Now a centurion in the Roman army, Viggo Aulus Callias and now his younger foster brother, Hector, find themselves in Germania on duty. He's looking forward to his leave to go back to his wife and see his son for the first time that autumn, but that hope becomes more desperate when he finds that his old enemy, Tribune Amatus, is serving his military term in the same legion.
Old rivalries spring up between them, even more deadly than they had been before, and with his and Hector's lives threatened by Amatus, Viggo begins to wonder whether he will make it back to Rome alive at all, let alone before the harvest.
This is the third and final story is a series of backstories for Hazel West's upcoming novel "By Blood or By Bond" about one of many of Viggo and Hector's adventures with the Roman legions.