'They're running!' one of the legionaries shouted in triumph, and punched his sword into the air.

'Shut your mouth and fight!' Cato snapped, then stepped in amongst the men still engaged in combat. He saw a thin sinewy man with long lank hair standing over a legionary who had been beaten down on to his knees. Even as the renegade's sword cut through the air, Cato thrust out his sword, blocking the blow with a sharp ring, and deflected it aside so that it grazed the legionary's shoulder and caught in a fold of his tunic. As the gladiator tried to pull his blade free, Cato struck the man on the side with his shield, driving the breath from his lungs as he stumbled and fell to the ground. At once the legionary threw himself on the man, locking hands round his neck and crushing the windpipe under his thumbs.

'Fall back!' a voice cried from the end of the village. Cato recognised it at once and turned towards it.

'Gladiators! Fall back!'

At once, the remaining renegades disengaged from their individual combats and backed warily out of range of the Roman swords. There was a brief lull as the legionaries stood and panted. The moment the last of the enemy withdrew between the buildings, there was another whirr of arrows in the fiery glow of the street. This time the archers were shooting from the shadows of the palm trees, almost invisible in the dusk. By contrast the legionaries were clearly visible in the glow of the flames. Two men were hit by the first volley, one in the leg, and another pierced through the neck.

'Shields up!' Cato ordered and his men resumed their earlier formation. 'Keep your eyes on the flanks!'

He quickly looked back over his shoulder. Rufus and his men appeared to have cleared the far end of the village and chased the enemy bowmen away. For a fleeting moment Cato was tempted to attempt one more charge, to try and run Ajax and his men down, but in the gathering darkness he would quickly lose control of his soldiers and who knew what tricks Ajax had planned for them if the Romans charged after him into the shadows? He had already managed to fool them once with his alternate use of archers and a surprise charge. There was only one sensible course of action, Cato reflected bitterly. He must pull back and plan a fresh attack.

'Fall back!' he ordered. 'Stay in formation and fall back, on me. One… two…'

The small knot of legionaries paced back, keeping time as the arrows continued to smack against the curved surface of their shields. Some ricocheted inside the formation, striking Cato's men, but their energy was largely spent and they simply bruised the men through their tunics, or caused minor injuries. The wounded men had been gathered up and they clasped an arm around a comrade's shoulder as they limped painfully along in the centre of the formation. Only the dead still lay in the street.

The small group of men steadily made their way back to the edge of the village. On either side fires blazed, hungrily consuming the dry palm roofs and then the wooden supports and meagre furnishings within. The heat was intense in places and Cato could feel it stinging his arms and neck as he and his men tramped past, the arrows lodged in their shields making the formation look like a giant burr. Gradually the enemy archers stopped shooting to conserve their ammunition and Cato's men finally reached the safety of Rufus's position at the entrance to the village. The wounded were helped to the rear, where their comrades dressed their wounds as best they could with linen salvaged from the houses that had escaped the fire. Cato's wound was shallow and he hurriedly tied a band of material around his chest. Dusk gave way to night as Cato and Rufus squatted down in the shadows to consider their options.

'We can't attack frontally, right down the street,' Cato decided. 'We'd make perfect targets for their archers, and they can come up at us from the flanks as we charge.'

Rufus nodded, then suggested, 'I could try to cut round the village and take them in the flank and rear while you distracted them here, sir.'

Cato thought a moment and then nodded. 'That's all we can do. The trouble is that Ajax is sure to be expecting us.'

'Only if he stays where he is, sir. In his place, I'd beat a retreat. He's won as much advantage as he can from the ambush. He knows we'll be forced to try a more indirect approach. Why sit there and wait? The sensible thing to do would be to leave a small rearguard to fool us into thinking he is still there, and then continue to make good his escape, steal as much of a march on us as possible before dawn comes. With good fortune, he might get far enough ahead for us to lose the scent when we continue the pursuit at dawn.'

'You're right,' said Cato. They could not allow Ajax the chance to slip away now that they were closer to him than they had been at any time since he had escaped from Crete. He nodded at Rufus. 'There's too much thick scrub and undergrowth to the right – they'd hear you coming. Take half the men and work round the left of the village through the grass. I saw a dyke on the side of the village before we entered, perhaps a hundred paces from the buildings, so you won't be able to swing out too far that side. Best wait until the flames have died down a bit before the attack, so you aren't spotted.'

'Yes, sir. What will you do when the time comes?'

'Try another charge up the street.' Cato smiled wearily. 'What I lack in imagination I'll make up for in making as much of a racket as possible. Right, then, pass the word on to the men. And let them know they can drink their fill. We'll refill the canteens from the village's water supply when it's all over.'

'How many men did we lose?' Ajax asked as he stared at the distant Roman figures at the far end of the village.

Karim, his closest follower, looked up from the wound he was dressing on Hepithus's arm. 'Two dead. One as good as and four wounded. Though all of the wounded can still fight.'

Ajax considered the outcome of the ambush. He had lost two men and had killed or wounded as many as ten of the Romans. A profitable exchange then, though he had hoped to annihilate them completely, or at least scatter them so that they could not continue the pursuit. Some of his men had been in a bad way when they reached the village late in the afternoon. It had taken all his personal authority to get some of them to prepare the ambush. The rest, his fellow gladiators, had been content to make a stand against their pursuers rather than continue to struggle on through the mangrove. The small victory had gone some way towards restoring their belief in him. As he knew it would.

Ajax had a clear understanding of the mentality of the gladiators who followed him, thanks to the years he had lived, and fought, in their ranks. They lived to fight. Having once been forced to risk their lives at the behest of their masters, they knew the value of freedom and would endure any hardship and any danger rather than submit to being slaves again, or facing execution. It was as well that gladiators respected a hierarchy based on proficiency, Ajax mused, otherwise his leadership would surely have been challenged at some stage since their flight from Crete. But as long as he was unquestionably the best fighter amongst them, they would continue to respect and follow him, and obey his orders. Despite his lapse in judgement. Once again Ajax cursed himself for his complacency. The supply base had been a most useful lair from which to continue their harassment of the Romans. For nearly two months they had eaten well and rested, all the time knowing that they would have to abandon the bay at some point.

They should have quit the place long ago, Ajax realised bitterly. They had made themselves too comfortable. They had done what only the greenest of gladiators ever did – they had lowered their guard. The lookouts had failed to do their duty. He felt a moment's rage course through his veins. The fools had cost their comrades dearly. In the months that the renegades had been at the supply base he had been able to swell their ranks from amongst the slaves on the ships they had preyed on. At the time of the Roman raid, Ajax's original company of thirty of his closest lieutenants and the survivors of his bodyguard had swelled to over three hundred men, enough to crew both ships in the bay, and even the damaged Roman warship that had unwittingly fallen into his hands shortly before the raid.