The dead lay thick upon the ridge at Ashdown, and among them walked the living like ghosts who had not yet learned they were meant to lie down.

  Eadric moved through the carnage with the mechanical purpose of a man who had long since exhausted his capacity for horror. His boots squelched in mud that had turned the color of rust, and twice he stumbled over bodies so mangled that he could not tell Saxon from Dane. The winter sun hung low and bloated on the western horizon, painting the sky in shades of crimson that seemed less like beauty and more like mockery—as though the heavens themselves were stained with the blood that had been spilled below.

  We won, he thought, and the words rang hollow in his skull. God help us, we won.

  But victory, he was learning, tasted no sweeter than defeat when measured in the weight of corpses.

  Near the base of the ridge, where the Danish shield-wall had finally broken, Prince Alfred stood surrounded by his household warriors and the captains of the fyrd. The young prince's golden hair was matted with blood—not his own, Eadric noted with distant relief—and his fine mail shirt bore the dents and scratches of close combat. But his eyes were clear, his bearing straight, and when he spoke, his voice carried across the field with an authority that belied his youth.

  "Bring me a count of our dead," Alfred commanded, and there was no tremor in his words, no hint of the boy scholar who had once parsed Latin grammar in monastery libraries. "And gather the prisoners. All of them. I would see who remains of the enemy's leadership."

  The men scrambled to obey, and Eadric found himself drawn toward the gathering as though pulled by an invisible cord. He had no rank to justify his presence among the prince's council, no standing beyond that of a common smith who had happened to survive. But something in Alfred's manner—that strange combination of compassion and steel—demanded witness.

  The prisoners had been herded into a rough circle near a stand of bare oaks, their wrists bound with leather thongs, their weapons confiscated. There were perhaps sixty of them—those who had surrendered rather than flee, or who had been too wounded to run. Some sat slumped in the mud, their eyes glazed with the peculiar emptiness of men who had accepted their deaths. Others wept openly, calling out in broken Saxon for mercy, for water, for the chance to see their families one last time.

  And then there were those who refused to break.

  Ylva knelt among the latter group, her wrists still bound behind her back, her ice-blue eyes tracking every movement of the Saxons who surrounded her. The wound on her scalp had been roughly bandaged—Eadric's own order, he remembered dimly—but blood still seeped through the cloth, painting crimson streaks down her pale face like war-paint. She had not spoken since her capture, save for that one chilling exchange about the men she had killed, but her silence was louder than any scream.

  Beside her knelt a grey-bearded Dane with the bearing of a jarl, his mail shirt torn and his left arm hanging useless at his side. Unlike Ylva, he had not stopped talking since the moment of his capture—a steady stream of curses and prophecies that had earned him more than one kick from the vengeful fyrdsmen.

  "Your Christ-god cannot save you," the grey-beard spat as Alfred approached, his Saxon heavily accented but perfectly comprehensible. "The Norns have woven your fate, little prince, and it is written in blood. Ragnar?k comes for all men—your people and mine alike. We will meet again in the halls of the dead, and there I will—"

  "Silence him," Alfred said, and a fyrdman obliged with a blow that snapped the grey-beard's head back and left him groaning in the mud.

  Eadric watched the prince's face as he surveyed the prisoners, searching for some hint of the rage that burned in the hearts of every Saxon present. He found none. Alfred's expression was grave, thoughtful, touched with something that might have been sorrow—but not hatred. Never hatred.

  How? Eadric wondered, his remaining eye fixed upon the young prince. How can he look upon these heathens—these butchers who have burned our churches and slaughtered our children—and feel anything but the desire for vengeance?

  He did not understand. He was not certain he wanted to.

  "My lord!" A rider was approaching at speed, his horse lathered and wild-eyed, his cloak streaming behind him like a banner. He reined in before Alfred with a spray of mud and nearly fell from his saddle in his haste to deliver his news. "My lord, the Danish kings—we have found them!"

  Alfred's composure cracked for just an instant, a flash of fierce hope breaking through the mask of calm. "Halfdan? Bagsecg?"

  "Bagsecg is dead, my lord." The rider's voice trembled with exhaustion and exultation. "We found his body near the old Roman road, not half a mile from here. His own men had stripped him of his arm-rings before they fled, but his banner-bearer lay beside him, still clutching the raven standard." The man paused, drawing a ragged breath. "And there is more. The earls—Sidroc the Old and Sidroc the Younger, Osbern, Fr?na, Harold—all slain. We have counted five of their greatest lords among the dead."

