Matthew Hervey of the 6th Light Dragoons is urgently summoned to the Cape Colony when he learns that the Zulu warrior King Shaka is about to wage war. Soon Hervey his old friend Eyre Somervile & their escort of dragoons & mounted rifles are riding north. When they arrive at Shaka's kraal it is a horrifying place. The sentinels at the gates are corpses & it quickly becomes apparent that he has slaughtered thousands of his subjects
- warriors & women alike. When Shaka is killed by his own people & the region plunged into civil war Hervey & his men find themselves in the midst of terrible danger. Yet worse is to come. Separated from his troop Hervey must lead Shaka's queen across a hostile land where sanctuary has never seemed further away...