Uhtred is a Saxon, adrift in a world of fire, sword and treachery. He has to make a choice -- fight for the Vikings who raised him, or for King Alfred the Great of Wessex who dislikes him.

Wessex, in the late 9th Century, was the last English kingdom. All the rest had fallen to the Danish Vikings. Now the Vikings want to finish England, and they assemble the Great Army which has only one ambition -- to conquer Wessex. Uhtred lives in Wessex, though he has small love for it and none for King Alfred. Yet fate, as Uhtred learns, has its own imperatives, and when the Vikings attack, Uhtred finds himself on Alfred's side.

The Pale Horseman, rooted in the real history of Anglo-Saxon England, tells the astonishing and true story of how Alfred fights back against his overwhelming enemies. Alfred and Uhtred make unlikely allies, yet the two forge an uneasy alliance that will lead them to where the last remaining Saxon army will fight for the very existence of England.

The Pale Horseman is enthralling as both a historical and a personal story, a novel of divided loyalties and desperate heroism. The Washington Post calls Bernard Cornwell "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today", and The Pale Horseman is yet another masterpiece of historical and battle fiction that gives life to one of the most important and exciting epochs in the history of the English people and culture.