The old world is burning
A hero will rise from its ASH.
Thirty years passed since Britannia voted to throw off the Roman yoke. Now, the old world crumbles. Pirates roam the seas, bandits threaten the highways, and barbarian refugees from the East arrive on Britannia's shores, uninvited. The rich profit from the chaos, while the poor suffer. A new Dark Age is approaching - but all is not lost.
Ash is a Seaborn, a Saxon child found on the beach with nothing but a precious stone at his neck and a memory of a distant war from which his people have fled. Raised on the estate of a Briton nobleman, trained in warfare and ancient knowledge, he soon becomes embroiled in the machinations and intrigues at the court of Wortigern, the Dux of Londinium, a struggle that is about to determine the future of all Britannia.
A child of Saxon blood, an heir to Roman family, his is a destiny like no other: to join the two races and forge a new world from the ruins of the old.
Regularly in top 20 in UK and top 50 in US in its categories. The first volume alone earned nearly $20,000 since publication.
The same narrow ship, heaving in a storm. Black, wrathful clouds in the sky, rain lashing at my face and hands, blinding, piercing. I open my mouth, but the roar of the wind silences my cries. A strong arm grasps at my blankets. The grip slips as the boat heaves and sways on the waves, then returns. The single mast shatters, a gust tears the red sail away into the darkness. The boat rolls to one side. The gripping hand slips one last time. Water, freezing cold and pitch black, covers my head. I gasp, choke, drown.
A face appears in the darkness, lit up from within: an old, bearded man, one eye missing, in a grey hooded cloak. He stares at me and then mouths some words, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the storm. He laughs and disappears. The strong hand returns and pulls me out of the darkness.
I reach out to hold on to something — anything; the butt of an oar strikes my arm, and I tumble to the bottom of the boat. The man before me struggles to hold the ship straight against the raging currents. I don’t see them, but I know there are thirty others like him on the boat, fifteen on each side. Though I understand that we’re in danger, I don’t yet understand how much. I don’t yet know that the kind of ship we’re on, called a ceol, is only good for sailing up rivers and along the muddy shores of our homeland, not for traversing the raging northern ocean. That without the mast and the sail, no matter how valiantly the oarsmen fight, we are as good as doomed in this hellish storm.
The strong hand picks me up again and sits me firmly on a wet plank. My shoulder hurts. Still crying, I turn to the sea. The downpour’s curtain splits open for a moment and I glimpse black shapes dancing on the billows, curved and sharp, like dried leaves. Two more ceols, thrown about by the same ravenous forces. A great swell separates us from them, and the ships disappear from sight.
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Vanesa Gómez Paniza
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