First off I have a short story about Bargan (Taroniah’s son) in this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFSSFKPC/

Kyron the Conqueror is off to the editor and I have started writing The Kelad Return

I haven’t decided what will follow the Kelad Return – either the next Taroniah book or something new….

Been a bit slack with the writing over the last couple of months but will try and do better between now and the end of the year.

For what it is worth, apart from Pam Uphoff books I have been reading books by someone called peachRoad (sigh)
they are alt history books with the ordinary person from the future taking over a historical figure and changing things.
As a rule they are badly formatted and full of inconsistancies with a lot of obvious AI writing but the way the author changes the timelines is very clever. Can;t recommend them but they are interesting if you like alt history.

Jason had never done as much physical labor in his life and by the third day was stiff and sore, but got a break that day as the professors and senior postgrads all concentrated on the newly found corners of the two forts. The bottom extended maybe ten yards further than the upper one, and the digging to determine the nature of the structures they had revealed slowed as the afternoon wore on. Jason was too tired to give his full attention to what they were finding, but then the next morning, feeling a little more rested, he paid closer attention to the finds and the conclusions being drawn. Finds of armor fittings, horse bits, and other material left behind during the construction of the lower fort led to a firm dating of the late first century and almost certainly a mixed force of legionaries and cavalry, probably a cohort of infantry and an ala of cavalry.

      The upper fort was more ambiguous. The corner had been built up with a wooden tower from the post holes left behind when the tower was burnt down. Careful excavation throughout the day resulted in a few hard to define burned bits and pieces and a shield boss, the date of which was hotly debated, with Professor Schmidt favoring a seventh or even eighth-century date with Germanic provenance. At the same time, Professor Armstrong thought it was fifth or sixth-century Romano-British. The shield boss was so damaged and too nondescript for any certainty in its identification, and the rest of the bits and pieces too badly burned to be easily datable. Several of the large pieces of charcoal that had been tower timbers were sent off for lab tests, but the team only had a limited budget for those sort of expensive dating methods.

      Normal digging resumed the next day as efforts were made to find the western side of the forts and the southern ends. After two days of carting muck and finding nothing exciting, they finally found the southern end of the lower fort. They found the southern edge of the upper fort the next day a good distance further south. The corner there was also found to have had a wooden tower on top of a substantial base, and this tower had also been burnt to the ground. It took another two days to find the western edge of both forts, which finally gave them some idea of the size of both. The older, lower fort they now revised to hold at least two infantry cohorts and the cavalry cohort or an even larger force, while the upper fort had clearly held an even bigger force given its rather large dimensions.

      Gradually more and more bits and pieces from the upper fort came to light. Some fittings looked Saxon, found near the middle of the east side, where they were now undertaking a slow search for a gateway. A coin was found that, after some work, proved to be from the reign of Valentinian the Third, which dated the upper fort to at least the late fourth century. It took several days to finally zero in on a gate on the east side as it was actually off-center to the south, not to the north as everyone had expected when nothing was found in the center of the wall length. The gate had been a substantial structure, with wooden towers on a sod base, and the left side was not quite as burnt down as all the rest of the remains. A mass grave was found just inside the gate where a large number of bodies had been thrown in a hole and then burnt before being covered with a mound of dirt.

His plan for an early night was foiled by the fact that Katerina was happy to sit and talk about almost anything! She played video games a bit and knew something about a lot more; she could talk science fiction and fantasy books of all sorts. They spent a lot of time comparing their favorite authors and then their favorite science fiction and fantasy films. Before they knew it, the place was empty, and the clock on the wall said it was one-thirty! Oh shit. They headed to their rooms on different floors, unfortunately, and Jason made sure his phone alarm was on, and the volume turned up!

The buzzing of the alarm did manage to rouse him barely three hours later! After a quick shower, a hot and not very good coffee made from the ingredients in the mini bar, which he only half slurped down, he raced downstairs clutching the two water bottles he’d grabbed from the tiny bar fridge in his room. He wasn’t the last to arrive out the front where he found a small bus was waiting, but it was close! One of the undergrads was right behind him, and a quick headcount confirmed they were all present. The bus lurched into motion even as Jason was heading for a seat. Franny was sitting with Katerina, damn, so he was forced to take a spot two rows back. A quick survey confirmed most of the crew were in shorts and t-shirts, although several had brought jackets of some kind as well. A jacket was something Jason hadn’t thought would be needed in the middle of the English summer! And sunscreen. Shit! In the rush, he’d left his behind. Oh well, hopefully, someone would let him share today.

