The Wall at the Edge of the World

Postumus Justinius Corvus, an army surgeon serving in Syria, is unexpectedly promoted and transferred to the Sixth Legion in his native Britain. The return is professionally valuable but personally dangerous: his family history is bound to the vanished Ninth Legion, and the northern province contains people who remember what his parents and their generation suffered. Postumus wants to treat casualties rather than decide the policy that creates them.

The new imperial government orders another frontier pushed north and a wall built from coast to coast across tribal land. As resistance grows, Postumus is required to serve an army whose medical system can preserve lives while enabling further conquest. Encounters with Britons, Picts and Roman commanders force him to determine whether loyalty to the legion can be separated from responsibility for its violence. The novel is a sequel of sorts to The Legions of the Mist, set roughly a generation later around the construction of the Antonine Wall.