There were many heroes that night – and Ferox suspected a fair few whose deeds and names would never be known. Claudia Enica was in the praetorium, and he had had to hold her to stop her from running out to rally her warriors. She had bitten his arm before sleep faded, sense returned and she took charge of the far wall of the barricade. Vindex was at the rear gate with some of his Carvetii and some Brigantians and they met a much larger group of Bastarnae as they retreated. The fight was savage and swift, with half of the Britons cut down and dismembered where they lay. Vindex killed three of the enemy, until he took a bad cut to the shoulder even after the falx had shattered his shield, and a lighter cut to the leg. Ivonercus saved him, standing over his body to kill the warrior before he could strike again, and then kill another who came screaming out of the darkness. Vepoc lifted the scout onto his back, and they and five others made it to the acropolis. Maximus had similarly carried two men to safety, before a stone from a sling hit his ankle which had since swollen badly.

Some of the bravest were unlikely heroes. Privatus, the chamberlain of Sulpicia Lepidina, was away from the praetorium seeing to his owner’s horses, some of the tiny handful left alive. Hearing the noise he found a group of three wives belonging to the veterans and persuaded them to come out from where they were hiding in the rafters above the horse boxes and got them back. Achilles, Claudia Enica’s dwarf who served as both buffoon and accountant, somehow climbed onto the roof of the principia, prised off tiles and started lobbing them down at any warriors trying to attack one of the most vulnerable stretches of barricade where his mistress and some of her Brigantes stood guard. The Dacians flung javelins at him and the little man dodged. Then they brought up an archer, but even then he proved an elusive target and shaft after shaft bounced off the rooftop before he was finally hit and fell. He lived, at least for the moment, with broken legs, a broken arm and the arrow in his side, but the heavy clay tiles falling on the enemy had done a lot to keep them at bay.

There were piles of dead warriors in front of all the barricades before the Dacians gave up the attempt to overrun it and went off to rest or loot. Ferox guessed that they had seventy or so men able to fight, two or three times that many wounded, and thirty or forty civilians and others. He was not sure how to count Sosius as the freedman showed little enthusiasm for fighting for all his killer’s eyes.

Bran wept, sitting with his back pressed against the wall of the praetorium. Ferox had never seen the boy like that, and it took a while before he learned what had happened. He had been with Vindex, but had broken away from the others to search for Minura, for he knew that the queen had sent her to carry a message to the east gate. The attack there was slower, and Cunicius had hesitated before ordering his men to retreat. By that time they were surrounded, and the centurion had to lead a charge to clear a path down one of the side alleys. They broke the Dacians, but the centurion lost both legs below the knee to a low sweeping falx and a fresh band of warriors were coming through the now opened gate and nearly upon them. Minura told the men to flee and stood beside Cunicius as his life blood flowed away. Bran was too far away to help, but close enough to see.