The dig site was on a farm in a wooded area. The previous season they had made one deep vertical trench ninety degrees to the line of the upper fort’s wall, and while digging that out, they had dug a couple of further, smaller, trenches northeast along the wall to find a corner. They hadn’t found an actual corner, but the fourth trench had been beyond the wall extent of the top fort and probably the older fort as well. The main trench had been extended outwards when they found the lower fort, which had been their main focus the previous summer. In addition to the two fort walls, they had found two adjoining ditches. In the case of the lower fort, the ditch seemed to have provided much of the material for the wall base, which would have then been topped with wooden stakes.

The upper wall was different and appeared to have been made of reinforced turf sods and logs with a protective palisade then erected on top of that. The dirt from the ditch seemed to have been only a small part of the wall construction. Although how they determined that from the nondescript mound of remains, Jason wasn’t sure. This year they were going to resume their search for a corner and then try and see how far the forts extended to the southwest. Oh goody. Lots of wheelbarrow work for the ‘technical assistants’! In practice, over the next few days, he found there wasn’t that much wheelbarrowing, but making up for the lack of wheelbarrowing, there was shoveling, digging, and carting tree refuse. The farmer had agreed to chain saw a tree that was in the way and used his tractor to pull out the stump and then cart off the bulk of the tree, leaving the bits and pieces that had broken off or otherwise come adrift for the ‘technical assistants’ to remove from the work area.

Jason nodded. The Professors then asked Geseppo about some personal matters, and Jason drifted apart, not feeling entitled to hear reports on the fellow’s family. He felt his arm grabbed, and Franny smiled at him while she dragged him over to where her boyfriend was talking with the younger members of the dig. There were about ten all told, mostly males but two other females besides Franny. A slim brunette was facing away from him as he was brought over, and when addressed by Franny, the brunette turned and, seeing Jason, smiled. Ah. The brunette from the video call last year! Jason decided she was even prettier in the flesh, especially as he could see a lot more of her very nice figure.

“Katerina, you remember Jason?” Franny purred smiling, at something Jason clearly didn’t understand.

Katerina blushed and nodded, glanced at Franny with a frown, then turned back to Jason.

“Hi.” She offered, looking tentative.

“Hi, yourself,” Jason replied. “I finally get to meet the girl in the phone!” he tried to make it sound light and humorous.

Katerina’s smiled increased, and she bobbed her head.

“You look different somehow.” She offered. “He looked fatter in the phone call Franny.”

“Camera angle.” Franny put in, although she gave Jason a good once over.

 “Have you lost weight?” She asked, looking slightly puzzled.

Jason felt himself blushing slightly. “A little. I have been doing a lot more exercise recently, although I haven’t so much lost weight as toned up.”

Franny took hold of her boyfriend’s arm. “That is what it is. Oh, tell me. What happened on that island? Didn’t you get food poisoning or something?”

Jason nodded. “Ate something that didn’t agree with me. Nearly died, in fact. All good now, though. So, tell me, how far is it to the dig site?”

Franny might have wanted to ask more about the food poisoning from her expression, but Katerina piped in. “Only about thirty minutes or a bit less, depending on the traffic. We leave pretty early in the morning, though. Did Franny warn you?”

Jason play acted gulping in trepidation. “Um, no. How early is pretty early?”

“Bus leaves at five-thirty, so you need to be up and out front by then. They get a bit miffed if you hold everyone up by being late.” She nodded over to the professors. “Breakfast and lunch are supplied on-site by a contractor at seven-thirty or so and around one-thirty. The food is a bit expensive but not bad with a good range for such a small truck. Make sure you have lots of water handy.  It gets hot and dry this time of year!”

He found her slight Scottish accent rather charming as he listened to her. Mind you, Jason’s first reaction was to scoff at it being hot here in the north of England. As he was from southern California, he didn’t think English hot would be anything like Southern Californian hot! However, he decided not to say anything as he had no real experience of performing manual labor all day in the sun. He had packed sunblock cream, at his mother’s insistence, so that wouldn’t be too much of a problem if he was careful. He hoped!

He was then introduced to the other technical assistants. Most were post-graduate students, but there were two undergrads as well. They were Both from the University of Liverpool and obvious fans of Professor Armstrong. A couple looked a bit intimidated by having an academically famous person in their midst. Still, he was very careful to play down his achievements and point out he was as inexperienced as the two undergrads! Which was true. This admission helped ease the situation, and soon they were all on easy terms with each other.