Rosemary Sutcliff tells the dramatic story of the encounter and fateful bond between a Briton and a Viking. It creates a fascinatingly vivid picture of a time when Kiev was the center of an emerging Russian state and Emperor Basil II ruled in Byzantium. The Vikings, also known as Varangians, played a role both here and there. A rarely depicted chapter of European history. In Constantinople, they call him Jestyn, the Englishman. But what else connects him to the island? Jestyn remembers how Thormod, the Viking, once bought him at the slave market in Dublin. How he then moved south with him as a free man and friend to avenge his father's murder.