The last stronghold was ready, even if it was no more than low barricades and the single tower joining up the praetorium, principia, hospital, a storeroom and barrack block. Ferox had wanted to move all the civilians and wounded inside days ago, along with as many of the men as could be bedded down within the compound. Piso refused, and as the days passed, he grew more and more assertive of his rights as senior officer. Fighting on the walls had invigorated him, so that he almost seemed to grow taller and bolder before their eyes.

‘If we pull back it will tell everyone – including our men – that the fight is hopeless and they will give in. For all we know a relief column is on its way. That is what we must give the men – hope! Hope that after all this we will prevail. For the few hours, or if the gods love someone here a few days, longer we might last, it is not worth snatching that hope from them.’

Vindex suggested hitting the tribune on the head again, but Ferox was too accustomed to obey and was not sure whether the tribune was right or wrong. He drove himself hard, but he was so weary that he no longer had the energy to think about such big questions. There was just the next step and the next moment, trying to do each little thing to keep them in the fight.

Shrouded in mist, the Dacians crept up to the walls, newly made ladders at the ready. They came past the stinking corpses, many with bellies burst open, and most with eyes pecked away by the carrion fowl who never left the fort these days, growing fat on the flesh of men.

Sentries were tired, slow to see and slower still to react, and so the fort fell. The west gate was opened first, and hundreds of warriors poured inside, led by Bastarnae with falxes. Ferox, having taken a rare snatch of sleep wrapped in his cloak in the courtyard of the principia, woke to screaming and shouts of triumph and to Sulpicia Lepidina shaking him awake.

‘They are coming,’ she said.

There was little he could do except make sure that the acropolis held and that all those able to reach it were let inside. There were twenty or so men who had been sleeping in the courtyard and as many more of the wounded able to fight if not required to move too much, so he shouted orders and sent them to the weak spots. Fugitives were coming in already; Sosius was one of the first to slide over the improvised wall. About half the soldiers and even more of the few families, slaves and galearii made it in time, while all the rest died, for the Dacians were in no mood to take prisoners.

Piso again came to new life. He had been at the porta praetoria and he gathered as many men as he could and led then in a knot back towards the acropolis. He had almost fifty men when he rallied them near the gate, thirty by the time he reached the junction of the roads, and sixteen were left to run in through the small gap in the barricades. They were the last big group to make it through and they had drawn many of the enemies to them, giving others a chance to escape.