69BC. Plagued by a dysfunctional family, Marcus Falerius Fronto seeks a way out, and finds it in the company of an ambitious and powerful, yet impoverished, nobleman. Julius Caesar is already making a name for himself in the senate and the city, and with an assignment as quaestor in the province of Hispania Ulterior, he is bound for the west, taking with him those he values.
But in Hispania, trouble awaits. The civil war between the supporters of Marius and the dictator Sulla ended just three years ago, and the last great general of that war, Quintus Sertorius, had challenged the whole republic from western Hispania. As a tribune in the Ninth legion, and tied to the new quaestor, Fronto is about to cut his teeth on a Hispanic war... facing Sertorius' ghost.
