The Pagans

What is now called Britain – the Island Country – is ruled by Brennis Gehan Fifth, a kinsman of the mainland Gehans. He is losing his mind, in love with his beautiful, wayward sister, and intent on the genocide of the native nomadic tribes.

His army swollen with foreign mercenaries, he prepares to march on the nomads' winter camp.

When the Shode, the nomads' leader, is killed in a hunting accident, his likely successor dismisses the threat. Only Tagart sees the danger: but first he must challenge for the leadership to become the next Shode.

Tagart's courage and honour are dwarfed by the horror of what ensues. Vast, incomprehensible forces are at work, on a scale undreamt of in his – and his ancestors' – culture.

Civilization is being born.

"Richard Herley … won wide critical acclaim and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for his first novel, The Stone Arrow, set in neolithic Sussex. Its successor is equally distinguished, a savage and breathtaking evocation, as gripping as any thriller, of an alien world."

— Yorkshire Post

"… takes neolithic genocide, incest, helotry and weaponry in its fine imaginative stride … the stark action and the snows and wolf-woods of a hostile landscape are powerful feats of description."

— Observer