Hard not to compare to Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom. Vikings raiding the England that was Wessex in the early middle ages. The Uhtred tales are hard to beat, but Giles Kristian comes close with Raven in Blood Eye.Some pretty darn good battle scenes with good ole fashioned shieldwalls, ba...
‘He wasn’t bloody fibbing.’ Mun did not answer for he was thinking of all that they had achieved since they had chased the rebel horse from Chalgrove Field. Since then they had all but destroyed Parliament’s Western Association army at Roundway Down and the King’s Council of War now pressed the i...
FAR FROM SEEMING happy the ealdorman if anything looked disappointed, dispirited and ashamed. Later, he would begin to scheme again, to believe that there might be something to be gained through guile and greed, but for now he was a shadow man. He had lost his household warriors, his fortune and ...
He had a rope around his hips and his chest, lashing him to the alder’s trunk so that he suspected he would hang there even without the branch below his feet which he could just reach. But he was glad of that branch for it meant he could share the burden between the ropes and his legs. Either sid...
Hooves thumped out a breakneck beat, pounding the iron-hard earth. Sword scabbards bounced, saddles and straps creaked, and buckles, metal fittings and tack jingled. The frigid night air scoured Mun’s face, dragging tears across his freezing cheeks and biting through his gloves into raw finger bo...
Mainly he spoke of his bravery and how well he had died, albeit after suffering the way he had. ‘The Norns spun a dark skein for our brother Halldor,’ Sigurd said, to which many murmured agreement, ‘but in the end he died as we all hunger to die, amongst our brothers, with a good sword in our han...
It was loud and it stank, but heathen and Christian were getting along better than anyone could have hoped. Even Wulfweard was there, though I did not see him talking to any of the Norsemen. He sat on a footstool drinking mead and fingering the wooden cross he wore round his neck as though the th...