"The day will bring pain," says the master trainer.

None of us doubt his word. He will work us until a cadet drops to the dirt. Drops and can't rise again. Earns a ticket to see the Greek.

One in our elite military academy must be the first to fall, but shame will rain down on any cadet who gives up before I do.

I'm Matthi the Goth, born a barbarian-a hostage of the legion of the V Macedonica-and I'm no quitter.

He's spent six years inside a frontier military garrison, held as leverage by the same Roman legions that saved him from an innocent boyhood mistake and the brutal justice of the Angel of Death.

He trains alongside highborn sons of the empire and sees his future within their ranks, but he is not a Roman citizen. He is Matthi the Goth-a savage-the teenage son of the only man who can unite the hostile southland barbarian clans. For some, this makes Matthi a symbol of unity. For others, he's a powerful bartering chip.

As famine crushes Lower Moesia, barbarian kings battle Roman generals, noblemen scheme for control of the territory, and Matthi must decide who he can trust, and who he must fight, in a web of betrayal, blood and lies.

***

The Stone Eagle is a historical action adventure series for young adult readers of any age. Each 20K word episode is a complete story that furthers the saga of the ancient Germanic Goth barbarians on the frontier of the crumbling Late Roman Empire.