‘Come on!’ Piso was already running for the gate. There were Dacian shouts, anger mixed with shock, and arrows came, but struck the riderless horses instead of their targets. Ivonercus twisted his blade free and then stabbed the writhing Dacian in the throat.

Ferox dashed back to the gate. Piso was hit beneath the knee by an arrow and fell in a heap. Ferox was close behind, so close that he jumped over the tribune rather than trying to stop. He kept going, the narrowly open gate just a few paces away.

‘Centurion!’ Piso screamed at him. ‘Help me!’

Ferox hesitated, the temptation strong to leave them both to the Dacians. Horns were blowing and men shouting as hundreds of warriors streamed through the gaps in their wall. Breaking a truce was a great impiety. Silures respected few things, and liked nothing better than to deceive an enemy and hurt him without him realising what was happening, but even they felt that a curse would fall on anyone breaking a truce.

Ivonercus spun around as an arrow from a belly bow snapped the rings on his mail and dug into his shoulder. He dropped his sword and staggered on.

The habit of duty was too strong and Ferox turned around, lifted the tribune and swung him onto his back.

‘I’m not your shield, you bastard!’ the tribune snarled, but though arrows came close none touched them and the only one to hit Ivonercus bounced back from his armour. Then they were through the gate and it was slamming shut behind them. Ferox dropped the tribune, none too gently, and ran for the stairs leading onto the rampart. ‘Sound the alarm,’ he shouted.

It was not a planned attack, well thought out and hitting the fort from several directions, but a simple outpouring of rage. Hundreds and then thousands of warriors rushed from cover or came from the camp and hurled themselves at the walls. There were fewer ladders than in the last attack, but every time the men around them were shot down more appeared and soon half a dozen rose against the front rampart. Ferox cut down one warrior who had pushed back the defenders and managed to leap onto the walkway, but few others made it that far. The Dacians died, well over a hundred of them, and many more moaned as they crawled or were carried back when the fury at last was spent. Seven of the garrison were killed to inflict this carnage and thirty more wounded, while they threw or shot far more missiles than usual, for there was a frenzy about the fighting on both sides.

Piso tried to make light of it all, when Ferox went to visit him in the hospital. ‘If I had known that I would be ministered to by such a fair doctor, then I believe I would have stayed here rather than going to Sarmizegethusa,’ he said, beaming at Sulpicia Lepidina, before taking her hand and kissing it. ‘Hygaia herself could hardly be more kind.