The Roman army are leaving Britain for ever. Instead, the country is over taken by civil war and the threat of invasion. Aquila deserts his regiment to remain with his family. But the Saxon hordes are out to destroy and Aquila looses everything that has ever mattered to him. All that remains is revenge. A classic account of the Romans in Britain.
The last of the Roman army have set sail and left Britain, abandoning it to civil war and the threat of a Saxon invasion. Aquila deserts his regiment to return to his family, but his home and all that he loves are destroyed. Years of hardship and fighting follow and in the end there is only one thing left in his life - his thirst for revenge...
Rosemary Sutcliff was born in Surrey, the daughter of a naval officer. At the age of two she contracted the progressively wasting Still's disease, and hence spent most of her life in a wheelchair. Her first children's book was published in 1950, and from then on she devoted her time and talents to the writing of children's historical novels, which have placed her name high in the field of contemporary children's literature. Rosemary received an OBE in the 1975 Birthday Honours List. Rosemary Sutcliff's novels about Roman Britain have won much critical acclaim. The best-known of these is her The Eagle of the Ninth trilogy, of which the second book in the trilogy, The Lantern Bearers, was awarded the 1959 Carnegie Medal. Rosemary died in 1992 at the age of 72.
