The Ghost of Culloden (Blood and Banner Book 1)

At the last, blood-soaked charge of Culloden, twenty-year-old Highland warrior Robert Ross should have died with sword in hand and mud beneath his boots.Instead, he is torn from the slaughter and hurled alone into Glenmoria in the year 1892 AC—a brutal land of monsters, pirates, plasma-fire, ancient roads, and hidden wars beneath the greater shadow of the War for the Adamite Throne.Armed only with his basket-hilt broadsword, targe, and the hard fury of a man robbed of his own age, Robert must survive a world that should have killed him on the first night. Guided by Branoc, a spectral Cù-Sìth from Carrick Ulst with a wicked tongue and older hungers, Robert learns quickly that Glenmoria does not reward weakness, hesitation, or fear.He has none to spare.As goblins and orks begin preying on scattered villages, Robert carves a savage path through raiders, relay cells, ambush lines, and pirate scouts, growing stronger with every kill, every choice, and every lesson written in blood. Along the way he gains new weapons, a darker Highland war-rig, and an unlikely ally in William DeMont—a silent Crimson Order warrior-monk with a greatsword, a sacred relic to reclaim, and enough buried guilt to drown kingdoms.But the western coast holds a greater enemy.At Sharkmaw Reach, the brutal pirate-ogre Captain Hurn’sh is building a web of violence stretching from hidden coves to inland roads, preparing to break the weak and feed a growing war machine of raiders, buyers, and corrupt powers. To stop him, Robert must become something more than a survivor.He must become a hunter.Then a saboteur.Then a captain.What begins as a fight to protect a single village becomes a ruthless campaign of ambush, shipboard slaughter, and calculated terror, ending in one impossible act of piracy that changes Robert’s fate forever.By the end of Book One, Robert Ross is no longer a lost Jacobite in a strange world.He is the captain of a stolen warship.And the western sea has only just begun to learn his name. Read more