Thirty-nine more soldiers were dead, three times that so badly wounded that they might die and would certainly not walk for some time. There were hundreds more Dacians dead outside the walls and dozens inside to be tipped out when enough men had the strength to do the task. Piso was pale when he came down from the tower and for once said little and did not even leer at Claudia Enica when she passed. She was whole, and Ferox rejoiced because of that, but even she was subdued. Although she had fought and killed men many times, he knew that she had only ever been in one real battle before she came to the fort, and this was slaughter upon slaughter. The enemy were losing many more than the garrison, but since there were so many more of them still to attack it did not really matter. Ferox doubted that they could repulse another assault on that scale, because there were no longer enough men to man the walls and plug the gaps. Half of him wondered whether to let the Dacians know that the monâkon was ruined, so that they could go on their way. It probably did not matter anymore. After so much killing the enemy were bound to want revenge.

Ferox had less than two hundred and fifty men reasonably whole, and a few dozen more who could help if they were not required to move too much. That was far too few to hold walls as long as this against any real attack, especially as there were few missiles left. Apart from the hospital many of the rooms in the principia and praetorium were filled with wounded, mainly lying on the floor, on straw where it was available and on nothing where it was not. Ephippus had almost finished his acropolis and there ought just to be room for them all to squeeze in. He had already moved half the remaining food there. They might last a day or two more or they might not, depending on how determined the Dacians were to kill them. The trick was to delay the Dacians, hold the ramparts as long as they could and then pull back to the stronghold with as little loss as they could manage.

Claudia Enica came to him as he supervised the start of the clear up and she clung to him tightly. They had given up their room and bed to the injured, and now she slept with Sulpicia Lepidina and he bedded down in his office in the principia with Vindex and several others.

‘You take risks, husband,’ she told him.

‘So do you. But I think now I have faith.’ Ferox could not explain it, but he was no longer worried. He had rarely cared that much about his own fate, and more than once had come close to welcoming death. That had changed when he became a father and even more when he came to love this woman. He did not want her to die, not here, not for many years until she had seen their children grow. The fear should now have overwhelmed him, for it had preyed on his mind so often. Yet it was gone.