‘You get used to it,’ Ferox told him, ‘and it’s a lot easier than making things.’

An hour later Ferox was once again up on the tower over the porta praetoria. The scars on the parapet seemed a lot smaller than they had during the fight, when the enemy arrows had been coming at them. Someone had spread sand out on the floor to cover the bloodstains, and it crunched under his boots.

The enemy kept on coming. Through the black smoke from the burning houses he could see some five hundred men around the bath house and bridge. No one was coming closer than a long bowshot, after the first to try was spitted by the bolt from a scorpio and the man next to him narrowly missed by a second shot. Another large band had moved over the bridge and now stood or sat in the fields either side of the track leading down the valley. A dozen riders were within half a mile, and he suspected that they were leaders for some way behind were eighty or so cavalry, and behind them a lot of infantry, some marching in more or less neat columns and some straggling like a crowd coming out of an amphitheatre after the games. Beyond were waggons, lots of them, and mules or other pack animals and more soldiers on foot.

‘There’s a lot of them,’ Sabinus said. The arrival of the enemy army had taken much away from his earlier good spirits.

‘About eight or nine thousand, so far,’ Ferox said, ‘near as I can judge, but more coming.’

‘How can you tell? Looks more like twice that to me. Almost too many to count.’

‘A wise old primus pilus once taught me a trick – you count their legs and divide by two.’

‘Ah, a wise man indeed.’

Ferox stared down the valley and still saw nothing moving. The cavalry ought to have been back before now, that is if they were coming on their own. The convoy probably had ox carts and oxen were slow and stupid and could not be rushed. If they had found the supply convoy then it could be another day, which meant that they had not the slightest chance of getting past the Dacian army and must then abandon them or die. That the enemy had bothered to send men across the river to wait made him think that they might have word that someone was on the way, or could just be a commander taking sensible precautions. Most Dacian leaders were not fools, as they had shown time and time again. Ferox had let the men use the bridge unmolested, wanting to keep the monâkon a secret for as long as possible. That’s if the enemy did not already know about it. After all, they’d built the thing in the first place and they seemed to know far more about the fort and its garrison than he would like. Spies inside these walls were likely enough, whether some of the civilians or still disgruntled Brigantes willing to send word to Ivonercus and the other deserters. Ferox wondered whether the man was out there amid that host.