Vindex gave the woman another encouraging smile. ‘Aye, bound to be proud of you both.’

‘So am I,’ Enica continued, for once not indulging the scout. Minura and Bran both touched their chests, where Ferox knew the members of the cult had a tiny scar given by a blade. Enica had the same mark between her breasts and a moment later she pressed her fingers against the mail rings above it.

‘We have travelled and we have fought,’ she added, and it sounded like a quote, but Ferox did not recognise it so wondered whether it was from a song of the Brigantes or verses special to the Mother and her children. So far the queen had said little about their activities in the last few months. He suspected that it was all part of her scheme to secure the rule of her tribe once and for all. As things were, there was little point in prying, for they had little time alone and then she was not forthcoming in any way. He hoped that the knowledge was not dangerous, or that if it was she would tell him in time. That it involved death he did not doubt. The Mother taught remarkable skill at arms, but her children did not kill during their time with her and some never managed to do that well. A mere glance at Bran and Minura revealed to eyes willing to see that they had already walked that path. There was simply an extra edge to their bearing.

The man with them, whose horse had bucked when the missile struck nearby had fallen, was not helped by having his hands tied. Landing badly, his neck had snapped and he had been dead before anyone reached him. Neither Bran nor Minura would say much about him, apart from the obvious fact that he was their prisoner, and that they were bringing him here as instructed.

‘Later,’ was all that Enica would tell him, for she clearly knew all about it, but later had not yet arrived. Ferox had looked at the body, seen the hair dyed red and tied into a knot on the right-hand side of the man’s head, the thick beard and the pale grey eyes and the little tattoo on his left wrist. With his dark, almost black trousers and the striped tunic, he was clearly one of the Quadi from across the Danube near Pannonia. Yet he wasn’t just that, for there was the look of a soldier about him, something hard to pin down, but obvious even before he pulled up the man’s sleeve and saw another tattoo, this one of the she-wolf suckling the twins on his arm. That was the relic of some drunken furlough outside an army base. Too young to have served his full stipendia and too hale to have been invalided out, this one was surely a deserter turned bandit or trader or both. Whether originally one of the Quadi who had crossed into the army and stayed as long as it suited him or a soldier who had gone over the rampart and found a new life among the tribes was hard to say. He thought of the former slave they had met with the Roxolani. People ended up in odd places – like a good Silurian boy turned Roman centurion and stuck out here in charge of a fort, he thought grimly. Bran and Minura had not chosen this captive by chance, that was for sure, and must have been sent to fetch him and bring him here. Ferox had overheard the young warriors asking Enica whether ‘he’ was here, seen her shake her head and say, ‘Ah well, it does not matter now.’