  A murmur rippled through the assembled Saxons—disbelief giving way to wonder, wonder to something approaching joy. Eadric felt it himself, that surge of savage satisfaction that came with knowing your enemies had paid the ultimate price. Bagsecg dead. Five earls dead. The leadership of the Great Heathen Army, gutted in a single afternoon.

  It was more than they had dared hope for. It was, perhaps, more than they deserved.

  "And Halfdan?" Alfred pressed. "The other king?"

  The rider's expression darkened. "Fled, my lord. He broke with the first wave of retreat and rode north with his household guard. Some of our cavalry pursued, but night is falling, and—"

  "Let them pursue." Alfred's voice was firm. "Every Dane who falls in the retreat is one fewer to face when they return." He turned to address the gathered fyrdsmen, his gaze sweeping across their blood-spattered faces with an intensity that commanded attention. "Hear me, men of Wessex! This day we have won a great victory—not through our own strength alone, but through the grace of Almighty God, who has delivered our enemies into our hands. King Bagsecg lies dead upon the field. Five of their mightiest earls have fallen. The Great Heathen Army has been broken, scattered, driven from this ridge like chaff before the wind!"

  A ragged cheer rose from the fyrd—exhausted, grief-stricken, but genuine. Men who had expected to die that morning found themselves alive at sunset, and the relief of survival mingled with the intoxication of triumph to produce something that felt almost like hope.

  But the cheering faltered when Alfred raised his hand for silence and turned his attention back to the prisoners.

  "Now we must decide what is to be done with those who remain."

  The mood shifted instantly. Eadric could feel the change in the men around him—the way their grief hardened into rage, their relief curdled into hunger for retribution. These were not professional soldiers, trained to treat prisoners according to the laws of war. These were farmers and craftsmen who had watched the northmen burn their homes, murder their families, defile their churches. They wanted blood. They needed blood.

  "Kill them," someone shouted from the rear of the crowd, and the cry was taken up by a dozen voices, then a hundred. "Kill them all! Let them taste what they have given us!"

  "String them up! Let the ravens feast!"

  "Blood for blood! Eye for eye!"

  Eadric said nothing. His hand had found the haft of his axe without conscious thought, and he was gripping it so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. The straw-haired boy's face swam before his vision—that nameless youth who had asked if they would die, and then had died himself, his chest split open by a Danish axe. The boy had been someone's son. Someone's brother. Someone's hope for the future.

  And now he was meat for the crows, like so many others.

  Kill them, Eadric thought, and the thought was prayer and curse alike. Kill them all, and let God sort the righteous from the damned.

  But Alfred did not give the order.

  Instead, the prince stepped forward until he stood directly before the kneeling prisoners, close enough that the grey-bearded jarl could have spat upon his boots. His hand rested upon the pommel of his sword, but he did not draw it. When he spoke, his voice was quiet—yet somehow it carried over the angry clamor of the fyrd, silencing them as surely as a thunderclap.

  "I understand your rage," Alfred said. "I share it. These men have brought fire and sword to our shores. They have murdered our kings and martyred our saints. They have made widows of our wives and orphans of our children." His gaze swept across the prisoners, lingering for a moment on Ylva's upturned face. "There is not a man among you who has not lost something precious to their savagery."

  He paused, letting the words settle.

  "But we are not savages. We are Christians—followers of a God who commanded us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. A God who offered mercy to the thief upon the cross, and forgiveness to the soldiers who nailed Him there."

  The murmuring of the fyrd had subsided, replaced by an uneasy silence. Eadric could see the confusion on the faces around him—the struggle between the teachings they had heard in church and the hatred that burned in their hearts.

  "The battle is won," Alfred continued. "The great feud between our peoples has been settled here, upon this ridge, in blood and iron. God has rendered His judgment, and we stand victorious." He drew a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice rang with the authority of a king—though he did not yet wear the crown. "Therefore, I offer these prisoners a choice."

  The grey-bearded jarl laughed—a harsh, mocking sound that cut through the silence like a blade. "A choice? What choice does a lamb offer to the wolf it has somehow cornered? Shall we choose between the axe and the rope?"

