Masters of Rome

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The fog thickened, forcing the turma of thirty-two legionary cavalry to slow their mounts to a walk. The snorts of the horses and jangle of harnesses were deadened, swallowed up by the thick atmosphere enshrouding the small detachment.

Titus Flavius Sabinus pulled his damp cloak tighter around his shoulders, inwardly cursing the foul northern climate and his direct superior, General Aulus Plautius, commander of the Roman invasion force in Britannia, for summoning him to a briefing in such conditions.

Sabinus had been surprised by the summons. When the messenger, a tribune on Plautius’ staff, arrived with a native guide the previous evening at the XIIII Gemina’s winter camp on the middle reaches of the Tamesis River, Sabinus had expected him to be bringing his final orders for the coming season’s campaign. Why Plautius should order him to travel almost eighty miles south to meet him at the winter quarters of the II Augusta, his brother Vespasian’s legion, seemed strange just a month after the legates of all four legions in the new province had met with their general at his headquarters at Camulodunum.

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