The First Cohort rounded the corner of the final dogleg and began to pass between a bastion and the main gate. This was the most dangerous moment of the assault. The men were under fire from two sides and could not begin to deploy the ram against the gate until the bastion was taken. The senior centurion knew his job, and in calm, measured tones gave the order for the First Century of the cohort to break away from the testudo. The men turned abruptly and scrambled up the steep slope to the bastion. The Durotriges who had survived the barrage of bolts threw themselves on their attackers, making the most of their height advantage. Several legionaries fell to their weapons, tumbling and slipping back down the slope. But there were too few of the enemy to hold off the Romans for long, and the vicious thrusting swords of the legionaries made short work of them.

As soon as the bastion had been cleared, men armed with compound bows scampered up and began pouring fire onto the defenders on the main gate, ducking down to string the next arrow behind the shields of the century who had won the bastion. The Durotriges redirected their missile fire onto the new threat, taking the pressure off the testudo standing at the base of the gate. Now the engineers moved up with the battering ram, and under cover of the testudo began a slow rhythmic assault on the stout wooden beams of the main gate.

The dull thud of the ram reached Vespasian’s ears and his mind turned to Cato and his small party on the other side of the hill fort. They, too, would hear the ram, and start making their move.

Below the drainage gully on the other side of the hill fort, the pile of sewage and refuse suddenly came to life. Had there been a sentry on the palisade above, he might have had difficulty believing his eyes when a small party of what appeared to be Celtic warriors emerged from the foul-smelling heap and silently swarmed up either side of the gully, making for the wooden opening set into the palisade. While the engineers had been busy levelling the ground, a small party of legionaries, the best men of the former Sixth Century of the Fourth Cohort, had quietly made their way round the hill fort, under the command of their optio and the tall Iceni warrior they had been introduced to earlier that night. Naked, and daubed in the blue woad designs of the Celts, they were equipped with cavalry long swords, which might just pass for native weapons at a quick glance. Prasutagus had led them over the ramparts and through the staked trenches to the reeking mound of spoil. There, with silent expressions of disgust, they had hidden themselves amid the shit and slops, and waited, motionless, for the coming of dawn and the battering ram attack on the main gate.