With the defeat of Arminius and his confederation of German tribes, it's time for the army of Germanicus Julius Caesar to return to their bases across the Rhine, including Gnaeus Volusenianus Pullus' 1st Legion. On their voyage home, a series of storms strike, damaging the ship bearing Gnaeus and two of his Centuries and eventually stranding them on the island of Britannia, in the land of the Parisii tribe.

Held hostage, Gnaeus' release is secured by his real family in Arelate, but only at a terrible cost that Gnaeus' honor will not allow them to bear. Rather than return to Ubiorum, Gnaeus risks his career, and possibly his life, searching for the man who, three years earlier, had cheated one of his uncles of a substantial portion of the fortune earned by the Prefect Titus Pullus, hero of Caesar's 10th Legion and Gnaeus' great-grandfather.

It is a journey that retraces the steps of the Prefect all the way to Alexandria, and Gnaeus will only have his family and his newly found love, a Parisii woman, to help him recover their fortune, and save himself and his family from being Hostages to Fortuna.