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Casca leaves the site of Attila's burial and wanders through the forests until he comes upon the scene of bandits raiding a village. He rescues the villagers, killing all the attackers and is feted as a hero, but he leaves, weary of killing and walks up high into the mountains and eventually enters a cave where he rests and slowly freezes, remaining in that state for a number of years until a young woman named Ireina sees him and falls in love with the 'Sentinel'. When her village is invaded and settled by more bandits, she flees to the cave and hopes the Sentinel will awaken and free the village. The fire she lights warms the sleeper and Casca comes back to life and indeed frees the village. He stays awhile and ends up living with Ireina who soon shows signs of pregnancy, but as Casca is barren he surmises the rape she endured at the hands of the bandits was responsible. Nevertheless he acts as father to the child, Demos, and all three leave the village and travel south to Italy, now ruled by the Ostrogoths, and tries to earn a living but eventually has to turn to that he is best at: fighting.
The best place to earn a living is as a mercenary in the pay of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople and the three travel there, unaware that there is a powerful presence of the Brotherhood of the Lamb there awaiting him under the elder Gregory, a palace eunuch who holds a high position of power. Casca enrolls in a mercenary company under a man called Sicarus who is preparing his company to aid the Romans in a campaign against the Vandals in North Africa. Casca befriends a fellow mercenary called Hrolvath and they all set out by ship for Egypt, while Ireina and Demos are housed with Sicarus' family.
In North Africa the imperial forces under the general Belisarius are victorious against the Vandals, led by Gelimer, but even as they celebrate their victory a letter arrives from the capital for Casca, stating that Ireina and Demos have been taken by the Brotherhood and he must go to them or they will be executed. The news is that Sicarus' family was also killed in the process. Casca kills the messenger in a fit of rage and returns to a plague-ridden Constantinople bent on revenge, unaware that Gregory has killed Demos already in an experiment to see if immortality was passed down to the boy. Casca infiltrates the Brotherhood's headquarters and confronts Gregory but Ireina dies accidentally and Casca goes berserk, killing every Brotherhood member he can. Gregory flees and rides eastwards towards Persia, pursued by Casca. Eventually they arrive at the original monastery Casca visited years before (see book #3: The Warlord) and Gregory and a handful of his acolytes fight to the death. Hrolvath, who has followed Casca all this way, dies from an arrow intended for Casca. In revenge Casca crucifies Gregory in a brutal version of Jesus' crucifixion.
Finally, weary and depressed, he mounts his horse and begins the long journey back to the west. |
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One of the best of the series, giving the main character a family and then having them killed at the hands of an implacable enemy. Essentially it is a novel of revenge and leaves us wondering where he will go now and what further action he will take, if any, against the Brotherhood. Sadler brings the sect to new heights in this book, making them powerful enough to arrange the fall of the Western Roman Empire; a fanciful notion in my opinion as it was doomed anyway. Belisarius was the Eastern Roman Empire's best general, winning the Vandal campaign in two battles in 534AD, and the author displays a good knowledge of the military structure in the imperial army at that time, although the book deviates from historical fact slightly in the journey to the Vandal kingdom (Casca and his comrades go via Egypt whilst the actual route was direct to modern-day Tunisia). One small error in the book occurs at the start when the narrative mentions Stilicho fighting the Huns. Stilicho fought Alaric's Visigoths in 405-408 while the Huns came up against Aetius (book #7: The Damned refers). The plague that strikes Constantinople at that time does not occur until later that decade but had much the same effect - over 200,000 were said to have died. Chronologically the book covers the period 453-535AD but here is where the continuous story of Casca breaks, and we are left wondering what he does in the intervening years until he pops up again in book #13: The Assassin, which takes place over 550 years later. There are tantalizing clues left in later books, for Mohammed is mentioned (the Islamic campaigns of 634-643 could have been one in which Casca partook) and there is a reference to him being in Jerusalem at the time of Mohammed's rise to power in Arabia. Also in book #21: The Trench Soldier there is a reference to Casca having served in the armies of Charlemagne (Frankish ruler 768-814). |
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