‘I have agreed to the terms,’ Ferox told the young officer.

‘You take a lot on yourself, centurion,’ Crispinus whispered, but took the outstretched hand and shook it firmly. ‘I agree,’ he told the chieftain, hoping that the man either knew a little Latin or would sense the meaning from his tone.

The boy was brought, and all the while more and more warriors appeared on the edges of the woodland. Egus’ son looked to be about nine or ten, skinny and with a drooping lip. The warrior attending him was the man with the painted face they had seen earlier in the day. By the time they all went back to join the rest of the party, there were hundreds more tribesmen watching them from the hillsides.

‘You were right,’ Crispinus conceded. ‘There are a lot more of them than we saw. A fight would have been harder than I thought. Yet I believe that I command. As I said, you presume a great deal to decide without consulting me.’

‘It’s my job,’ Ferox said. ‘Usually there is no time to seek approval. I am here to keep Rome’s peace, if I can. Once the main body came up we could have beaten this lot – probably. But we would have lost men, they would have lost a lot more and the rest of them would hate us. This way everyone is alive and we have a loyal ally.’

It started to rain, which made the wait for the column to arrive seem even longer. They pitched camp on the fairly level ground in front of the hillock where Egus and his band had waited. By now there were probably over a thousand Britons watching the soldiers as they went through the routine of entrenching and laying out the tent-lines.

‘They don’t get a lot of entertainment up here,’ Vindex said.

The hostage, lank hair plastered flat by the rain and huddled in his cloak, was sent to Crispinus’ tent as soon as this was erected, at the junction where the line of the two main roads in the camp met, just as if this was a proper fort.

‘Pity we could not get up into the next valley,’ Ferox said, half thinking aloud.

Crispinus scanned the hillsides in the fading light, watching the Selgovae as they watched the Romans. ‘We are with allies, so you tell me. And we have their leader’s son at our mercy.’

‘If that’s who he is, and assuming his father actually likes him.’

For the first time Crispinus appeared shocked.

‘It will probably be all right,’ Ferox said. ‘Probably.’

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