Yet others sensed something similar. It had been growing for a while, but since the raid he noticed a dark mood among the Textoverdi. ‘Bad times,’ men said to him over and over again. ‘There’s a storm coming and a cruel winter.’ People were worried and they would not tell him why, or perhaps they could not explain, something they sniffed in the wind like the one-eyed Batavian. ‘Bad times.’

Ferox launched a fresh assault on the post, hacking with more fury than skill until he was pouring with sweat. He had seen horsemen coming down the valley, but knew he could not hurry them so kept at his exercises.

‘I’ll give you five to four on the post,’ Vindex announced as he reined in.

Ferox nodded, breathing heavily. ‘Well, it is a very good post.’

‘Got good news and bad,’ the Brigantian continued, his skull-like face serious even by his standards.

‘Let’s have the bad news.’

‘No, let’s have a drink and then all the news.’ Vindex sprang down and walked with him into the outpost.

‘We found the Goat Man’s boy,’ he said, staring down into his flagon of beer, sitting on a three-legged stool in the centurion’s quarters. The room still showed the damage from the struggle to rouse him all those days ago, in spite of Philo’s best efforts. Ferox was sticking to well-watered posca but was thirsty after his exercise and glad to have it.

‘He is dead?’

Vindex nodded and there were tears in his eyes. ‘The bastards buried him.’ He could see that the centurion did not understand. ‘He wasn’t dead. They just trussed him up and buried him on a mound beside a stream.’

He drank for a while, brooding and angry, and Ferox thought it better to let him. He knew that his own rage would grow. People did not come and do this on his patch.

‘We caught one,’ Vindex said after a long wait, the silence only broken by the crackling of the fire. ‘One of the mad buggers with the horse on his head. He was Hibernian, came across the water to follow the Stallion, the seer blessed by Cocidius and the Morrigan to lead the peoples in the war that will end the world. Reckon that’s the lad we saw at the ambush, waving them on. This boy swore that this Stallion has powerful medicine, and is blessed by the gods, who want him to purge the whole island of the corruption of Rome.’

‘Nice names and nice ambition,’ Ferox said. ‘But you said “was”?’