‘Mostly,’ Ivonercus conceded. ‘Ferox is like the lone wolf, and they are dangerous. He is a ferocious and merciless fighter. He will not give in, even if the cause is lost, so that you must wonder whether he despairs of life. They say he had everything and yet threw it away because he does not value life or happiness. The queen…’

Brasus grabbed the Briton’s arm to silence him, although the man had already stopped in mid flow. One of the warriors had hissed a warning and they waited and listened. There were steps approaching.

Ivonercus had not spoken like this before, and part of Brasus wanted to know more. If the man had been speaking his true thoughts then it did not matter. Ferox was beginning to sound interesting. Perhaps he was one of the creatures who was different. Not a pure man, since that could not be, but a stranger who sensed or by chance followed something of the right path. That would not matter to the king, who would only care that this was a commander who would fight hard and by the sound of it skilfully. So be it. Such knowledge might change the way things were done rather than the plan itself. Brasus was beginning to think that it could work.

There was the sound of a man singing softly, his rather nasal voice wandering either side of a tune that was as old as the hills. One of the warriors smiled, for it sounded like one of the Getae.

Brasus drew his curved dagger and showed it to the warrior. The smile died, but the man nodded in understanding. They knew the instructions. If the wanderer did not find them then he was free to pass. Even seeing their tracks would not matter. Yet if he saw warriors, men he would guess were men serving the king, then he must die. The folk in this valley had sometimes been loyal and sometimes not. He might tell the Romans deliberately or by accident and for the moment the secret needed to be kept.

The warrior crept until he was leaning against the thick trunk of a beech tree. His own knife was in his hand.

Brasus looked again at the fort and wondered about this Ferox and wondered about the queen the Briton had mentioned. He sensed that Ivonercus regretted speaking of her and doubted that he would willingly tell more. The queen must be the sister of the king the man had served and Ferox had killed. The Briton had rarely mentioned her, and only ever with awe, perhaps fear, as if it was unlucky to speak of the royal house.

The singing faded, getting further and further away. Brasus kept them there for a long while, but they heard no more of the wanderer. Night was falling.

‘It’s time to go,’ he said.

VII

Piroboridava

Second day after the Kalends of April

THE STORY WAS simple enough. Manius Sertorius Festus had walked over to the parade ground to watch as some of his veterans marched groups of the Brigantes up and down. The warriors were formed into groups of thirty, mixing the men who had served in the royal cohort or other units with the rest for whom all this was new. After a slow start, progress was good, not least because everyone had realised that this was easier than labouring. Within a few days, they began to drill with weapons, which helped them all to feel more like warriors again. Festus had chosen instructors well, helped by the fact that many of the veterans had done this before and did not need to be watched every moment. They treated the Brigantes with a respect denied to raw tirones in a legion, picked up a few words of their language and taught the Latin commands simply, so that the whole squad and not simply the Latin speakers knew what they were supposed to do. Somehow, they made the warriors laugh, the humour simple and often crude, but enough to make the barked orders and even louder reprimands acceptable.