The Pagans Series

Driven by the sinister forces of his own heritage, Brennis Gehan Fifth, Lord of Valdoe, is planning the genocide of the nomadic tribes who impede the spread of his empire in the land that was southern England of 5,000 years ago. With his army swelled by foreign mercenaries he prepares to march through the snows to annihilate the nomads’ retreat in their winter camp. Word of the Lord of Valdoe’s intentions has already reached the nomads, but when their chieftain is killed in a hunting accident it seems his successor will not heed the warning. In all the tribes, only Tagart understands the danger and is strong enough to face the Flint Lord, but first he must win the strange battle for leadership, waged according to ancient and ruthless laws. The campaign that he then inspires is a superb story of desperate courage. This novel of intrigue, violence and betrayal in the land of our Stone Age forefathers is a magnificent successor to the author’s The Stone Arrow. Here, spurring the Flint Lord’s drive for conquest, is his passion for his beautiful, decadent sister, a drive and a passion which lead inexorably to catastrophic consequences. Extent: 71,772 words (about 239 conventional pages)

It is 3000 BC. The cult of the Earth Goddess is controlled throughout the vast empire of Europe by the secretive and unscrupulous Red Order, the priesthood which manipulates all power for its own ends. The land that is now called England has been annexed and its lord, Brennis Gehan Fifth, betrayed and murdered. The Lady Altheme, his consort, has escaped to the forest. She is carrying his son, Paoul, rightful inheritor of the Valdoe domain. But his inheritance is usurped by his illegitimate half-brother. Ignorant of his parentage, Paoul is orphaned, sold into the priesthood, and sent to the mainland citadel for instruction. His teachers predict a great destiny for him. Only later, beyond the point of no return, do his doubts begin ... This remarkable novel, complete in itself, follows The Stone Arrow and The Flint Lord and concludes The Pagans, a trilogy whose theme finds form in Paoul’s disillusionment and in his illicit passion for his half-brother’s wife, the gentle and beautiful girl who becomes for him the true Goddess of the Earth. The story of their love races to a climax of tragedy that signals devastating consequences for the evil men of the priesthood and the empire. Extent: 73,653 words (about 246 conventional pages)

When the men of Burh, settlers from continental Europe, fall upon the sleeping nomad tribe in the depths of the forest amid the Downs of southern England, Tagart is the only survivor, escaping by sheer chance after his wife and young son have been massacred. Twenty-five and heir to the chiefdom of the roving hunters, he sees his only inheritance now to be an overwhelming urge for merciless revenge - of his family, his tribe and indeed of a way of life which in the England of 5,000 years ago is steadily being eroded by these tillers of the soil. Tagart’s first objective for his single-handed work of retribution is the fortified village of Burh (in what is now known as the Cuckmere Valley), and the means he uses are more subtle and deadly than any traditional form of attack. This story of his revenge, his subsequent savage enslavement by the new lords of the land and his escape with Segle, the beautiful sister of another captive, introduces a new author of considerable significance. Richard Herley writes with acute sense of place, of wind and weather, of wild life and of the background of Stone Age England when the countryside is in its last virgin state before civilization begins. Extent: 71,400 words (about 238 conventional pages)