Polish classic best-seller, in print since 1946, now for the first time in English. 570 B.C. Carthage, Sicily, Crete, Egypt. An elderly Zoroastrian priest and his teenage apprentice rush across the Mediterranean in an attempt to forestall the break out of a war. They are pursued by secret agents, assassins, and, eventually, the whole state apparatus of Pharaonic Egypt. Book culminates in the Battle of the Thestis Well (as described in Herodotus).