Ferox saw a couple of legionaries leaning on their shields, their heads bowed so that they did not have to meet anyone’s eye. ‘You!’ he bellowed from a few feet away, his voice suddenly full of strength and with enough of a parade-ground tone to make their faces jerk up. ‘What are your names?’

‘Longus, sir,’ one answered before he could think. His comrade glanced at him, but knew that he could not refuse.

‘Terentius, sir.’ He was younger than the other man, probably no more than twenty, but he had the sharp features of someone who planned to grow as old and rich as possible.

‘Good. You are with me. Stay right behind me and if ever I lose sight of you, I’ll make sure they have the skin off your back before the week is out. Understand!’

‘Sir.’ The voices were weary and lacked enthusiasm, but the habit of discipline was strong and his crest marked this man out as a centurion – and his tone as a right bastard likely to remember.

Everyone knew that the worst slaughter happened when a unit broke and fled, and as a fight drew on and on and everyone tired, they all knew, too, that the collapse could come at any moment. So men hung back and waited. No one wanted to be seen to start the panic and be blamed. No one wanted to die either, so they lurked well behind the fighting line until they could follow the lead of everyone else.

Terentius and Longus trailed after the centurion as he went forward, ignoring men who were wounded but yelling at the rest to follow. Ferox scooped up a shield that lay on the ground, hefted it to test that the handgrip was still firmly in place and the boards solid, and pushed on. There were a dozen archers nearby, waiting and not shooting.

‘Running short of arrows, sir,’ the optio with them reported. ‘Down to four or five each.’

‘Right. Every second man gives his to the soldier next to him. Then he draws his sword and follows me. You stay with the others.’

‘Sir.’

He expected more show of resentment at being asked to fight hand to hand rather than do what they were paid and trained to do, but the archers’ faces were impassive.

Ferox ran forward. The front of the cohort was now a row of seven or eight clusters of weary men. Some of them may have started out as the centuries of the cohort, but there was little regularity any more. Legionaries still determined to fight on bunched together because that made them feel safer. Most of the clusters were ten or twelve deep and there were big gaps between them. If the Britons had been fresh and eager then they could have swarmed through the spaces and overwhelmed the remnants of the cohort, but they were just as exhausted and their line looked much the same and was no more solid.