Glory. Death. Fighting alongside Alexander as he burned a path across the Persian Empire, Kineas has seen the God of War loosed upon the world - heroism straight from the pages of Homer, and horror beyond his nightmares. Leading his Greek cavalry time and again against the Persian hordes brought Kineas two laurel wreaths for valour and some scars that will never heal. But on his return from the east to his native city of Athens, his reward for fighting with the conqueror is not glory but shame - and exile.

With nothing to his name but his military reputation, Kineas agrees to lead a handful of veterans to the Euxine city of Olbia, where the Tyrant is offering good money to train the city's elite cavalry. But soon Kineas and his men find themselves being used as pawns in the Tyrant's schemes against his own citizens, as destruction threatens the city from the outside. While Alexander has been conquering the world, Macedon has grown hungry for gold and grain - and Olbia now stands in her path.

Kineas is now faced with the prospect of matching the deadliest war machine the world has ever seen with only his newly trained cavalrymen, a handful of mercenaries and Olbia's unpredictable Scythian allies. Weighed down by the dark prophecies of a Scythian seer, and haunted by a dazzling woman-warrior whose love could mean death, Kineas must devise a plan of breathtaking daring in order to avoid the fate the gods seem to have prepared for him.