The prologue sets a frame. The narrator, a Saxon lord of advanced years looking back on his life, introduces himself as Uhtred, the Earl of Bebbanburg. As a memoirist, he defines an ambitious purpose. This, he intones, is the story of a blood feud, a tale of “how I will take from my enemy what the law says is mine” (3). It is also, as he outlines, the story of how he himself came to pledge fealty to Alfred, the king of a now-unified England. 

The narrator recalls his childhood. It is 866, and Uhtred (born Osbert) is only 10. He is the second son. His family has long occupied a commanding fortress in Bebbanburg along England’s northern coast in the kingdom of Northumbria, one of four kingdoms that makes up England. The fortress is perceived to be impregnable.

A roving, three-boat raiding party of Norsemen invades Northumbria. In the ensuing bloody battle, Osbert’s older brother Uhtred is captured and summarily beheaded by Ragnar the Fearless. Shaken but determined to continue the family line, Uhtred’s father rechristens Osbert with his own (and his brother’s) name. So, the boy becomes Uhtred.

The Danish marauders live up to their reputation as brutal and vicious.