Far to the east, beyond the Urals, a young man, Barrik, revolts against the edicts of priests, and against a yearly ceremony that will see him, along with a lovely young girl, sacrificed to the Sun God in order to assure fertility and bountiful crops for the community in the coming year. A youth of exceptional intelligence, imagination, and courage, Barrik contrives to seize the head priest, bar the temple door against the enraged community, and to escape along the "Secret Way" known only to the priests.
For his community has, for centuries, lived in a valley surrounded by high, sheer, un-scalable cliffs, where the obedient and unquestioning people have come to believe, through the teaching of the priests, that this valley comprises the world, and that they are the only people in it.
Barrik never believed that lie. Now, along with the priest, Is, and the girl, Isba, Barrik sets out to explore an outer world which he knows must be there. We travel with them as they discover both wonders and horrors.
West, ever west, Barrik leads them, drawn by some inner conviction that his fate, and his reason for being, are to be found in the west. They encounter a nomadic tribe. A natural swordsman, with a sword, the secrets of whose amazing qualities are lost in the mists of time, he defeats the tribe's champion in single combat and wins, for his little party, first, a place in the tribe, and, finally, its leadership. He defeats neighboring nomadic groups and adds the survivors to his own group. Leading his nomads ever westward, endowed with innate skills of leadership and a natural understanding of battle strategy, he encounters and subdues more tribes, again adding survivors to his own number. Until, as leader of what amounts to an army, he comes to the borders of that thing that he realizes has been calling him, that thing in which his destiny lies. The Roman Empire.
How he out-maneuvers the legions under the command of Tiberius, and how he rallies the German tribes to a nearly successful bid to overthrow Roman rule, foiled only by the betrayal of the King of Bohemia, Marbod, is the central point of this full-blooded, fast moving, violent, always gripping and fascinating-in-detail story.
But there are touching human relationships as well.
Toff, the champion who he beats, and spares, in his first encounter with a nomadic tribe. Olaf, the chief of that tribe. Both to become his chief officers and stalwarts to the end.
Is, the priest who finds a new world and understanding right along with Barrik.
Isba, who becomes Barrik's wife, and who undergoes all of the ups and downs, thrills, fears, happy or tragic events, victories and defeats that her determined and oddly driven husband sees fit to drag her though.
Then there his exceptional little son Coris,
Last but not least, is the accidental and then ever-deepening friendship and understanding that develops between Barrik and the Roman Centurion,
Lucius Mentillius.
It is though Lucius that, as finally Barrik goes into the arena with comrades Toff and Olov to die after they "show these Romans how to fight," Barrik goes as a proud and happy man, knowing that his son Coris will be enabled to carry on with his dream, to find his own version of that scarcely understood but unavoidable compulsion that drew Barrik westward, ever westward, from the simple-minded secret valley far to east to the amazing civilization that was Rome.