The False Prophet: A Novel

The Chosen One is dead.He died in a stairwell at Wardlaw, and the army that followed him broke and ran. Corporal Ned Furze carried a half-loaf of marching bread out of the Scald and could not bring himself to eat it. Eight years later, the bread is still in his pack.Captain Tom Dunning is not a hero. He has a bad arm, three hundred tired men, and a bridge to hold. When the temple names him in a new prophecy, he does what any sensible officer would do: he refuses. Then he rides north anyway, because someone has to count the living and the dead, and no one else will do it properly.What follows is not a story of destiny. It is a story of ledgers and last words, of forms filled out four times, of a drill manual written in a rented room above a saddler's shop. It is about the men who keep the records when the gods go silent, and the quiet work of refusing to become a myth.The False Prophet is a novel of ordinary competence in a world that keeps demanding heroes.