A Place for Battle

Sergey Dukhariev is no longer just a rootless clown, and not even a Varangian-druzhina commander—he is the leader of a flying detachment in the Dnieper steppe. The boundless feather-grass steppe stretches on, the Wild Field lies far and wide. But it is cramped for those who want to make it only theirs. Khazars, Rus’, Pechenegs… And the heavy Byzantine gold that deepens the hatred between them. By the will of fate, Byzantine gold does not go to the great Pecheneg хан Kurkuté, nor to the grand prince of Kyiv Igor, but to two dozen Varangians of Sergey’s detachment… Heavy metal—gold. Hard to keep hold of… And you have to choose the place of battle.

The tenth century. The formation of Rus’. A time of legends. A time of heroes. This isn’t fantasy. This is the real world of History—brutal, alien, and irresistibly beautiful. This is how you would see it, if you could look into the past. Sergey Dukhariev didn’t plan to look into the past. But one day he woke up there—in the tenth century—into a world where the outsider has only two options for the future: to be a slave or a dead man. Sergey Dukhariev decided that neither option suited him. He chose a third path.