Black Fox of Lorne

“Now we shall go a-Viking.” With these fateful words, Harald Redbeard determines a new course of life for his twin sons, Jan and Brus. No longer are they children, at work and at play on the lands of their kinfolk in Norway; now, although they are but thirteen years of age, they are men; they shall go a-Viking. Setting sail in their dragon-prowed Raven of the Wind, Harald and his sons are beset by those ancient enemies of seafarers—storm and fog—which separate them from the other ships in their convoy and dash them to ruin on the rocks of Scotland. Even as they wrestle with the fear that their mother and household are lost to the sea god in watery death, Jan and Brus find their plight worsening: their father slain and their own freedom taken by the murderous Gavin Dhu, Black Fox of Lorne. Swept into the wilding world of tenth-century A.D. Scotland, where loyal clansmen clash with invaders, marauders, and treacherous lairds, the brothers must enact a life-or-death deception. Their secret: that no one in this strange land reckons they are not one, but two—twin brothers with the courage to defy the odds that death might be likelier than life.