  "You shall choose," Alfred said, his tone unchanging, "between baptism and release, or imprisonment in the King's hall as hostages until such time as your people pay ransom for your return."

  Stunned silence.

  Eadric felt the words strike him like a physical blow, driving the breath from his lungs. Baptism and release. The prince was offering these heathens—these murderers—the chance to walk free. To return to their ships, their families, their gods of blood and thunder. All they had to do was submit to the waters of Christian baptism, and their crimes would be washed away as though they had never been.

  It was mercy. It was madness. It was—

  It is what Christ would have done, a voice whispered in the depths of Eadric's soul, and he hated himself for recognizing its truth.

  Among the prisoners, reactions varied wildly. Some wept with relief, reaching out toward Alfred as though he were a saint dispensing blessings. Others sat frozen, unable to comprehend the gift being offered. A few—the hardened warriors, the true believers in the old gods—curled their lips in contempt, their silence a rejection more eloquent than words.

  But it was the fyrd whose reaction proved most violent.

  "No!" The shout came from somewhere in the crowd, and it was taken up immediately by a dozen throats, then a score. "No mercy for heathens! No mercy for child-killers!"

  "My son lies dead upon this field!" a grey-haired farmer screamed, his face contorted with grief. "And you would let his murderers walk free?"

  "Shame! Shame upon the house of ?thelwulf!"

  The booing began—a low, ugly sound that swelled like a wave, washing over Alfred's words and drowning them in a tide of fury. Men stamped their feet and beat their spear-hafts against their shields, the rhythm of their rage drowning out all else. Some pushed forward, their hands reaching for the prisoners, and only the household warriors' shields kept them at bay.

  Eadric did not join the chorus, but neither did he speak against it. His eye found Ylva's face among the prisoners, and he saw something there that chilled him more than the winter air—not fear, not hope, but a cold and calculating interest, as though she were watching a drama unfold for her private entertainment.

  She wants this, he realized. She wants us to tear each other apart.

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  The thought had barely formed when the crowd's attention shifted. A ripple of movement passed through the fyrd, men stepping aside and bowing their heads, and through the gap rode King ?thelred himself.

  The king had emerged from his post-battle prayers at last. His mail shirt gleamed in the fading light, unstained by the blood that marked his brother's armor, and his face bore the serene expression of a man who had placed his fate entirely in God's hands. He dismounted with deliberate grace, his eyes sweeping across the scene before him—the angry fyrdsmen, the kneeling prisoners, his brother standing alone before the mob.

  "My lord king!" A thick-necked man with the bearing of a minor thegn pushed his way to the front of the crowd, dropping to one knee before ?thelred. "My lord, your brother has offered mercy to these heathens—mercy they do not deserve! We appeal to your wisdom, your justice! Surely you cannot—"

  "I have heard my brother's words." ?thelred's voice was calm, measured, carrying the weight of a man accustomed to command. "I heard them from the ridge, where I watched the battle's end."

  A murmur ran through the crowd. The king had watched? He had seen Alfred's charge, his victory, his offer of clemency—and said nothing?

  Eadric studied the king's face, searching for some hint of the resentment that must surely lurk beneath that placid surface. ?thelred was the anointed sovereign, the elder brother, the one who should have led the charge and claimed the glory. Instead, he had remained at prayer while Alfred seized the moment and won the day. Such a blow to royal pride would fester in the hearts of lesser men.

  But ?thelred's expression betrayed nothing save a quiet, almost paternal pride.

  "My brother has spoken with great wisdom," the king said, his voice rising to carry across the field. "He has shown mercy where others would show only vengeance—and in doing so, he has proven himself more Christian than any man here."

  The booing died, strangled by confusion. This was not what they had expected. This was not what they had hoped for.

  "My lord—" the thick-necked thegn began again, but ?thelred cut him off with a raised hand.

  "I have the utmost trust in my brother's judgment. He has earned that trust today, upon this field, with the blood he shed and the victory he won. I will not gainsay him."

  "But he moved without your permission!" The words burst from the crowd—a fyrdsman with a bandaged arm and wild eyes, his voice cracking with desperation. "He charged without the king's command! That is treason, my lord! That is—"

  "Enough."

