The year is 878 and Wessex is free from the Vikings Uhtred, the dispossessed son of a Northumbrian lord, helped Alfred win that victory, but now he is disgusted by Alfred's lack of generosity and repelled by the king's insistent piety He flees Wessex, going back north to seek revenge for the killing of his foster father and to rescue his stepsister, captured in the same raid He needs to find his old enemy, Kjartan, a renegade Danish lord at his stronghold of Dunholm