The sun inscribed a shallow parabola across a clear sky on the second day of the cohort’s march back to the Second Legion. The previous night had been spent in a hastily erected marching camp and despite the exhausting effort of breaking up the frozen ground to make the ditch and inner rampart, the cold and fear of the enemy denied sleep to the men of the cohort. From first light Hortensius permitted no rest stops and watched the men like a hawk, swooping to bawl out any legionary who showed signs of slackening his pace, and freely wielding his vine cane if further encouragement was required. Even though the air was cold, and the snow compacted to ice underfoot, the men soon broke into a sweat under the burden of their equipment yokes. The British prisoners, though chained, were unburdened and had the best of it. One, who was wounded in the legs, had dropped out of the column towards the end of the first day. Hortensius stood over him and laid into the Briton with his vine stick, but the man just curled up in a protective ball and would not get up. Hortensius nodded grimly, stuck his vine into the ground and in one sweeping movement drew his sword and cut the Briton’s throat. The body was left by the track as the column moved on. No more prisoners had fallen out of line since then.

Without any rest periods to relieve the pressure of the hard yoke poles on the men’s shoulders, the march was an agony. The men in the ranks grumbled about their officers in increasingly bitter undertones as they forced themselves to place one foot in front of the other. Not many had slept since the night before the attack on the Durotriges. By early afternoon on the second day, as the sun began to dip towards the smudgy grey of the winter horizon, Cato wondered how much longer he could bear the strain. His collarbone was being rubbed raw under its burden, his eyes were stinging with weariness and every pace sent shooting pains up from the soles of his feet.

Looking round at the rest of the century, Cato could see the same strained expressions etched on every face. Even when Centurion Hortensius called a halt to the march at the end of the afternoon, the men would have to begin the back-breaking work of preparing a marching camp. The prospect of having to tackle the frozen soil with his pickaxe filled Cato with dread. As so often before, he cursed himself for being in the army and his imagination dwelt on the relative comforts of the life he had previously enjoyed as a slave in the imperial palace in Rome.