England, involved through the ruin of other countries, is faced with financial collapse and revolution, bringing panic, street-fighting and an uncontrolled exodus from the cities to the countryside, where bands of starving people wander, pillaging for food.

Out of the terror and the bloodshed steps Gregory Sallust, to take the leadership of a group of men and women seeking only to survive: to lead them through bitter hardship and terrible hazard to a rural settlement which they fortify against invasion, and which, at first, seems reasonably secure...