Macro and newly appointed centurion Cato are ordered to provide Verica, ruler of the Atrebatans, with an army. It's AD 44, and Vespasian and the Second Legion are forging ahead in their campaign to seize the south-west of Britain. Will Cato and Macro discover where the Druids are hiding their hostages? And can they find some way to rescue them before time runs out? Unless their demands are met within one month, Plautius's family will be burned alive. His wife and children have fallen into the hands of a dark sect of Druids, who now demand the return of those of their brotherhood taken prisoner by the Romans. As their leader General Plautius plans the next phase of their campaign, word arrives that the ship carrying his family to join him was wrecked in a storm off the south coast. The Emperor has returned to Rome, leaving the fearless Centurion Macro and his young Optio, Cato, to rest and regroup, along with the rest of the Second Legion.

Cato and Macro are about to discover even deadlier adversaries than the British barbarians.Īfter a series of bloody battles, Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester) has fallen to the invading Roman army. Bleak, rainy and full of vicious savages, Britannia is a land that Cato, solider of the Second Legion, wishes Rome didn't want to conquer.Īnd as right-hand man to Centurion Macro, Cato sees the very worst of his native Britons, battling alongside his commander in bloodier combat than he could ever have imagined.īut the Britons are fighting back with Roman weapons - which means someone in their own ranks is supplying arms to the enemy. After the long march west, Cato and Macro undertake a special mission that will thrust them headlong into a conspiracy that threatens to topple the Emperor himself.īritannia, AD 43. Then the men discover that the army's next campaign will take them to a land of unparalleled barbarity - Britain. As second-in-command to Macro, the fearless, battle-scarred centurion who leads them, Cato has more to prove than most in the adventures that lie ahead. If adjusting to the rigours of military life isn't difficult enough for the bookish young man, he also has to contend with the disgust of his colleagues when, because of his imperial connections, he is appointed a rank above them.

It is AD 42, and Quintus Licinius Cato has just arrived in Germany as a new recruit to the Second Legion, the toughest in the Roman army.

Simon scarrow under the eagle series