Inside the enclosure there were scores of Druids, not merely the handful he had been able to glimpse by their fires. Many were asleep on the ground, and Cato assumed there were yet more in the huts lining the inside of the enclosure. Several others were awake, at work on timber structures that were not unlike the frames of legionary catapults. The Druids were evidently fashioning their own crude form of artillery. His eyes searched the enclosure, but the general’s wife and son might be in any of the huts. Refusing to give way to despair, Cato scanned the huts once more. He had almost given up when he saw the cage. Beside one of the bigger huts, half concealed in the shadow cast by the overlapping thatch, was a small wicker cage, with wooden bars fastened across the entrance. Behind the bars, just visible in the pale moonlight, were two faces, watching the Druids at their work. Guards stood either side with their spears grounded.

Cato’s heart sank at the sight of the wretched prisoners. There was no way to get to them, no way at all. The moment he tried to pull himself up and over the wall he would be seen. Even if, by the most incredible miracle, he wasn’t, then how could he alone get them out of the cage? Fate had seen fit to permit him to advance this far in his attempt, and now no further.

Cato lowered himself, knowing there was no way he could reach the hostages without getting himself killed. He had always known this was a fool’s errand, but the confirmation of it was no less hard to bear. There was nothing more he could do. He had to leave at once.

He made his way back to the drain hole as carefully as he had approached the enclosure. When Cato was sure that he was unobserved, he leaned through the opening.

‘Prasutagus…’ he whispered.

A shadow rose from the slope and slid towards him. When the Iceni warrior had positioned himself beneath the hole, Cato dropped down, missed his grip and tumbled towards the gully. A powerful fist closed about his ankle and yanked him to a stop, scarcely a foot above the turds and urine trickling down the steep sides of the gully. Prasutagus swung him back onto the grass and collapsed beside him a moment later.

‘Thanks,’ Cato panted. ‘Really thought I was in deep shit there.’

‘You find them?’

‘Yes,’ Cato replied bitterly, ‘I found them.’

When The Eagle Hunts

Chapter Thirty-Three