The Roman Empire faces the barbarian horde.
612 AD.
Decadent, desperate Athens is the Roman Empire's most vulnerable city.

Aelric - senator of the Roman Empire, fresh from a bloodbath in Egypt that may or may not be regarded in Constantinople as his fault - is forced to divert the Imperial galley to Athens for reasons the Emperor has neglected to share with him.

He finds a demoralized and corrupt provincial city threatened by an army rumoured to contain twenty million starving barbarians.

Not to mention an explosive religious dispute, an unexplained corpse, and hints of something worse than murder. Is he on a high level mission to save the Empire? Or has he been set up to fail? Or is the truth even worse than he can at first imagine?

He will have to call upon all his formidable intellect and lethal ingenuity to survive his enemies inside and outside the city walls . . .

Genre: Historical