AD 68. The tyrant emperor Nero has no son and no heir. Suddenly there’s the very real possibility that Rome might become a republic once more. But the ambitions if a few are about the bring corruption, chaos and untold bloodshed to many.  Among them is a hero of the campaign against Boadicea, Aulus Caecina Serverus. Caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow Caesar’s dynasty, he commits treason, raises a rebellion, faces torture and intrigue – all supposedly for the good of Rome. However, the boundary between such selflessness and self-preservation is far from clear, and keeping to the dangerous path he’s chosen requires all Severus’s skills as a cunning soldier and increasing deft politician. And so Severus looks back on the dark and dangerous time that history remembers as ‘The Year of the Four Emperors’, and recalls the part he, and those around him, played – for good or ill – in plunging the mighty Roman Empire into anarchy and civil war… When the novel begins Severus is a young war hero who has already proven his worth as a solider on the bloody fields of Britain. Full of ambition, but very much on the periphery of events, he is keen to prove himself….