As the sun rose, it alighted on more hoof marks heading east. Barnimeon could tell by now as well as any veteran that the hooves were iron shod. Centaur hooves, he thought, grinding his teeth. Thousands of them.

“They’re ahead of us,” Aetos murmured that morning as he dropped back to walk by the strategos awhile, nodding to the churned earth.

Barnimeon nodded grimly. “Yes. And if they make it through the hinterlands, we won’t only have the skern eggs to worry about. Our people will be defenceless against the centaur invasion. They’ll be slaughtered like sheep.”

Barnimeon Dedopoulos’ father and grandfather were killed by Centaurs.

Newly promoted to strategos, he is assigned to watch over the Rockhorns beyond the infamous hinterlands, the very mountains where his forefathers met their fate.

Now is his chance for revenge.

It is not only the Centaurs that are ravaging his people, however.

The eggs of the infernal skern are turning his own kinfolk against him.

The line between friend and enemy becomes blurred when you cannot trust your own brother …

Now, a magician with a dark past, his ancient nemeses, the lost God of Bronze and the mother of the skern eggs are Barnimeon’s only hope to save his country.

A standalone epic fantasy tale of unlikely fraternity, unwilling betrayal, bloody battles, mythical creatures, flawed heroes, primeval mysteries and abyssal sorcery set in Maradoum.