‘She was like the Morrigan in her rage,’ he told Ferox. ‘Her armour gleaming like the sun, her shield a disc of fire and her sword like a bolt of lightning.’ Ferox had never thought the boy capable of such poetry. ‘I saw her behead one man and then spin to slice the arm off another coming at her from the other side. It was… beautiful. She put down seven at the very least, even when blood gushed from her own wounds. She had sworn that she would never let men take her. Never again.’

Claudia Enica had appeared and patted the boy on the shoulder. ‘She kept her word, brother,’ she said softly. ‘Our sister is gone to join all the other brothers and sisters and all the Mothers since the world began. One day our souls shall join them. We must make sure that we live to be worthy of their company.’

Bran got to his feet. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Fleeting though it be, there is vengeance to work.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Ferox said. ‘I do not think they will come again tonight.’ In truth the dawn was little more than an hour away, but as he watched the boy limp off, his left leg stiff from a wound taken several days ago, he did not envy the men who would meet him in battle.

As the sun was rising, they held a consilium in a side room of the principia.

‘Well, it is not much,’ Piso said, after Petrullus had read out a list of the men fit for action and all the other survivors. ‘What about food?’

‘Six days’ worth if we are careful,’ Sulpicia Lepidina told them. ‘Ten if we take only the bare minimum needed for life, but the wounded and sick will be dead before that time has passed.’

‘Six days, it is,’ Piso decided. ‘If no help has come by then, it will not matter and we may as well feast as long as we can. I take it that there is some wine left. Good. And thank you, lady, for all your efforts. I am so sorry that… Well, just take it that I am sorry. Now, Ferox and I will plan our strategies for holding this “acropolis” – or as Romans perhaps we should say our Capitol – and I think everyone else should get as much rest as they can. Thank you, all.

‘The enemy will take most of their army and go,’ Piso said after the others had gone. ‘Today or tomorrow, but now that they can cross the bridge at will, they need only leave a thousand or so here to slaughter us and the rest can march for the river.’

‘Perhaps, my lord.’

‘If help is to come in time then an army must already be on its way.’

‘Hadrian promised to do his best.’

Piso sniffed scornfully. ‘I do not care to rely on the lisping Graeculus,’ he said. ‘Any fellow who sports a beard and is fonder of boys than women cannot be sound. Still, we have no choice, and my revered legatus is an ambitious man, there is no doubt of that. You have nothing to say, centurion?’