‘I am sure some fool will rush ahead to distract the enemy,’ she said, but there was a warmer smile than he had seen for a while. She was so close that he brushed against her silk-clad leg without Vindex seeing.

‘He’s right, my queen,’ Vindex said. ‘Be a shame for the lassies to grow up without a mother.’

‘If that mother is daft enough to let herself be killed they will feel no great loss.’ Enica edged her horse on, and this time tapped Ferox’s shoulder playfully with the flat of her sword. ‘My story does not end here or for a long time yet. This much I know.’ There was neither humour nor a trace of doubt in her tone.

‘Wonder if these poor souls thought the same,’ Ferox said, gesturing at the corpses, their places and the marks in the earth and flattened grass telling him of the story of what had happened as clearly as if he had been watching. There were seven Brigantes, one of Vindex’s Carvetii and an auxiliary duplicarius who had been in charge. The little fight had not lasted long as fifteen or more archers shot from the trees. Horses and men fell, as one flight of arrows followed another before the first had struck home.

The patrol had been careless as soldiers often were when nothing had happened on all the other long patrols. Half the horses were down and the rest wounded when warriors had come from the gulley and the archers had followed from the wood to hack down the survivors. Only two of the Brigantes had no arrows in them, and the rest were dead or staggering and bleeding as the little charge swept over them. One of the unwounded men had his whole chest opened by a savage cut. He cannot have been wearing armour, which would have taken some of the force from the blow, and Ferox made a note to check that all the Brigantes had been issued with a cuirass and that all wore it, whether it was uncomfortable or not. The other had a hole in the top of his skull, fairly small and neat, which probably killed him outright after punching through his helmet, which lay broken and discarded a few yards away. Ferox sighed, for he had seen wounds like that before, many years ago and knew what caused them.

‘Why not steal the horses?’ Vindex asked.

‘Too easy for us to track,’ Ferox said. ‘And they didn’t want anyone to get away.’

‘They took the clothes though. Stripped the poor buggers bare.’

‘We will probably find most of it dumped nearby. They will only take what they need.’ Ferox did not bother to explain that pieces of the men’s clothing would help some of their killers purify their bodies. Instead he went over to his own gelding. ‘We need to take care of them. Perhaps you two can deal with that and I’ll take a couple of men and see where the trail leads.’