Hereward ~ Paperback ~ James Wilde

1062- While the ailing King Edward, known as the Confessor, wastes his final days building monuments to God, across the Channel the brutal William the Bastard of Normandy plots to swamp all England in a tide of blood. The war drums are beating, the ravens are gathering. But with the king s closest advisors scheming and squabbling, any hope of resistance to the Norman duke lies with just one man. Hereward, the King of Terror. Hereward is a warrior, trained in the lethal art of spear, axe and sword, a master tactician, a mercenary, and, to both ally and enemy, the devil in human form - as adept at slaughter as the foes gathering to claim Edward s throne. Yet the men who need him most have made him outlaw, and Hereward must carve a bloody swathe from the frozen hills of Northumbria to the war-torn fields of Flanders just to stay alive. Here, during the darkest age in history, are the early days of the man who would be forged into one of England s greatest heroes. It is the story of two mismatched allies, Hereward the Warrior and Alric the Monk, one fighting to save the land he loves, the other to save his friend s soul. This is the story of the last Englishman, the first terroriAuthor BiographyJames Wilde is a Man of Mercia. Raised in a world of books, the author studied economic history at university before travelling the world in search of adventure. Unable to forget a childhood encounter - in the pages of a comic - with the great English warrior, Hereward, Wilde returned to the haunted fenlands of Eastern England, Hereward's ancestral home, where he became convinced that this legendary hero should be the subject of his first novel. Wilde now indulges his love of history and the high life in the home his family have owned for several generations in the heart of a Mercian forest.