Endings And New Beginnings

To Turn The Tide.

The novel climaxes with vastatio (devastation) and slaughter to be followed, according to Marcus Aurelius, by:

"'Peace...'" 

-CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO, p. 439 -

- hopefully a permanent positive peace, not merely a post-vastatio wasteland.

The novel ends with the good news that, although an illness has arrived on schedule from the east, it is not measles but smallpox which can be and is being treated.

Nowhere to go but up? Or will there be unexpected obstacles in Volume II which is en route to me via eBay?

Artorius is a new Noah. The Biblical creation had been the separation of the waters above from the waters below and the moving aside of the waters below so that the dry land appeared. The Flood had been the undoing of that Creation. The withdrawal of the waters was the creation of a new Earth to be populated by Noah's, the new Adam's, descendants. Artorius and his team escape the destruction of an old Earth and remake their new Earth. A Biblical theme.