His plan is to become accepted by their leaders, and to sit in their councils and uncover their plans. Determined to discover the enemy's strategies, he draws once again on his Viking upbringing, and attempts to enter the Viking camps.

There, forced to move restlessly to escape betrayal or detection, using the marsh mists for cover, they travel by small boats from one island refuge to another, hoping that they can regroup and find some more strength and support. Defeated comprehensively by the Vikings who now occupy most of England, Alfred and his very small group of surviving followers retreat to the trackless marshlands of Somerset. But when Iseult, a powerful sorceress, enters Uhtred’s life, he is forced to consider feelings he’s never confronted before-and Uhtred discovers, in his moment of greatest peril, a new-found loyalty and love for his native country and ruler.Continuing the outstanding success of The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman is the second installment of Bernard Cornwell’s fantastic series, following the fate of Alfred the Great ,and the forging of Britain.

Uhtred has always been a Dane at heart, and has always believed that given the chance, he would fight for the men who raised him and taught him the Viking ways. The Danish Vikings quickly invade and occupy three of England’s four kingdoms-and all that remains of the once proud country is a small piece of marshland, where Alfred and his family live with a few soldiers and retainers, including Uhtred, the dispossessed English nobleman who was raised by the Danes. This is the exciting-yet little known-story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England’s four kingdoms.Īt the end of The Last Kingdom, The Danes had been defeated at Cynuit, but the triumph of the English is not fated to last long. The second installment of Bernard Cornwell’s New York Times bestselling series chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, “like Game of Thrones, but real” ( The Observer, London)-the basis for The Last Kingdom, the hit television series.

The pale horseman series