‘Thank you for your help,’ Ferox said, and once he was sure that everything was in place in case the enemy attacked again, he made his way up to the roof. Probus was there, along with Bran and an ebullient Ovidius. All three were covered in dust. Ferox pulled himself up onto the thatch. A large section of the surrounding wall was gone, and he realised that they had pulled it apart to use as missiles. He looked over the edge. It was a good ten feet or so to the mouth of the entrance below, and some of the shaped stones had gone further than that.
‘I did worry that we might touch a capstone or something like that,’ the old poet said. His eyes were bright, and he was struggling to stop from grinning. ‘Thought we might pull out a single piece and have the whole tower fall down around our ears.’
‘That would have been unfortunate, my lord,’ Ferox agreed.
‘I rather fear I was not strong enough to do more than give orders, which the others were courteous enough to follow. I threw one and it struck the roof.’
‘It nearly hit me.’
‘Sorry. I almost hit that fiery Hibernian queen as well, as she hauled herself up onto the roof.’ Ovidius pointed down to one of the half-ruined houses alongside the winding entrance tunnel. ‘Oh dear, that’s a long way up,’ he said, looking nauseous. ‘I really do not care for heights. When something is happening it is fine, but now…’ He trailed off.
‘It is like that. Sometimes you are too busy to be afraid.’
‘That must be so.’ Ovidius was puzzled and intrigued, and Ferox sensed an approaching discussion. He turned to Probus.
‘You did the throwing? That’s a hell of a long way.’
‘I was a slave once, and a soldier,’ the merchant said. ‘These days I’m rich, but a man should still do some of his own work. The other lad is smaller than me and lobbed them just as far.’ He meant the Red Cat. ‘The boy reckons he’s seen something.’
‘I kept a lookout while they were fighting.’ Bran’s face showed resentment at not being able to hurl big rocks as far as an adult. ‘And I saw them. Three sails, maybe four.’
Ferox went to the other side of the tower and looked out to sea. The weather was closing in again, clouds sweeping over the waves so that he could not see much more than half a mile out across the water.
‘Anyone else see anything?’ There was silence. ‘What about the Red Cat?’
‘He was busy,’ Bran insisted. ‘And by the time the fight was over, it was harder to see. He reckoned he saw something, but was not sure and he said that he would go and get you.’
Ferox peered out, shading his eyes as if somehow that would let him penetrate the grey veil. ‘What makes you sure?’
‘The shape. Only your army ships have sails like that.’
‘Good lad.’ He leaned on one arm as he made his way around the conical thatched roof. There was not much high ground on the island, apart from to the north east and that was furthest away from the ships – if that was what the boy had really seen. An idea was forming in his mind, a wild, foolish idea, and he was not sure whether he should say something to Ovidius. For all his vagueness, the old man was a noble and had the ear of the legate.
An arrow struck the wall in front of him and bounced off the stone.
‘Keep down, everyone. No sense in getting killed now that help is on the way.’
‘You really reckon they’re coming?’ Probus asked the question that he sensed Ovidius was also itching to raise.
‘They’re coming,’ he said, and saw Bran swell up with pride. ‘What we have to do now is work out how we can help them.’
XXIII
‘IT’S USUALLY better to attack if you can.’ Longinus spoke the words cautiously, as if weighing up each one. ‘Defence is all very well, but if the bastards won’t go away then you’ll lose in the end. I did.’
Ferox had taken Vindex and the veteran to the room with the cow and its calf, and once he had got there said that he needed the advice of Julius Civilis. His mind was made up, but he wanted to see if the men he trusted the most could make him change it or would prove that he was right.
‘There are ten of us left who can fight,’ Vindex said. ‘Eleven if you count Segovax.’ The northerner was insisting that he was not slowed down by his wounds enough to matter. ‘He probably can fight on if we stay here, and he doesn’t need to move about much.’
‘There are three wounded who cannot go anywhere,’ Longinus, or Civilis, equestrian, prefect of a cohort and leader of the Batavian rebels, pointed out. ‘And you cannot expect the old man to survive long out in the open. Or the lady, spirited and tough though she is. And that boy of yours is raw.
‘Much depends on whether the child really did see warships on their way. If he did and the weather holds, then they may be here tomorrow, or even tonight. They will not know where we are or even whether we are still alive.’
‘We could signal,’ Vindex suggested. ‘If we lit the thatch the fire ought to go up and the stone cannot burn. We may have to come down from the upper floor, but we should be safe enough.’
‘It’s raining hard,’ Ferox said, ‘even if it was safe.’
Longinus nuzzled the cow, which started to lick his fingers. ‘Assuming that help is on its way, what will Cniva do?’
Ferox sighed. ‘If he knows? Either make a last effort to kill us and then hole up in his stronghold on the far side of the island, or take to his heels. He has a ship. We might follow him for a while, but he can probably guess that we won’t hunt him forever. Even after his losses he has a lot of well-armed warriors. They could easily take another island.’
‘Or wait until we have gone and come back here,’ Vindex suggested. ‘Doesn’t it depend on how much he wants Genialis? If the boy has value to him then he might have another go. It’s quiet out there now, but if they get in it won’t last long.’
‘What if he could not leave?’ Ferox looked at them in turn.
‘You are thinking of his ship?’ Vindex said. ‘Burn it, like we did those boats at Aballava?’
‘I was thinking something like that.’
‘Big thing to burn.’
‘It is.’
‘If you trap him here then he must fight.’ The one-eyed veteran was still fussing the cow. ‘So maybe he will go back behind the walls of his settlement and prepare. If he has seen the ships coming he will guess at how many are coming for him. So he will know that he is outnumbered two or three to one. Can he hope to beat those odds?’
‘Will he have a choice?’ Ferox asked. ‘He cannot leave, so as you say he must fight. This is not the country to face bigger numbers in the open, and there is nowhere to hide. Behind a stout wall he has a chance. We have held them off so far and he might do the same.’
Longinus nodded. ‘Our boys won’t have the equipment for a full siege or the time for it. So Cniva might be wondering how much food Brocchus and his men have brought with them. There is not a lot to take up here, not to feed hundreds, and if Brocchus sends men to sail off to the coast or another island that takes time and weakens his force. Hold out for long enough and the Romans might leave.’
‘Might be weeks or months, or maybe never, before they come back,’ Vindex conceded. ‘This is a long way from the province. If he can hold them off Cniva would tell everyone that he was a great leader, a man whose spirit is strong. But he’s failed so far here. What’s to say that some of the rest don’t kill him and find someone else to take charge?’
‘Does it matter?’ Ferox said. ‘The choices are the same. They know that they’ll not get terms. Not after what they have done. And Cniva’s lasted a long time. You don’t get rid of a man like that easily.’