The camp was plunged into chaos. Soldiers were running everywhere, fumbling with weapons and armour, some of them only half-dressed. And from one corner of the camp a plume of smoke was rising.

Xander stared about, bewildered. 'What has happened? What should we do?'

'Stand still,' Brigonius said firmly. He took Lepidina's arm. Her face was closed up and he couldn't tell what she was thinking or feeling. This wasn't the place for her, he told himself angrily. 'Stay with me,' he said. 'The camp is obviously under attack. We're in the safest place, right here. Just let the soldiers do their jobs.'

Karus shook his head, clearly reeling from the wine. 'I'd like to know how they managed to torch the camp. What did they use, a catapult?'

Tullio approached them and glared at Brigonius. 'You. You're a Brigantian. Are you going to give me any trouble?'

'No.'

Tullio pressed him: 'What are you then? On this night when many of your countrymen will have their bellies slit open by Roman stabbing swords, are you a traitor to your kind?'

The question struck at Brigonius's heart. But he said, 'No. But I am no fool either. This isn't the way to deal with the Romans; this can't work.'

'And what is the right way to "deal" with Rome?'

'On your own terms. By skinning you of every sesterce.'

Tullio inspected him closely. 'Very well. Stay close to me or Annius; it's likely to be a long night. And keep these people under control.' Then he turned away, dismissing Brigonius and his party.

A junior officer ran up. 'Sir, we're under attack!'

'Well, I can see that,' Tullio snapped. He drew his stabbing sword and turned to face the north. 'Perhaps those northerners are taking their chance before the Wall is built. Get me a signaller and tell him-'

'Sir.' The officer, no older than twenty-five, was distressed, out of his depth. 'They aren't coming from the north.'

'Then where?'

'From the south, sir. The south!'

Tullio gaped. 'The south? Which side of this cursed Wall are the barbarians supposed to be on? And how did they set fire to my camp?'

'I can answer that, sir.' A tough-looking centurion approached. His face was streaked with ash, and he carried something in his hand, something that dangled and dripped a dark fluid. 'He was inside the camp. He had business here; he'd been here before. We'd no reason to suspect him. But he was carrying a bottle of oil which he lit and-'

'Who, man? Who did this?'

The centurion glared at Brigonius. 'This is yours, I believe.' He raised his arm. The thing in his hand was a human head, severed at the neck, from which blood still oozed. The face was obscured by a thick black beard. The centurion dumped the wet thing on the floor.

Brigonius flinched but stood his ground, while Lepidina cowered behind him. 'Matto,' Brigonius breathed. 'Oh, you fool.'

Tullio glared. 'Recriminations later. For now let's get control of the situation. You,' he told the centurion. 'Take charge of what's going on inside the camp. Put that fire out before it does any more damage.' The centurion ran off. 'Annius, you come with me. What are those signallers doing up in that tower, sucking each other off? I need to find out what's happening in the country…' He stalked off, bristling, angry, competent.

Karus was staring at the severed head. 'I knew this man.'

'He was my cousin,' Brigonius said grimly. 'He worked for me, at the quarry.'

'What was in his mind, Brigonius? He must have known he could not survive a lone attack on a Roman camp.'

'But death didn't matter to him,' Xander said quietly. 'The Romans have encountered such suicide killers before-and know they are hard to deal with. As Tacitus has written, "The man who is prepared to die will always be your master." '

The commands flowing from Tullio soon had their effect. Soldiers swarmed around the camp, preparing weapons and armour. Meanwhile others gathered around the fire. They hauled a cart laden with a heavy tank of water. Two beefy infantrymen began to work a two-handed lever, and water was forced out of a nozzle. The cart was hastily swivelled so that the fire engine's spouting water was aimed at the burning tents.

The light faded, the long day dwindling into night. Brigonius and his party huddled with Tullio's staff in the prefect's tent.

Beyond the camp the country was wild. Brigonius heard shouts, screams, and there was a prevailing stink of smoke. The soldiers prowled around their watch posts, peering out into the dangerous dark.

To Brigonius's surprise, Tullio didn't send his forces out immediately to meet the enemy. During the night the sentries passed only despatch riders. On the old signal tower flags were raised and beacons lit, and across the turbulent countryside more pinpricks of fire lit up in response, as the mass mind of the army channelled and absorbed information about what was happening.

It soon became clear that the uprising had been coordinated. There had been strikes all along the line of the Wall, most of them rash suicide raids. And at the same time there had been a general rising in the countryside, with tax officials and councillors, many of them Brigantian themselves, abused, attacked, their homes ransacked. The most serious rising was to the west of Banna, where a pack of young men had torched the still-incomplete turf wall, kicked in the defensive ditch, and generally made a mess of the Romans' new frontier.

Through the night Tullio sat in his improvised command post, poring over maps and lists of detachment names and numbers on hastily setout tables. Records, charts, lists, information, information: even as the countryside boiled like a disturbed ant hill, communication, patience, thinking was the key to the Roman response. Sitting here Brigonius saw how very wrong Matto had been to resist the Romans' literacy, for it was the army's key weapon. Through words and numbers on paper Roman commanders were able to transmit their commands unambiguously across hundreds of miles, and the bloody lessons of the past were stored without error or distortion, for ever.

While Tullio and his staff worked, the Brigantian slave boy brought them food and more soldiers' wine. Brigonius wondered what was going on in the head of the boy, what he understood of the uprising. Where was his family-north of here, south? But families, even names, were irrelevant, once you were a slave; you had no past, no future, no purpose but that which your master assigned you. Even your children were slaves, and given litter names by your master: 'First-born' (Primigenius) perhaps, or 'Similar', or 'Runt'. But on a night like this, Brigonius thought, even the most docile slave must feel something stirring in his heart.

The long night wore on. Karus drank himself to sleep on a soldier's blanket. Xander, a nervous man surprisingly stoical in the face of a real crisis, wrapped himself in his cloak and sat quietly, eyes wide. Lepidina curled up against Brigonius, and Brigonius welcomed this echo of their brief love, though he knew she wanted no more than comfort. As for himself he could not sleep.

The sun was rising when at last the bugles sang. Brigonius left his companions sleeping, letting Lepidina slide off onto a blanket, and went out to see.

Units of soldiers were forming up, preparing to march out to meet the enemy. Brigonius overheard Tullio and his aides reviewing their information and giving commands to the junior officers. The Romans had delayed their response until they could assemble a sufficient countering force with detachments of the auxiliary units from Banna, other nearby camps, and the forts behind the Wall line. The legionary detachments assigned to Wall construction work were also gathering their weapons, but they were falling back, while other detachments from the legionary fortress at Eburacum, better prepared, were moving forward. The auxiliaries would do the brunt of the fighting while the legions would be kept in reserve, for no large-scale pitched battle was expected…