The Western Roman Empire is falling apart. Civil war rages, Germanic tribes invade, and Emperor Honorius hides in Ravenna. Constantine III rebels from Britain, stripping it of troops to march into Gaul. With help from the Franks and Suevi, he drives back the Vandals and Alans but gives up land to his allies.

In this third Yul novel, Yul, a young Saxon officer in a Roman cavalry unit of mostly German soldiers, struggles to prove himself as a leader. Promoted to legatus, he faces the Vandal king Gunderic in single combat while navigating the empire's ethnic and religious tensions. Britons see Germans as barbarians, yet it's these Germans holding the empire together.

Yul's father, a respected treasurer, teaches him to survive court politics, where Constantine's jealous son, Constans, and British rivals seek to undermine him. As the cavalry moves south into Hispania, news breaks of the mass slaughter of Stilicho's German troops and families, ordered by Honorius' courtier Olympius. Outraged and vengeful, Yul's men face further betrayal when Christian fanatics attack, escalating the rebellion's fractures.

Crossing the Pyrenees, Yul receives devastating news from his closest friend, Kaeffer.