There were tumbled circles of stone clustered inside the ramparts, the remains of old houses, making it hard to move quickly, while the dark smoke drifted slowly across the fort and it was impossible to see very much. Two of the burning huts were at the far end, upwind in a fitful breeze that fanned the flames without being strong enough to blow the clouds away quickly. Ferox gave up trying to thread his way through the ruined huts and instead bounded on to the rampart. There were fifty or sixty warriors in a mass down the slope from him. Far more were on the top of the next peak on this long ridge. Closer still, men with slings and javelins were edging nearer to the fort.

Ferox ran along the grassy top of the rampart. Here and there were the stumps of posts showing that there had once been a palisade to protect men on the walls. A pebble from a sling flicked through the grass just ahead of him as he ran. Another whipped past inches from his face. There was no protection for a man on the rampart any more, and the Tungrians were wisely waiting behind the wall rather than be targets on top of it. For the moment the Selgovae were only probing, unsure how many Romans were in the smoke-filled ruin, but soon they would see the defenders’ weakness.

He ran on. There were two old gateways in the rampart. The one he had come through faced the approach to the pass, while the second was at the far end, looking towards the rest of the ridge. The wind veered and gusted, letting him glimpse the high plumes of Annius and the legionary centurion near the far gateway. Ferox hurried towards them, running down the inside slope of the rampart and scrambling over the dry stone walls of a cattle pen.

Titus Annius saw him and looked angry. ‘Thought you had gone for orders.’

‘I have sent my men, but reckoned that you might need an additional officer.’

The cohort commander shrugged, and went back to telling the legionary centurion to form his men to block the open gateway. Earlier in the day the Selgovae had pulled a cart across the gap, but when they abandoned the fort they had dragged it away and pushed it down one of the slopes. It lay there now, both wheels shattered so that they could not recover it.

‘You hold here, Rufus,’ Titus Annius told the centurion from II Augusta. ‘I’ll put a detachment on the other gate, and keep the rest formed up in groups of twenty ready to take anyone who comes over the walls.’

Rufus nodded. His face was dark with patches of soot. ‘What about the other gap in the wall?’

Titus Annius slapped his hand against his leg in annoyance. ‘I’d forgotten. I’ll put men there.’

‘I did not know that there was another way in,’ Ferox said.