The Young Lions

Lions of the Thirteenth Legion: Book 1

By: John Call

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

100 AD. The Danube frontier.
Emperor Trajan is preparing for war.
Along the river, the legions are recruiting, training, and quietly gathering strength for the campaign that will become Rome's greatest war in a generation.
At Vindobona, headquarters of Legio XIII Gemina — Caesar's old legion — two young men arrive from opposite ends of the Empire.
Lucius Atilius Corvus is the son of a retired centurion from southern Gaul, joining his father's old legion under his father's name and determined to live up to it.
Marcus Ulpius Varro is the nineteen-year-old son of a senator from Hispania, sent to the frontier as senior tribune of the Thirteenth and expected to take his rank among men old enough to be his grandfather.
Neither is a soldier yet.
Both are about to learn what the Roman army demands of the men it makes.
As the frontier grows restless and Trajan's preparations accelerate, Marcus and Lucius are drawn into the daily life of the legion — its discipline, its friendships, its dangers. When a patrol north of the Danube uncovers a murdered chief, a war-band rising, and a young heir hunted through the autumn woods, both young men face their first test under arms.
Before they can fight Rome's enemies, they must first become Romans of the Thirteenth.
The Young Lions opens Lions of the Thirteenth, a series of soldiers, command, and the price of life on Rome's northern frontier in the age of Trajan.
In the tradition of Bernard Cornwell, Simon Scarrow, and Conn Iggulden.