  The single word fell like a hammer-blow, silencing the man mid-sentence. ?thelred's serene expression had hardened into something far more dangerous, and when he spoke again, his voice carried the cold edge of royal displeasure.

  "You would speak to me of treason? Here, upon this field, where my brother's courage turned certain defeat into glorious victory?" The king stepped forward, and the fyrdsman shrank back as though struck. "You would seek to drive a wedge between the sons of ?thelwulf, here and now, while Danish bodies still cool in the mud and their kinsmen plot revenge?"

  The man's face had gone the color of old ash. "My lord, I only meant—"

  "I know what you meant." ?thelred's gaze swept across the assembled fyrd, and men who had been shouting moments before now found fascinating things to study in the mud at their feet. "There are those who would see this kingdom divided against itself—who would whisper poison in the ears of brothers and turn victory into the seeds of civil war. The Danes know this. They count upon it. They have watched kingdom after kingdom tear itself apart from within, and they have feasted upon the scraps."

  He paused, letting the words sink in.

  "I will not give them that satisfaction. My brother acted as he saw fit, in the heat of battle, and God Himself has vindicated his judgment. Any man who speaks otherwise—any man who seeks to sow discord between us—is no friend to the men of Wessex."

  The silence that followed was absolute. Even the ravens seemed to have stilled their cries, as though the very birds of the air recognized the weight of the moment.

  ?thelred turned to his brother, and something passed between them—a look that spoke of shared burdens, shared fears, shared faith in a cause greater than either of them alone. Then the king nodded, once, and Alfred bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  "See to the prisoners," ?thelred commanded, his voice returning to its earlier calm. "Those who accept baptism shall be released, as my brother has decreed. Those who refuse shall be held as hostages against future ransom." He glanced toward the western horizon, where the sun was sinking into a sea of blood-red clouds. "And have the army make camp away from this slaughterground. The dead deserve their rest, and the living deserve to sleep without the stench of death in their nostrils."

  The work began.

  Eadric found himself assigned to the sorting of prisoners—a task that suited his grim mood better than he cared to admit. One by one, the captured Danes were brought before a hastily assembled tribunal of priests and thegns, where they were offered the choice Alfred had promised: the waters of baptism, or the chains of captivity.

  Some accepted eagerly—younger men, mostly, whose faith in the old gods had been shaken by the day's defeat. They knelt in the frozen mud while a priest poured water over their heads and intoned the words of the sacrament, their eyes squeezed shut as though they expected the Christian God to strike them down for their presumption. When it was done, they were given a crust of bread and a skin of water, and pointed toward the east with instructions to return to their ships and trouble Wessex no more.

  They will be back, Eadric thought, watching one such convert stumble away into the gathering dusk. Within a year, within a month, they will return with their kinsmen and their axes, and the blood they shed will wash away whatever grace they gained today.

  But he said nothing. It was not his place to question the prince's mercy, or the king's endorsement of it.

  Most of the prisoners, however, refused.

  The grey-bearded jarl spat in the face of the priest who offered him the sacrament, and was dragged away still cursing in his harsh northern tongue. A young warrior with a shattered leg begged to be given a sword so that he might die fighting, and wept when his request was denied. An old man with the tattoos of a skald upon his arms simply shook his head and smiled, murmuring something about Valhalla and the feast that awaited him there.

  And Ylva—the she-wolf, the demon in woman's flesh—did not even deign to respond. When the priest approached her with his basin of holy water, she simply stared at him with those ice-blue eyes until he backed away, crossing himself and muttering prayers of protection.

  "This one is touched by darkness," the priest whispered to Eadric as he passed. "I can feel it. The Devil himself looks out from behind those eyes."

  Eadric said nothing. He was not certain the priest was wrong.

  In the end, nearly four dozen prisoners refused baptism and were led away in chains—hostages against a ransom that might never come, or might be paid in blood rather than silver. They would be held in the king's hall at Reading, under guard, until their fate could be determined.

  And what of the she-wolf? Eadric wondered, watching Ylva's tall form disappear among the other captives. What ransom could possibly be demanded for such a creature? What king or jarl would pay to have her returned?

  He suspected the answer was none. He suspected Ylva knew it too.

