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Anthony Riches

Rome, AD 68. Nero has committed suicide. One hundred years of imperial rule by the descendants of Julius Caesar has ended, and chaos rules. 

 His successor Galba dismisses the incorruptible Germans of the Imperial Bodyguard for the crime of loyalty to the dead emperor. Ordering them back to their homeland he releases a Batavi officer from a Roman prison to be their prefect. But Julius Civilis is not the loyal servant of empire that he seems.

 Four centurions, two Batavi and two Roman, will be caught up in the intrigues and the battles that follow - as friends, as victims, as leaders and as enemies.

 Hramn is First Spear of the Bodyguard. Fiercely proud of his men's honour, and furious at their disgrace, he leads them back to the Batavi homeland to face an uncertain future.

 Alcaeus is a centurion with the tribe's cohorts serving Rome on the northern frontier - men whose fighting skills prove crucial as Roman vies with Roman for the throne. A wolf-priest of Hercules, he wields the authority of his god and his own fighting prowess. 

Marius is a Roman, first spear of the Fifth Legion: a self-made man who hates politics, but cannot avoid them in a year of murderous intrigue.

 Aquillius, former first spear of the Eighth Augustan, like Hramn, is in disgrace for refusing to dishonour his oath of loyalty. But their paths will lead them to opposite sides of an unforgiving war.

And Civilis, Kivilaz to his countrymen, heroic leader, Roman citizen and patriotic Batavi, will change both the course of the Empire's destiny and that of the centurions.

(P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton

Mark Noble

Hodder & Stoughton

The Centurions

Betrayal: The Centurions I

The author of the bestselling Empire sequence continues his new epic of the uprising of the Batavi in AD 88.

The Rhine frontier has exploded into all-out war. Summoned back to their homeland by their new leader Kivilaz, the Batavi cohorts, so recently proud soldiers of Rome, find their lands transformed. All Roman influences have vanished after a battle in which two legions were humbled by the rebels, then chased away to lick their wounds in their fortress, the Old Camp. 

As the most experienced men in the Batavi army, the veteran soldiers are send south again alongside an army of warriors from the German tribes, tasked with spearheading the fight to destroy the Roman stronghold and remove the threat it poses to their homeland.
Swiftly besieged and without little hope of relief, the defeated 5th and 15th Legions grimly defend an undermanned fortress against both the Batavi and their enraged barbarian German allies, united under the banner of the priestess Veleda. 
But a relief column under a driven Roman general is marching north with a burning need to restore Rome's pride — and the events that follow will determine the fate of both the Old Camp and Roman rule on the northern frontier.

(P)2017 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Onslaught: The Centurions II

The action-filled climax of the epic story of the Batavi uprising in AD 69, from the author of the bestselling Empire series. 

'A masterclass in military historical fiction' - Sunday Express

Victory is in sight for Kivilaz and his Batavi army. The Roman army clings desperately to its remaining fortresses along the Rhine, its legions riven by dissent and mutiny, and once-loyal allies of Rome are beginning to imagine the unimaginable: freedom from the rulers who have dominated them since the time of Caesar. 

The four centurions - two Batavi and two Roman, men who were once comrades in arms - must find their destiny in a maze of loyalties and threats, as the blood tide of war ebbs and flows across Germania and Gaul. 

For Rome does not give up its territory lightly. And a new emperor knows that he cannot tolerate any threat to his undisputed power. It can only be a matter of time before Vespasian sends his legions north to exact the empire's retribution.

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Retribution: The Centurions III

The Centurions - The book series

The Centurions - The book series

The Centurions books in order

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