This brilliant first saga, in a sequence of novels set at the end of empire in the reign of the Emperor Constantine, stars newly promoted centurion, Aurelius Castus.
Once a soldier in an elite legion from the Danube, he believes his glory days are over, stuck in Britain's provincial backwater. But history is about to take a hand and when the king of the Picts, the savage people beyond Hadrian's Wall, dies in mysterious circumstances, Castus is selected to command the bodyguard of a Roman envoy sent to negotiate with the barbarians. But the diplomatic mission ends in bloody tragedy. Castus and his men are soon fighting for their lives and the legionary discovers that nothing about his doomed mission was ever what it seemed.
