The first in a series of adventure novels featuring Captain Rawson - spy, linguist, sportsman, duellist, ladies' man and career soldier involved in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough during the war of the Spanish Succession. In 1685, young Daniel Rawson witnesses the regiment of his fierce Protestant father being destroyed by the troops of the Royal Army's second-in-command, John Churchill, and his Dutch mother narrowly avoiding rape at the hands of a soldier from the same platoon. After his father has been executed, Rawson and his mother leave Devon and sail for the Netherlands. In 1688, he returns to England as a soldier in the Dutch Army, supporting William of Orange in his bid to replace James II on the throne.