''The Eagle's Prey'' is the fifth book in the ''

Eagles of the Empire ''Eagles of the Empire'' is a series of historical military fiction novels written by Simon Scarrow. The series began in July 2000 with the publication of ''Under the Eagle'', and as of March 2022 there have been 20 novels released in the series ...

'' series, by

Simon Scarrow Simon Scarrow (born 3 October 1962) is a British author. Scarrow completed a master's degree at the University of East Anglia after working at the Inland Revenue, and then went into teaching as a lecturer, firstly at East Norfolk Sixth Form C ...

Synopsis

This novel is set in AD 44 during the

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

invasion An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing con ...

of Britain. During the second year of their campaign against the British tribes, the Roman legions are under great pressure to complete their mission. However, at a crucial juncture in battle, Macro and Cato's superior, Centurion Maximius, loses his nerve after discovering an auxiliary outpost had been massacred by British raiders and leads his cohort on a revenge mission, in spite of his orders to defend a vital river crossing. Macro questions Maximius' orders, and is allowed by his superior to take his century and guard the river crossing. Maximius gets his revenge, but is alerted to the danger of Macro's century and rushes back to the aid of his junior centurion. However, they are too late, and the cohort is driven in to a tactical retreat to avoid obliteration. This allows the Britons, including the enemy leader Caratacus, to escape. Because of this failure to halt the escape of Caratacus' army, and the subsequent delay of Claudius' triumph at Rome, an inquest, overseen by General Plautius and Narcissus, leads to the

decimation Decimation, Decimate, or variants may refer to: * Decimation (punishment), punitive discipline * Decimation (signal processing), reduction of digital signal's sampling rate * Decimation (comics), 2006 Marvel crossover spinoff ''House of M'' * ''D ...

of the

cohort Cohort or cohortes may refer to: * Cohort (educational group), a group of students working together through the same academic curriculum * Cohort (floating point), a set of different encodings of the same numerical value * Cohort (military unit), ...

. Cato and his fellow convicts escape their punishment and are forced to wander the British countryside, looking for a safe place to hide from their enemies, both Roman and Briton. By a twist of fate Cato finds himself in the hands of Caratacus, and gets to know him and his cause.

External links

The Eagle's Prey on Simon Scarrow's official website
Eagles of the Empire 2005 British novels Novels set in Roman Britain Novels set in the 1st century Headline Publishing Group books {{2000s-AncientRome-novel-stub