Cato stepped out of the tent and surveyed the scene before him. Dusk was closing in over the Silurian mountains, painting the sky with a faint lilac hue. The army had halted during the afternoon to make camp and now that the last defences had been prepared, it was settling down for the night. Due to the narrowness of the valley floor the soldiers had been obliged to construct a long thin rampart rather than the usual regular rectangle. As a result, the baggage train and the haphazard sprawl of tents and shelters of the camp followers stretched out on either side, beyond the regular lines of the tents belonging to the men of the escort detachment. The horses of the Thracians were contentedly chewing on their evening feed in a roped-off enclosure.
To his right, two hundred paces away, were more ordered lines of tents where the two cohorts of the rearguard were camped. A similar distance to the left were the long rows of tents belonging to the main body of the army, as neatly ordered as the ground allowed, and arranged about their commanding officer’s tent. The largest tent that Cato could see was on a small rise, over half a mile away: the headquarters of General Ostorius. Scores of fires had been lit, and the glow of the flames pricked out of the gathering veil of darkness. Looking up, beyond the staked parapet running along the rampart, Cato could see small parties of horsemen from another cavalry unit on the slopes surrounding the camp, some starkly outlined against the fading glow of the setting sun. And beyond them, out there in the wilderness of these mountains, lay the army of Caratacus that the Romans were pursuing — for the moment anyway, Cato thought. He had fought the Catuvellaunian king before and had learned to respect him. Caratacus might yet spring a surprise on them. Cato smiled grimly. In fact, it would be a surprise if he didn’t.
The thin brassy notes of a cornu cut through the hubbub of shouted orders, muted conversation and braying. Cato listened attentively and recognised the signal summoning unit commanders to headquarters. He turned back into his tent and pulled on and laced up a leather jerkin with its protective strips that covered his shoulders and dropped from his waist to his thighs. He slung his sword strap over his shoulder and snatched up his woollen cape. It would be dark by the time he returned to his tent and he knew these valleys well enough to know how cold they became at night, even in what passed for a summer in Britannia. Stepping out of his tent, Cato fastened the pin at his shoulder and adjusted his cloak as he waited for Macro to stride up from his tent line. Then the two of them set off through the camp towards headquarters.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Now that we’re all here, I can begin.’ General Ostorius glanced at Cato and Macro pointedly before he looked over the faces of the officers seated on camp stools and benches in front of him. The last to arrive, Cato and Macro sat at the back, on the end of a bench, amongst the other auxiliary unit commanders. Cato was the youngest by some years and most of the other prefects had hair flecked with grey, or had already lost much of it. Some were scarred, like Cato, whose face was bisected by a jagged white line from a sword cut he had received in Egypt. In front of them sat the senior officers of the two legions in Ostorius’s column, the Fourteenth and Twentieth: the centurions commanding the cohorts, the junior tribunes and the broad-stripers who were destined to lead their own legions provided they showed the necessary potential, and lastly the two legates, veterans who had each been entrusted with command of one of the empire’s elite fighting formations.
General Ostorius stood facing his officers, a thin, wiry aristocrat of advanced years, his face deeply creased and fringed with cropped white hair. He had a reputation as a tough and experienced officer with a sound grasp of strategy, but to Cato he looked frail and worn-down. His judgement was questionable too. Before Cato and Macro had returned to the province, the general had provoked an uprising by the tribesmen of the Iceni. He had been preparing for a campaign against the Silures and the Ordovices and to ensure the security of the rest of the province he had ordered the Iceni to lay down their arms.
It had been a tactless move, causing grave offence to the warrior caste of the tribe who had been prepared to fight rather than give up their weapons. The ensuing revolt had been easily crushed, but it had delayed the campaign and bought Caratacus much needed time to organise his new allies. It had also humiliated the Iceni and their allies, and those tribes now regarded the Romans with thinly veiled hostility. That was the kind of wound to the pride that would fester in the hearts of the native tribesmen, Cato reflected. He doubted that it would be the last time the Iceni defied Rome. The final battle of the brief revolt had been won by tribal levies commanded by Roman officers. The divisions between the British tribes did far more to undermine the cause of those who opposed Rome than the swords of the legions. As long as the largest tribes continued to nurture their age-old rivalries, Rome would win the day. But if they ever united, then Cato feared that the Emperor’s soldiers would be swept from the island amid a tide of carnage and humiliation.
Ostorius raised a hand and addressed his officers.
‘Gentlemen, as you know, we have been pursuing Caratacus through these wretched mountains for over a month now. Our cavalrymen have been doing their best to keep in contact with the enemy, but the terrain favours him rather than us. Too many choke points where the Silurian rearguard can turn and hold us off while the main body of their army escapes. So far we have remained in touch with the enemy. But the mists of the last few days have enabled Caratacus to give us the slip.’
There was no concealing the disappointment in his voice and Ostorius ran his gnarled fingers through his hair as he continued. ‘The scouts report that there are two routes that the enemy could have taken. Tribune Petillius, the map, if you please.’
One of the junior tribunes hurried forward with a roll of leather and set it up over a wooden easel beside the general’s desk. Night had fallen outside and the map was illuminated by the oil lamp stands in the tent, so Cato had to squint to make out the details. The features of the map betrayed one of the main difficulties of the campaign. While the coastline was delineated in detail, thanks to the work of the naval squadron operating from Abona, the inland sections of the map were sparsely marked, and only then as the advance of the army uncovered the landscape it passed through. Such was the loyalty of the local people to their cause that none was willing to serve as a guide for the Roman forces, even for a small fortune in silver.
Ostorius approached the map and tapped his finger on the soft parchment. ‘This valley is where we are camped. Some ten miles ahead it divides. . Here. One branch appears to head deep into Silurian territory. The other leads north, towards the Ordovices. If we turn south on the assumption that Caratacus is headed that way then he will continue to lead us a merry old chase through the mountains. That said, the longer it continues, the more strain he places on his food supplies. The Silurians have already suffered enough hardship feeding his troops and enduring the raids that we have mounted on their settlements. We can keep up the pursuit until the end of the campaign season but the chances are that Caratacus will elude us and then we will have to begin a new hunt for him next year.’