‘Taranis!’ came a voice from close by. ‘The poor sod.’

‘Shut up, you stupid bastard,’ snapped the decurion, obviously unnerved by the sound.

No more arrows came and the silence enveloped them again. They waited. Sabinus felt that the horses were calm now, and knew that it was his duty to see what was happening. He stumbled over the corpse with the arrow in its eye, recovered and then went where he thought that he had last heard one of the decurions.

‘Best keep down, sir, or find a shield,’ the decurion said from the shadows.

‘Looks like you are in charge,’ Vindex added, his teeth white in the dim starlight.

‘Where is Ferox?’ Sabinus asked, forgetting to call him the Lord Ferox after the fashion of these folk.

‘Is he down?’ The decurion was still nervous.

‘You in the camp!’ The shout came from outside. ‘I am coming in. Don’t do anything daft!’

‘There he is,’ Vindex said cheerfully.

A darker shape appeared against the night, turning into a man as he walked closer. He had something bulky in each hand and when he came close Sabinus smelled the blood.

‘One got away,’ Ferox said as he dropped three severed heads onto the grass.

‘You’re getting slow, old man,’ Vindex told him.

Ferox grunted. ‘No harm in letting one tell the story. Might make them cautious next time. He won’t be back tonight and there is no one else around. Still, be prudent to keep a good watch. Did we lose anyone?’

One man was dead, the sentry wounded badly and there were a few scratches to men and horses, but it could have been worse. Ferox wished that he had a few dozen Silures to stalk the nights and make the enemy fear the darkness. Still, if they had faced thirty or forty of his fellow tribesmen then they would have lost many men, and most if not all of the horses would have been dead, crippled or stolen, leaving them with a long march to the fort, and at least one more night of murder, so that few if any would have made it back.

The next morning the sentry was feverish, but clinging on and they rigged up a blanket on a couple of poles which could be dragged along by a horse. There was no sign of the enemy, apart from the three headless corpses of the men Ferox had killed. He had tied the heads to the front horns of his saddle, so that they dangled there as he rode, just like the heroes in the songs of the tribes. The Brigantes liked that, and he suspected that Vindex was feeding the stories about the skill and savagery of the Silures in the darkness, and most of all the centurion.

Sabinus was fascinated by the sight of the heads bouncing as Ferox’s horse walked along. One had a truly ghastly wound that had destroyed the right eye. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, even in the arenas, but he had not had the courage to ask how it had been inflicted and wondered whether that had provoked the appalling cry of pain they had all heard. Ferox had scrubbed his hands when they came to a stream, without removing that much of the dark blood engrained in the nails of his right hand.