A nithing - an outcast - is set upon by robbers and nearly killed, but he fights back, joins their band, and eventually finds a new bench-place with King Hoc of the Half-Danes. That nithing's name is Hengest, the hero of the Battle of Sonderburh, and he rises to become king's thegn, but things start to go badly for him when he is drawn into King Hoc's bitter feud with the Frisians. This is the first part of the English Dawn Pentalogy, which tells...