The last thing Alistair Finch remembered was the scent of burnt coffee and the screech of tires. Then, a crushing, final impact. He had been crossing the street, his mind lost in the tactical failures of Stilicho during the Gothic invasions of Italy, a truly unforgivable lapse in situational awareness for a military historian.
The next thing he knew was cold. A deep, biting cold that seeped into his bones, far worse than any English winter he had ever known. And the smell. It was a ripe, cloying stench of unwashed bodies, woodsmoke, and damp earth.
He forced his eyes open. The world was a blurry, dim mess. He wasn’t in a hospital. He was lying on a bed of straw and furs, inside what looked like a round, wooden hut. A low fire pit in the center cast flickering shadows on the rough-hewn walls.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness and a throbbing pain in his head sent him crashing back down. A young woman with braided red hair and a worried face rushed to his side, speaking in a language that was a strange, lilting mix of what sounded like Brythonic Celtic and heavily accented, vulgar Latin.
“Artorius! Lie still. The healer said the blow to your head was severe.”
Artorius? The name echoed in his mind, feeling both alien and strangely familiar. He looked down at his hands. They were not his. His were the hands of a fifty-year-old academic—soft, with ink stains on the fingers. These hands were young, calloused, and strong, though currently trembling.
Memory, not his own, flooded his senses. A chaotic battle. The splintering of a shield. The horrifying face of a Pictish warrior, blue tattoos contorting in a scream of fury. The crushing blow of a club against his temple. These were the last memories of Artorius, the son of the chieftain of Dunum. And now, they were his.
He had read about this. Transmigration. Reincarnation. It was the stuff of cheap fiction, not historical journals. Yet here he was. The rational, evidence-based mind of Dr. Alistair Finch was screaming in protest, but the reality of the straw beneath him and the pain in his head was undeniable.
“Water,” he croaked, his voice raspy and young.
The woman helped him drink from a clay cup. As his vision cleared, the grim reality of his situation solidified. The hut, the clothes, the language—he was in post-Roman Britain. His field of expertise. His obsession. He mentally calculated. Based on the style of dress and the mention of Pictish raids, he was likely somewhere in the late 4th or early 5th century. The twilight of Roman rule. The very edge of the abyss.
A heavy-set man with a grey-streaked beard and the weary eyes of a leader entered the hut, his leather armor scuffed and stained. This was Cassian, his—Artorius’s—father.
“He is awake,” Cassian said, his voice a low rumble. He looked at Alistair with a mixture of relief and stern disappointment. “You were reckless, boy. You broke the shield wall to chase a single warrior. Pride has no place in a battle for survival.”
Alistair, or Artorius, couldn’t answer. His mind was racing, connecting the dots. Dunum. A small hillfort. Pictish raids. It wasn’t one of the major historical sites, just a tiny, insignificant outpost on the northern frontier. An outpost that, according to the archaeological records he had studied, was burned to the ground and its people slaughtered around this exact time. There were no survivors.
Just then, a horn blared from outside, a mournful, desperate sound. Cassian’s face tightened. “They are massing for another attack. The scouts say their main war-band has arrived. Their numbers are too great.”
Cassian looked at his son, his expression grim. “Rest, Artorius. Pray to whatever gods you still believe in. We will sell our lives dearly.”
He turned and left, leaving Alistair alone with the red-haired woman and the terrifying knowledge of his impending death. He was going to die. Again. This time in a brutal, primitive battle, a nameless victim in a forgotten massacre.
But as the panic subsided, something else took its place. A lifetime of study, of analyzing battles, of raging at the stupid, shortsighted mistakes of long-dead generals, coalesced into a single, defiant thought.
No.
He had spent his entire life studying this period. He knew the Pictish tactics—fierce, undisciplined shock assaults designed to break morale. He knew the Roman counters—discipline, formation, and superior engineering. These people, his people now, were fighting like Britons but had forgotten how to think like Romans.
With a groan, he forced himself to sit up, ignoring the pain that exploded in his skull. The woman, whose name he now remembered was Eira, Artorius’s childhood friend, tried to push him back down.
“You must rest!”
“There’s no time for rest,” Alistair said, his voice gaining a strange, new authority that surprised them both. “If your father fights them at the wall again, everyone in this fort will be dead by sunrise. Their numbers are too great for a static defense.”
He grabbed a nearby piece of charcoal from the fire pit and, on the rough wooden floor of the hut, he began to sketch. He drew the layout of the hillfort, the main gate, the weaker palisade on the eastern flank.
“Get my father,” he commanded Eira, his eyes burning with an intensity she had never seen in the reckless young man she knew. “Tell him his son has a way to kill a Pictish army.”
He was Dr. Alistair Finch, a historical strategist. And his final exam was about to begin.