Halfway through the night the cloud cleared and the first faint outline of the moon rose across the sky. It was cold, turning sentry duty into a numbing torment as men stared out into the night and hoped not to see anything. A heavy sun rose blood red over the hills, but the morning brought only slow relief from the chill and the reds and pinks in the sky hinted at bad weather to come. Before dawn Ferox and his exploratores went ahead. One of the auxiliaries, an easterner by the look of him, chanted a low hymn to the god of the morning as they rode, and for once the others kept silent and listened to the strange words in a tongue they did not understand. It made Ferox think of Philo, who was back in the camp having insisted on following his master. With another slave, the boy helped to look after the tent that he shared with two of the Batavian centurions.

They did not see any warriors for the first hour, and that was strange, but Ferox kept his men in hand for it would be dangerous to get too far ahead of the supporting cavalry in the vanguard. The enemy were there, they were close, and he suspected that they wanted the Romans to press on. There were plenty of tracks showing where horsemen and quite a few men on foot had been on these hills before they had drawn back to the north.

The wind had dropped, otherwise they would have smelled them sooner, long before they saw them. There were plenty of piled stones warning of great danger, and it was no surprise when Vindex rode back and called to him, ‘You had better take a look.’

Ferox followed the Brigantian up the long ridge, ignoring the road, which climbed in a series of laborious bends. A pair of scouts were waiting for them on the crest, sitting impassively, spears resting on their shoulders. Neither man paid him any attention as he rode up, both just staring out at the view. He could not blame them. When it crossed the ridge the road dipped down, following the valley until it began to climb again. It was too wide to be called a pass, but on the line of hills around three-quarters of a mile away the rebels waited. Most sat or wandered about without apparent purpose. There were clusters, some very dense, and elsewhere looser swarms of men. Ferox tried to make a rough guess at numbers, and quickly reached a total of well over ten thousand. More kept strolling across the crest to join them and he guessed that there were many, many more not yet visible.

‘There’s a few of them,’ Vindex said.

‘Won’t be so many by tonight,’ Ferox replied.

‘And how many of us will there be?’