the Marsh of Kings: Book III Fractured Empire: 3

THE MARSH OF KINGS Book III of The Fracturing EmpireBy AD 250, raids have become war.Cniva is assembling a host from many peoples and many leaders, Goths, Carpi, riders, archers, deserters and men whose loyalties reach no farther than the fire beside which they sleep.Theodemir joins them with a small following of his own.They cross the Danube into Roman territory, where fortified roads, walled cities and imperial armies stand between the northern host and the wealth of the provinces. What follows is not a single invasion by a single people, but a campaign held together by bargaining, necessity and the expectation of plunder.Novae. Nicopolis. The mountains. Beroe.Then Philippopolis.By the time the city falls, the cost has spread far beyond the battlefield. The wounded fill carts. Captives crowd the roads north. Leaders quarrel over men, horses and gold while the Roman emperor Decius gathers an army to pursue them.The chase ends near Abritus, among broken ground and marshland.For Rome, it will become one of the great disasters of the third century.For Theodemir, surviving it may be the least difficult part of coming home.