The Eagles Prey

'Romans!' a voice called out of the mist in Latin, and Cato quickly turned towards the sound. 'Romans! Throw down your arms and surrender!'

Cato drew a breath and called out 'Who's there?'

The voice answered at once, 'I speak for Caratacus! He demands you drop your weapons and surrender. Or else, you die.'

'Who's he trying to fool?' Figulus muttered. 'We're dead either way. At least it'll be quick and less painful if we fight. Might take a few of them bastards with us as well.'

Cato could only nod at the prospect of the imminence of his death. It had come to this at last, and he felt his spine and neck clenched in the grasp of an icy fist. He was afraid, he reflected in some small rational part of his mind. At the very end he was afraid to die when it came down to it. But Figulus was right. Die he must, and right here and now, if he were to spare himself the lingering torment of a death at the hands of barbarians.

'Romans! Surrender. You have the word of Caratacus that you will not be harmed!'

'Bollocks!' Figulus shouted back.

Suddenly there was movement all around them and at once figures drifted forward out of the mist, and solidified into the forms of native warriors, hundreds of them, hemming the small knot of Romans in on each side. They slowly closed in and shuffled to a stop no more than ten feet from the points of the Roman spears. Again the voice called out to them, much nearer now, but still invisible.

'This is the last time Caratacus deigns to make his offer. Surrender now and you will live. You have ten heartbeats to decide…'

Cato glanced round at the fierce faces of the warriors, woad-patterned beneath jagged crests of lime-washed hair. They stood, poised and ready to rush forward and cut the handful of legionaries to pieces. There was a thud, and Cato glanced round to see that Metellus had dropped his sword. Several more of his men immediately followed suit. For a moment Cato felt nothing but contempt and rage for Metellus. He was on the verge of charging into the enemy line… Then he regained control of himself and realised that it would be a futile death. Quite futile. And while he lived there was always hope.

Cato took a deep breath as he straightened up. 'Drop your weapons…'

05 The Eagles Prey

CHAPTER THIRTY

'What do you think they'll do with us?' Figulus muttered. They were sitting inside a cattle byre. The previous occupants had been moved, but not the soiled straw they had lived in, and the faecal filth caked on to the mud and grime that had become a second skin for the Romans.

Cato rested his forearms on his knees and was staring down at his boots.

'I've no idea. No idea at all… I'm not even sure why they let us live. They've not taken many of us prisoner before.'

'What happened to the ones they did take prisoner?'

Cato shrugged. 'Who knows? All we've found is bodies – and bits of bodies. I wouldn't get your hopes up.'

Figulus craned his neck round and squinted through a small gap in the willow-weave that formed the wall of the byre. Beyond the wall the rest of the enemy's camp stretched out across the island: hundreds of round huts, enclosed by a low palisade. There was only one approach to the camp, along a slender causeway that crossed the shallow waters surrounding the island. The causeway was defended by two formidable redoubts that projected from the island, either side of the main gate, which itself was made of thick timbers of oak. Inside the gate the survivors of Caratacus' army rested and licked their wounds, while they waited for their commander to decide what to do next.

When the small column of Roman prisoners had been led into the camp a large crowd of warriors and a few women and children had turned out to pour scorn and ridicule on the half-starved and filthy representatives of their vaunted enemy. While keeping his head protected as best he could from the shower of mud, shit and stones, Cato had looked round the camp with a professional interest. The warriors had kept their equipment clean and many still sweated from the training they had been doing before the prisoners had arrived. Cato had expected them to be demoralised and beaten after the almost complete disaster at the crossing of the Tamesis fifteen days before. But these men were clearly fit and eager to return to the fight.

The prisoners had been paraded round the camp and forced to suffer the usual indignities of capture before being led to this byre, where they had remained for three days, fed on scraps and tied up around the wrists and ankles. The existing stench of the small space had been made worse by the urine, shit, vomit and sweat of the prisoners, unable to move far from their position, without disturbing their comrades bound on either side. By day the sun beat down on them, cooking the thick fetid air that filled the byre so that every breath made Cato and his men feel nauseous. Outside, the Britons trained hard, with the monotonous clash and clatter of weapons, punctuated by the grunts and war cries of men determined to fight on against the legions with every fibre of their being.

'Not much chance of finding a way out through that lot,' Figulus said, as he turned round and leaned back against the wicker wall. The optio reached down and tried to ease the leather collar around his ankle into a more comfortable angle. 'Even if we could get out of these.'

Cato shrugged. He had long since given up any thought of escape, after thoroughly assessing the situation. The byre was guarded by three warriors, day and night. While the wall did not represent a serious obstacle to a man determined to find a way through or over it, the long chain that bound all the prisoners made it impossible to get out of the byre.

With all consideration of escape banished from his mind, Cato concentrated on the reason for their being spared in the first place. It seemed to make no sense. They would be useless as hostages. What were the lives of a score of legionaries to General Plautius? And the fact that they were fugitives from Roman justice made them even less valuable as a bargaining counter. So, if not hostages, then what? The alternative purpose of their captivity filled Cato with a horror that clenched its icy grip around his spine.

Human sacrifice.

Caratacus, like all Celt leaders, bowed to an authority placed even above the kings who ruled the tribes of this island – the druids. Cato had encountered them before and carried the scar of a terrible injury given to him by a sickle-wielding druid. Worse, he had seen evidence of what the druids did to the men, women and children they offered up as sacrifices to their gods. The image of himself being slaughtered on a stone altar, or being burned alive in a wooden cage haunted every long hour he spent tethered to his men in their prison.

Most of the others shared his foreboding and sat in silence, only shifting when their position had been endured long enough to become unbearably uncomfortable. Even Metellus and his cronies held their tongues and sat waiting for the inevitable end. Only Figulus seemed to have any fight left in him, and watched and listened intently to the daily routine in the surrounding camp. Cato admired his optio's resolve, irrelevant as it was, and made no attempt to persuade Figulus to stop fretting and accept his fate.

At the end of the third day Cato was woken from a light sleep by a sudden deafening chorus of cheering. Even the guards outside the byre joined in, thrusting their spears up in the air with each shout.

'What's all the noise?' asked Cato.

Figulus listened a moment before replying. 'Caratacus. It's Caratacus – they're calling out his name.'

'Must have been away from his camp for a few days. Wonder where he's been.'

'No doubt trying to stir up some more resistance to our legions, sir. He'll soon be ru