KNOW THYSELF

The words are carved into the temple wall, but Miltiades of Athens doesn't need their advice. He already knows who he is… a dull man, a spectator, someone who reads about the heroes of the past, unlikely to ever be one himself.

Or is he?

Sent by the tyrants who killed his father to re-establish contact with a far flung colony near the Black Sea, Miltiades begins to find he may be more of a leader than he – or his family – expected.

The risks are great. From fractious Thracian neighbours to the growing power of the Persian Empire, and the knowledge that someone in his camp is acting as a spy.

And there is worse. A black flood is rising. A terrible sickness, spreading across the ancient world, that brings the dead back from the afterlife. And when they return, they are hungry. Unleashed by the Egyptians in their greed for immortality, and fanned by the Persians as a weapon in their hunger for empire, it threatens the existence of Miltiades' little city-state and all he holds dear.

And not just them – for the Persian's eyes are on the city of Athens itself, where a strange experiment is taking place: power is being held not by kings or the wealthy, but shared by all the citizens, together. They call it demos kratia. But this small flame of freedom will lost unless Miltiades can stand against the tide.

The forces are gathering. The battle is here. A race for survival.

At Marathon.

Timothy Bowden