===OO=OOO=OO===

As the distant skyline lightened with the coming of dawn, Macro softly ordered a halt and the men slumped down along the side of the track. The night march had taken a heavy toll on their nerves and the men were glad to see the darkness beginning to dissolve into the glow of the coming sunrise. After leaving the pickets behind, they had twice had to hurry from the track at the sound of approaching horses, but none could tell whether it had been Roman or British scouts passing as the hooves thundered by in the darkness. For the rest of the night they had marched along the track as quietly as they might, fully expecting to be attacked at any moment. The first shafts of orange light fell upon Cato’s worn expression as he chewed on a strip of dried pork. He turned to Macro.

‘Much further to go, sir?’

‘Should be there by nightfall. See there.’ He pointed out across the rolling countryside into the distance where a low, flat expanse still lay underneath a blanket of fog, save for the odd hummock of land that rose like an island from a sea of milk. ‘That’s where the marsh begins.’

‘And how are we supposed to find the wagon amongst that lot, sir?’

‘We follow this track, until we find a depression in the track where it enters a small copse. The wagon’s hidden in the marsh by a burned-out oak stump. Shouldn’t be too difficult to locate.’

Looking down the track to the point where it finally disappeared into the bank of fog, Cato somehow doubted that the search would be as easily resolved as that. The distant marsh waited for them with a cold, sleepy inertia that filled Cato with sudden superstitious fear. This was the vision of the underworld that he heard of as a child on his father’s knee. Wraith-like shadows curled about the darker shapes of dimly seen trees as the thinning mist shifted on the lightest of airs.

Macro stared intently down the track and then quickly scanned the surrounding countryside for any signs of movement. To the left, the land rolled gently away and in the distance the sea shimmered, off to the right the sparsely cleared farmland gave way to a distant forest. Nothing moved. The Britons had made sure that all farm animals had been swept from the invader’s path and every store of grain had been torched. Well then, Macro decided, it was safe to move. He stood up.

‘On your feet, you idle buggers. There’s work to do.’

Rising wearily from the grass the men formed up. The centurion strode off down the track and his men followed, tired and tense. The track sloped down towards the marsh and the mules had to be tightly reined in to prevent the cart from gathering speed. At the edge of the marsh, the track narrowed so that the cart’s wheels crushed the grass on either side. The ground beneath was soft and Cato could feel it give slightly under his boots as the little column moved into the mist. In a short space of time the vistas of the British countryside had vanished and an indefinite white horizon hemmed them in on all sides. At their backs, the sun struggled to make itself felt through the dense haze and the air was cold and clammy on their skin. No-one spoke and the only sounds were the snorts of the mules as they hauled their burden through the soft peat sucking at the cart’s wheels.