They were half-brothers, raised in different worlds in the same country, and destined to be lifelong enemies. Manfred De La Ray and Shasa Courtney, sons of Centaine de Thiry, were blood enemies from their very first boyhood encounter. Caught up in the tumult of South Africa's history through two decades, they found themselves adversaries in an age-old war of savagery to seize the sword of power in their land.

Sweeping from the teeming goldfields of the highland to the secret citadels of Afrikaner power, from the clamouring stadiums of Hitler's Berlin Olympics to the raging war over Abyssinia, their story was to become a rich, thrilling adventure, an epic saga of rivalry and revenge, of winners and losers in a struggle where only the ruthless survived.