High Kings and Vikings

As the first millennium draws to its close, Scotland is not yet a single secure kingdom but a country of competing dynasties, regional rulers and vulnerable coasts. Viking fleets continue to raid and settle, while the high kings of Alba hold power only so long as they can survive family rivalries and violent succession. In 995, the death of his father makes the young Cormac mac Farquhar Thane of Glamis and brings him unwillingly into the troubled reign and fall of Kenneth II.

Cormac would prefer to protect his people and estate rather than contend for influence at court, but neutrality is impossible when blood-feud, royal ambition and Norse attack threaten every allegiance. Forced to choose whom he can trust, he travels through a realm in which an oath may preserve a kingdom or condemn a family. Amid the brutality of the age, however, Cormac also discovers an attachment he never expected, giving him a personal future to defend as Scotland’s rulers struggle to shape the country that will follow them.