Dragon and the Raven: Or The Days of King Alfred

England, 877 AD. The Danes are coming. Village by village, the Viking longships sweep across the coast, and the great kingdom of Wessex crumbles beneath their axes. For young Edmund, the invasion is not abstract politics but a wound that will never heal: he watches his father cut down in the mud, fighting a losing battle against the savagery of the Northmen. Years later, that boy has become something dangerous. Edmund has studied warfare with a scholar's precision, learned where discipline fails and where it prevails. He builds a ship unlike any other in the English fleet, swift and lethal, and names her the Dragon. With a handpicked crew of men forged in fury and discipline, he takes to the sea not merely to fight but to wage a personal war against the occupiers who murdered his father and enslaved his homeland. His quest leads him from the waters of Britain to the courts of Europe, toward glory, toward love, and toward a reckoning that has been brewing since he was a child hiding in the ashes of his village. Henty's rousing adventure captures the desperation and defiance of a kingdom on the edge of annihilation. It is a story for anyone who has ever wanted to fight back against impossible odds and refuse to surrender.