A nithing - an outcast - is set upon by robbers and nearly killed, but he fights back, joins their band, and eventually finds a new bench-place with King Hoc of the Half-Danes. That nithing's name is Hengest, the hero of the Battle of Sonderburh, and he rises to become king's thegn, but things start to go badly for him when he is drawn into King Hoc's bitter feud with the Frisians. This is the first part of the English Dawn Pentalogy, which tells the story of the conquest and settlement of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, set against the broad sweep of events in the Dark Ages: the decline of the Roman Empire, the rise of Attila the Hun, the raids by the Picts and the Scots, and the usurpation of the kingship of Britannia by the tyrant, Vortigern. These events are a prequel to the age of Arthur, and the final chapter of the pentalogy sees Merlin setting up the sword in the stone for the king who is to come.