  As the last light faded from the sky, the Saxon army broke camp and marched three miles east, away from the ridge where so many had died. They made their fires in a shallow valley where a stream provided fresh water and a stand of ancient oaks offered some shelter from the bitter wind. The mood was strange—exhausted triumph mingled with grief, relief shadowed by the knowledge that this victory, however great, was not the end.

  Eadric sat apart from the others, his back against a gnarled oak, his axe across his knees. He had cleaned the blade as best he could, but dark stains still lingered in the grain of the wood where blood had soaked too deep to be scrubbed away. He found himself staring at those stains, wondering how many of them had come from men he had killed, and how many from the boy whose name he had never learned.

  Fourteen, he thought. The she-wolf claimed fourteen. I killed perhaps five, perhaps six. Does that make me less of a monster, or merely less efficient?

  He had no answer. He suspected God did not either.

  Nearby, a group of fyrdsmen huddled around a sputtering fire, their voices low but carrying in the still night air. Eadric caught fragments of their conversation—speculation about what would come next, complaints about the cold, prayers for the souls of fallen comrades. But one phrase snagged his attention and held it fast.

  "—Basing, I heard. The Danes have taken Basing, so we’re headed there next, aren’t we?"

  Eadric's head came up. Basing was a royal estate, less than twenty miles to the south—a wealthy manor with good walls and better stores, the kind of prize that Danish raiders dreamed of. If the enemy had seized it...

  "When?" another man asked, his voice sharp with alarm.

  "Before the battle, supposedly. A warband split off from the main host and struck while we were gathering on the ridge. They hold it now—the manor, the church, everything."

  "Christ's wounds. Surely it won’t be a siege.” Eadric shook his head, though the man who had spoken could not see him in the darkness. "No siege," he said, his voice rough with exhaustion. "Not in January. Not with the ground frozen and supplies running thin on both sides."

  The fyrdsmen turned toward him, their faces orange masks in the firelight. One of them—a young man with a fresh bandage wrapped around his forearm—frowned with the skepticism of youth. "How can you be certain? The Danes have shown no reluctance to—"

  "Because I have eyes," Eadric cut him off. "And a memory that stretches back more than a single season." He gestured vaguely toward the north, where the Danish camps lay hidden by distance and darkness. "This war has been skirmishes and raids, boy. Quick strikes, quick retreats. Neither side has the stomach for a proper siege—not when every man knows that a fortnight of sitting in the mud means frostbite, starvation, and disease."

  He was right, though he took no pleasure in the knowledge. The campaigns of the past five years had followed a grim pattern: the Danes would strike at an undefended target, strip it of everything valuable, and retreat before a proper response could be mustered. The Saxons would gather their fyrds, march to confront the enemy, and find nothing but ashes and empty fields. Occasionally the two forces would meet in open battle—as they had today—but such encounters were the exception rather than the rule.

  Siege warfare required resources that neither side possessed in abundance. It required patience, which the Danes—ever hungry for new plunder—had never cultivated. And it required a willingness to endure suffering that even the hardiest warriors found difficult to sustain when the alternative was simply moving on to easier prey.

  "So what happens now?" the young man asked. "Do we march on Basing and drive them out?"

  "Perhaps." Eadric's gaze drifted toward the distant glow of the command fires, where Alfred and ?thelred were no doubt conferring with their thegns and ealdormen. "Or perhaps the kings will decide that one victory is enough for now. The fyrds have been in the field for weeks. Men have farms to tend, families to feed. If the Danes are content to sit in Basing and lick their wounds..."

  He did not finish the sentence. He did not need to. Every man present understood the calculus of war in these desperate times—the constant weighing of military necessity against the simple human need to return home, to hold one's children, to sleep in one's own bed without fear of waking to a Danish axe.

  Home. The word echoed in Eadric's mind like a prayer. His rebuilt smithy, still smelling of fresh timber and iron. His two children—Godwin and little ?lfgifu—waiting with their aunt in the village, not knowing if their father lived or died. The grave behind the church where his wife lay buried, her body broken but her soul, he prayed, at peace in the arms of Christ.

  He wanted to go home. Every man in the fyrd wanted to go home. It was the one desire that united them all—farmer and craftsman, young and old, faithful and doubting. They had answered the summons because duty demanded it, but duty could not silence the ache in their hearts for the simple comforts they had left behind.

  And yet.

