The fifth in the bestselling Alfred series. In the last years of the ninth century, King Alfred of Wessex is in failing health, and his heir is an untested youth. The Danes smell opportunity. First comes Harald Bloodhair, a savage warrior leading a Viking horde. But Alfred still has the services of Uhtred, his unwilling warlord, who leads Harald into a trap and inflicts one of the greatest defeats the Vikings were ever to suffer. This novel tells of the final assaults on Alfred's Wessex, that Wessex survived to become England is because men like Uhtred defeated an enemy feared throughout Christendom.