‘It’s a gamble.’ The legate turned away and paced up and down the small tent. Another man would have needed to duck his head under the low roof. There was silence for a long time and he must have crossed back and forth a dozen times. His friend Ovidius sat on a folding chair and watched him, now and again rubbing his dripping nose. The old philosopher had insisted on coming, and appeared remarkably cheerful in spite of the discomfort and danger.
‘It’s a big gamble,’ Marcellus said at last.
‘I thought that was why we were here, my lord.’
Ovidius chuckled.
‘So be it.’ The governor turned to his friend. ‘Iacta alea est, as they say. It worked well enough for him.’
‘Aneristho kubos,’ the philosopher corrected him. ‘As I heard it, Caesar spoke in Greek.’
‘That must have made all the difference. Well then, I shall roll the dice and see how they fall.’ His smile was thin, his face taut in the flickering light of the lamp. ‘And what do your Silures say when they play a game?’
‘We do not think much of a man who plays, my lord,’ Ferox said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. The Romans were an emotional people, ready to weep and cry out in triumph or frustration, and so many years spent among them had weakened the calm so important to his people.
Marcellus’ face turned hard immediately.
‘We admire only the man who wins,’ Ferox told him.
‘And care little for courtesy, I see.’ The legate punched him softly on the arm. ‘Well, true enough, and I doubt Caesar thought any different. Get some rest. Tomorrow we win.’
Halfway through the night the cloud cleared and the first faint outline of the moon rose across the sky. It was cold, turning sentry duty into a numbing torment as men stared out into the night and hoped not to see anything. A heavy sun rose blood red over the hills, but the morning brought only slow relief from the chill and the reds and pinks in the sky hinted at bad weather to come. Before dawn Ferox and his exploratores went ahead. One of the auxiliaries, an easterner by the look of him, chanted a low hymn to the god of the morning as they rode, and for once the others kept silent and listened to the strange words in a tongue they did not understand. It made Ferox think of Philo, who was back in the camp having insisted on following his master. With another slave, the boy helped to look after the tent that he shared with two of the Batavian centurions.
They did not see any warriors for the first hour, and that was strange, but Ferox kept his men in hand for it would be dangerous to get too far ahead of the supporting cavalry in the vanguard. The enemy were there, they were close, and he suspected that they wanted the Romans to press on. There were plenty of tracks showing where horsemen and quite a few men on foot had been on these hills before they had drawn back to the north.
The wind had dropped, otherwise they would have smelled them sooner, long before they saw them. There were plenty of piled stones warning of great danger, and it was no surprise when Vindex rode back and called to him, ‘You had better take a look.’
Ferox followed the Brigantian up the long ridge, ignoring the road, which climbed in a series of laborious bends. A pair of scouts were waiting for them on the crest, sitting impassively, spears resting on their shoulders. Neither man paid him any attention as he rode up, both just staring out at the view. He could not blame them. When it crossed the ridge the road dipped down, following the valley until it began to climb again. It was too wide to be called a pass, but on the line of hills around three-quarters of a mile away the rebels waited. Most sat or wandered about without apparent purpose. There were clusters, some very dense, and elsewhere looser swarms of men. Ferox tried to make a rough guess at numbers, and quickly reached a total of well over ten thousand. More kept strolling across the crest to join them and he guessed that there were many, many more not yet visible.
‘There’s a few of them,’ Vindex said.
‘Won’t be so many by tonight,’ Ferox replied.
‘And how many of us will there be?’
He sent a messenger back to the main force, choosing Victor from the half-dozen troopers with him because he knew and trusted the man.
The sun had gone, the sky once more an unbroken sea of dirty clouds, so that the day had become darker rather than lighter. Up on the ridge an icy wind gusted into them, making them lean into it to keep their balance.
‘Least it’s not raining,’ Ferox said to Vindex as they waited and watched the enemy.
‘Not yet.’
The Britons did not advance. Their numbers kept growing and over time the line more clearly became a row of dense masses. Even if they had answered the Stallion’s call to war, Ferox suspected that most men were seeking out their kin to stand beside if it came to a fight. He fought the urge to go forward and take a closer look, and instead remembered the provincial legate’s instructions. There were four or five hundred horsemen in plain sight on each flank, but almost everyone else was on foot. From up here he could see few chariots, which meant that not many important chieftains had joined the cause. That is if they were not simply waiting behind the ridge, ready to make a triumphant entrance just before the battle. The little he had seen of the Stallion and his followers did not suggest any great subtlety in the way the man did things, but if important leaders had joined him then he would not be in sole charge and some of them would be old and wise in war. Then there was the great druid, if he was over there somewhere, a man famed for his deceptions and magic. For the moment the Britons waited and Ferox wanted to do nothing to provoke them.
Others did not share his caution. The decurion in charge of the first turma to reach them was young and eager, and it took a direct order to stop him from riding forward on his own and challenging the enemy to single combat. Fortunately he was from the ala Petriana and Ferox knew enough about Brocchus to be confident that the prefect would frown on such glory-hunting.
Crispinus and Flaccus were another matter, and when the two tribunes rode up at the head of the main body of the vanguard, they looked like two boys who had just been told that their schoolmaster was sick and would not be back for a week.
‘We have them!’ Crispinus almost shouted the words, waving his hand along the great length of the enemy host.
‘Yes, bet we’ve got them worried,’ said Vindex under his breath.
Flaccus’ eyes betrayed a moment of anger before he made the decision not to hear anything said by so insignificant a person as a scout from one of the tribes. ‘It’s almost like an arena,’ he said. ‘Just perfect.’
In the past, Crispinus and the other tribune had treated each other with courtesy and no more, but the prospect of action appeared to have created a wave of mutual affection. ‘The legate will be delighted.’
If the fools expected Marcellus to advance and then attack straight up that slope then Ferox was not about to shatter their illusions.
‘I feel that we should keep them busy,’ Crispinus announced. ‘We have a decent number of well-mounted men, so can disengage and withdraw whenever we want.’ The two tribunes had arrived with the formed supports for the scouts. There were forty legionary cavalrymen, and three turmae, all from ala Petriana.
Ferox wished that Brocchus had come up. ‘My orders are not to look for trouble, my lord.’