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Zusatztext "For [readers] poised between Harry Potter and Tolkien! there really is nothing better than Sutcliff." -- The New Yorker Informationen zum Autor ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF was born in Surrey, England, in 1920, the daughter of a British naval officer. She was the author of four works of nonfiction, an autobiography, four novels for adults, and more than fifty books for children, including the eight volumes of the Eagle of the Ninth series. Sutcliff won many literary awards, including the Carnegie Medal for The Lantern Bearers , and received an OBE and a CBE for her services to children's literature. She died in 1992. CYRIL WALTER HODGES (1909-2004) was an English book illustrator at the height of a distinguished career in the 1950s and '60s when he illustrated some of Sutcliff's early works. Hodges was a leading scholar of the Elizabethan theater and himself the author of a number of books including Columbus Sails and Shakespeare's Theatre , which he also illustrated. Klappentext In 119 A.D., the Ninth Roman Legion marches north into the wilds of Britain--and disappears without a trace. Fifteen years later, Marcus Flavius Aquila, the son of the unit's commander, embarks upon a quest to recover the lost eagle standard of the Ninth. I. FRONTIER FORT From the Fosseway westward to Isca Dumnoniorum the road was simply a British trackway, broadened and roughly metalled, strehgthened by corduroys of logs in the softest places, but otherwise unchanged from its old estate, as it wound among the hills, thrusting farther and farther into the wilderness. It was a busy road and saw many travellers: traders with bronze weapons and raw yellow amber in their ponies' packs; country folk driving shaggy cattle or lean pigs from village to village; sometimes a band of tawny-haired tribesmen from farther west; strolling harpers and quack-oculists, too, or a light-stepping hunter with huge wolf-hounds at his heel; and from time to time a commissariat wagon going up and down to supply the Roman frontier post. The road saw them all, and the cohorts of the Eagles for whom all other travellers must make way. There was a cohort of leather-clad auxiliaries on the road today, swinging along at the steady Legion's pace that had brought them down from Isca Silurium at twenty miles a day; the new garrison coming to relieve the old one at Isca Dumnoniorum. On they went, following the road that now ran out on a causeway between sodden marsh and empty sky, now plunged into deep boar-hunted forest, or lifted over bleak uplands where nothing grew save furze and thorn-scrub. On with never a halt nor a change of rhythm, marching century by century, the sun bright on the Standard at their head, and the rolling dust-cloud kicked up, over the packtrain behind. At the head of the column marched the, Pilus Prior Centurion, the cohort Commander, the pride that shone from him showing clearly that this was his first command. They were, he had long since decided, a command worthy of anyone's pride; six hundred yellow-haired giants recruited from the tribes of Upper Gaul, with the natural fighting power of mountain cats, drilled and hammered. into what he firmly believed to be the finest auxiliary cohort ever to serve with the Second Legion. They were a newly joined cohort; many of the men had not yet proved themselves in action, and the spear-shaft of their Standard had no honours on it, no gilded laurel wreath nor victor's crown. The honours were all to win- perhaps during his command. The Commander was a complete contrast to his men: Roman to his arrogant finger-tips, wiry and dark as they were raw-boned and fair. The olive-skinned face under the curve of his crested helmet had not a soft line in it anywhere- a harsh face it would have been, but that it was winged with laughter lines, and between his level black brows showed a s...