  Eadric looked up at the winter stars, cold and distant and utterly indifferent to the struggles of men below. Bagsecg was dead. Five Danish earls lay rotting on the ridge at Ashdown. By any measure, this should have been a turning point—the moment when the tide of invasion finally began to recede.

  But he knew, with the bone-deep certainty of a man who had lived through too many disappointments, that it would not be enough.

  "The Nords will come," he said quietly, almost to himself. "Halfdan will send word to his kinsmen across the sea. New ships, new warriors, new hunger for Christian gold. Bagsecg's death will not end this war—it will only make them angrier."

  The fyrdsmen around the fire exchanged uneasy glances. They had been hoping for reassurance, for some wise elder's promise that today's victory meant tomorrow's peace. Instead, they had received the cold truth that Eadric could not bring himself to soften.

  "Then what was the point?" the young man with the bandaged arm demanded, his voice cracking with frustration. "We bled and died on that ridge—for what? If they're just going to come back, if nothing ever changes, then what was the point?"

  It was the question that haunted every Saxon who had lived through the long nightmare of the Danish invasions. What was the point of fighting when defeat seemed inevitable? What was the point of rebuilding when the northmen would only burn it down again? What was the point of praying to a God who seemed content to watch His faithful children suffer and die while heathens prospered?

  Eadric had no answer. He had stopped expecting answers years ago, around the time he had buried his wife and learned to see the world through a single eye.

  "The point," he said slowly, "is that we are still here. Wessex still stands. The other kingdoms fell—Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia—but we remain." He met the young man's gaze, and something of his old fire flickered to life behind the exhaustion. "Perhaps that is all we can ask. Perhaps that is all God requires of us—not victory, but endurance. Not triumph, but the simple refusal to lie down and die."

  The words rang hollow even to his own ears, but the young man seemed to find some comfort in them. He nodded slowly, his jaw setting with renewed determination, and turned back to the fire.

  Lies, Eadric thought. Pretty lies to help boys sleep at night.

  But what else could he offer? The truth—that Wessex was surrounded by enemies, that the old kingdoms had been ground to dust, that no help would come from the Frankish lands across the sea because the Franks had their own problems, their own Vikings, their own slow collapse into chaos—would only breed despair. And despair, in times like these, was more dangerous than any Danish axe.

  He thought of the Frankish kingdoms he had heard travelers speak of in better days—those proud inheritors of Charlemagne's legacy, now fractured and squabbling, their coasts ravaged by the same longships that plagued England's shores. He thought of the letters that King ?thelred had sent across the narrow sea, begging for aid, for alliance, for some sign that Christian solidarity meant anything at all. The silence that had answered those letters spoke louder than any words.

  We are alone, Eadric realized, and the thought settled into his bones like the winter cold. Wessex stands alone against the darkness, and if we fall, there will be no one left to mourn us.

  Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled—a long, mournful sound that seemed to give voice to the despair Eadric could not speak aloud. He thought, absurdly, of the she-wolf in chains, and wondered if she could hear her wild kin calling to her from the frozen hills.

  What does she think of all this? he wondered. Does she believe her gods have abandoned her, as I sometimes fear mine have abandoned us? Or does she simply accept the cruelty of the world as natural, as inevitable, as the turning of the seasons?

  He did not know. He was not certain he wanted to know.

  The fire crackled and spat, sending sparks spiraling up into the darkness. Around him, the fyrdsmen began to settle into their cloaks, seeking what rest they could before dawn brought new orders, new marches, new opportunities to die for a cause that seemed increasingly hopeless.

  Eadric did not sleep. He sat with his back against the oak and his axe across his knees, watching the stars wheel overhead in their eternal, uncaring dance. And he thought of his children, waiting for a father who might never return—thought of the world they would inherit, scarred by war and shadowed by enemies on every side.

  God, he prayed silently, if You have a plan for us, I cannot see it. If this suffering serves some greater purpose, I cannot fathom it. All I ask is the strength to endure—to protect what little remains, to stand against the darkness until my legs give out and my heart stops beating.

  It was not much of a prayer. But in the frozen darkness of that January night, with the dead of Ashdown still unburied and the future stretching before him like an endless wasteland of blood and fire, it was all simple Eadric had to offer.

  

  Author’s Note

  The Fyrd, so far the first completed novel is available for purchase on Amazon: