Sworn Sword

Name: Sworn Sword
Rating: 4.2 (558 reviews)

by James Aitcheson Book 1 in the The Conquest series.

First published 2011

Amazon

4.2(558)

Northumbria, January 1069. Tancred a Dinant marches north with Robert de Comines and a Norman force sent to impose the new king’s authority. At Durham the occupation collapses into an urban ambush, leaving Robert and most of his men dead. Wounded and separated from his companions, Tancred escapes a disaster that destroys his lord’s household and leaves him dependent on another Norman magnate for protection and employment.

English resistance gathers around Edgar Ætheling while northern towns, local landholders and Norman garrisons prepare for renewed war. Tancred’s pursuit of those responsible for the Durham rising draws him into a conspiracy connected with the invasion of 1066 and with competing ambitions inside the victorious Norman elite. The novel presents the conquest as an unfinished occupation in which vengeance, land and sworn service repeatedly conflict with military necessity.