrust their short swords at any enemy body or limb that tried to force a gap through the Roman line. Maximius turned to men waiting on the river bank.

‘Fourth Century! Give way!’

A gap opened up in the cohort behind Macro to allow him passage into the line and he bellowed an order to the decurion. ‘Scouts first! Go!’