Book excerpt: “O Mother of Mares, send me a change in the wind!” Jessa, Healer to a nomadic tribe, is content enough among them but life is routine and predictable, and her heart is empty. She prays for change, and apparently the Gods hear her, for change arrives – most unexpectedly, in the shape of a warrior from an alien world. As an officer with the British Army in Afghanistan, Captain Malcolm Redwing finds life anything but routine and predictable. It becomes even less so when after a serious accident on active duty he wakes to find himself among Jessa’s tribe, a stranger on a world that is not Earth. At first he is regarded with dislike and suspicion, but eventually he makes his peace with The People and settles down as one among them. As a professional soldier should, he waits for his chance to discover how he came to their world, and whether he can make his way back to his own by the same means. As time passes, however, the friendships he makes and his developing relationship with Jessa begin to come into conflict with his loyalty to his regiment and the comrades and friends he has left behind. His duty is to return home if he can, but as the months slip by he begins to question where his true loyalty really lies. Then news comes that a long-feared invasion by a strange and warlike people from the South has begun, and both Malcolm and Jessa are swept up into a conflict for which the peaceable Tribe are utterly unprepared.