The Macurdies had been farmers for generations, and Curtis Macurdy would have been content to spend his life with his exotically beautiful wife Varia, earning a living by tilling his plot of land in the American Midwest. Varia was from Yuulith, a magical world separated from Earth by only a dimensional barrier that could sometimes be broached.

When her superiors in the Sisterhood demanded that she return to Yuulith, she disobeyed -- and so one day Macurdy came home and found that the Sisterhood had abducted Varia, taking her from Farside, as they called our world, to Yuulith.

That was a big mistake. Macurdy may have seemed to be an ordinary farmer, but this would not be the first time that under the surface of an unassuming landholder lurked a strategic genius of the highest order; and he would follow Varia across the dimensional barrier to get her back, even if he had to raise his own army and crush any nation or ruler who stood in his way -- and in the process become the invincible warlord Makurdi, known to his followers as --