Title Page

 

CAPE WRATH

 

 

by

PAUL FINCH

Publisher Information

 

First published in England in 2002 by

Telos Publishing Ltd

17 Pendre Avenue, Prestatyn, Denbighshire, LL19 9SH, UK

www.telos.co.uk

 

Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2011 by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

 

Telos Publishing Ltd values feedback. Please e-mail us with any comments you may have about this book to: feedback@telos.co.uk

 

Cape Wrath © 2002 Paul Finch

Cover artwork by David J Howe

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

 

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Introduction

 

Then came Ivar, Great Ivar, also called ‘Slayer’ and ‘Boneless’. Ivar, destined to add the crown of York to his crown of Dublin, but also to bring great murder and pillage to all the lands of the English.

The son of Ragnar, who was flung to Aella’s adders, Ivar brought vengeance on all the Christian kings of Britain. Three of them he gave up in heathen rites. Their hearthmen he laid waste in bloody battle, their fair women he raped and enslaved and fed to his crews like meat to the dogs.

Ivar of the berserk rages, also called ‘shape-shifter’, ‘wolf-spirit’, and seer, it was said, with the single eye of Odin. His conquests and devastations ran like fire through England, ’til only the kingdom of Wessex held against him. This too he might have had, but White Olaf, Ivar’s brother-in-arms, crossed the wide sea to Norway, and Ivar went unto the lands of the Gaels, already burned and sacked by him, yet ripe now for more.

Boneless Ivar was the terror of this age.

 

Monastic Chronicle of the Farnes, 870 AD