‘The centurion in charge of the column coming up from Bremesio estimates the bands of horsemen as numbering several hundred,’ the provincial legate told Ferox late that night.

Ferox was tired, for he and Vindex had spent the day riding hard, marauding across the land, taking care to be seen on the tops of hills by the troops going up the road. The Brigantian scouts had acted the part of rebellious warriors, and the task had amused them, especially when they were told to set light to any abandoned buildings they found.

‘Imaginative fellow, that centurion,’ Ferox said. It had taken a good deal of effort to persuade the legate to release the scouts held under loose arrest at Vindolanda, but in the end he had had his way and with the other warriors who had come in time there had been twenty-three riders out in the hills. ‘Perhaps, my lord, it would be wise not to place him in charge of counting stores.’

The army marched an hour before dawn. Ferox and the advance guard of the exploratores set out two hours before that, although he left Vindex and his men behind to rest and catch up before the end of the day. The legate had given him eighty troopers detached from their units and it was a pleasant surprise to find Victor and the Thracian from his own burgus among them. They were good choices, active and intelligent, and his impression of the rest of his command was equally favourable. It seemed that Neratius Marcellus was a clever man, who liked to plan ahead and tried to prepare as well as possible. Ferox hoped that he was also lucky, for without that the odds were on a disaster and a wave of blood and ruin sweeping over the north.

Marker stones were already there warning of the approach of a large force. There were others put down by the Textoverdi, vaguer warnings of danger, and there was no hiding the wariness among the people they met. Ferox had already heard the rumours of a work of great magic made greater by the hideous sacrifice of a queen of the Romans and the killing of their king. It made little difference when he told them that neither had died, and that the actual victim was born a slave and not royal. People only shook their heads and talked of dark times and a blood-red winter.

For most of the first day Ferox stayed with his outposts. The men worked in pairs, spaced wide apart across the lands to either side of the road. He kept half a dozen troopers with him, half a mile back, and had similar groups on either flank. On the second day he was strengthened by Vindex and his men and placed patrols in the rear as well.