Viking, Mercenary, King (Part One)

Before 1066, before Stamford Bridge, before he became a legend, Harald Hardrada was a boy standing in a collapsing shield wall, watching his world burn.

Wounded, hunted, and forced into exile, he vanishes east into a vast and dangerous world of rivers, warbands, and shifting loyalties. He fights in the courts of the Kievan Rus, then pushes further south, into the glittering, treacherous heart of Constantinople, where emperors rise and fall and survival is never guaranteed.

Here, among mercenaries and kings, Harald learns how power is truly made, in gold, in blood, and in reputation.

This is the story of how a fugitive becomes a force that will one day shake the world.