The year is 1002.

Growing up on an island in Norway, thirteen-year-old Ama and her ten-year-old sister have only known the Ulfberh family business of making their swords for trade. Then everything changed.

Tragedy and loneliness can be powerful enemies. While fleeing to Northumbria, Ama and Amdis must fight despair, especially when they arrive in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Unknown to them, King Aethelred II instructed his nobles to remove all Danes from Britain’s soil permanently on St. Brice’s Day. Baron Gumbar is eager to obey; he hates them too.

Hoping to find fellow Scandinavians, Ama and Amdis find themselves, instead, on the run again. How can these two orphans survive in a foreign land where everyone is a stranger?

Within sorrow sometimes, the only thing left is an ember of hope. That ember, to Ama and Amdis, was that they still had each other.