Time for a book update!
I am still flogging the newest Tyburn tale, Sorcerer Street, with agents and potential publishers, so it will be arriving at *some point* in the future. I would love to provide a definitive date but at this point, I just can't, so thank you for your patience!
On the "works in progress" side, I am past the mid-point on my newest project (50,516 words so far). I have not released any details on this project other than it is not a Tudor-era historical fiction but rather set in the heart of the Viking era (860 AD). The tentative title is THE SAND WOLF and I can share a short excerpt below.
Let me know what you think!
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THE SAND WOLF (Excerpt) - (All Rights Reserved)
The force of horsemen that had
been approaching along the beach road came flooding over the dunes and grassy
knolls surmounting the beach, pouring down the paths and trickling into the
lines of riders facing the raiders, thickening the mass of horses and bright spearpoints
until the long line resembled a bristling hedge of edged thorns. A set of men
in white and silver, their horses adorned with feathered plumes, cantered past
the line of lancers to confer with the officer. The lancer displaying the head
gestured and pointed.
They came in a flood of spears
and colour and screaming noise, bright pennants snapping in the smoke-tinged
breeze. They moved at first at a slow trot, the horses stiff-legged in the soft
footing. The pace rapidly shifted to a quick canter, the long line curving
ahead along the surf line, as the horses surged forward unhampered through the firmer
wet sand, saltwater spraying and misting from their hooves as they moved.
“Keep moving. Stay tight.” The
orders were bellowed and, surprisingly, obeyed. The vikingr could be
disciplined when needed. The Norsemen clashed their spears and weapons on their
painted shields, shouting curses at the approaching line of riders. The archers
on the longboat’s oarports drew back their bows and fired, steel-tipped
broadheads slicing into the cavalry as they drew near.
The first men began to die.
An arrow took one of the lead
riders in the throat and he spun off his mount, crashing down into the wet sand
with a choking shout, driven under the hooves of the next line of riders. A
second arrow slammed into a man’s upper chest and spun away, denied by the iron
and leather gambeson reinforced with chainmail. The rider reeled from the blow
but snarled and tightened his grip on the reins, yanking his lance point back
into line as the charge accelerated towards the vikingr raiders.
The shield wall met the charge
with an incoherent scream of rage and a responding clatter of lancepoints on
steel and oak. None of the horses would charge home into the fixed line of the
shieldwall, so the Bláland riders pulled up, turning or slowing in confusion,
throwing the subsequent lines of riders into chaos. Lances shattered on hard
oaken shields, although dozens penetrated, finding weaker niches and points
where men had failed to properly overlap their shields, or where a man’s nerves
had flinched at the last moment.
A rider pitched through the air
off his mount, slamming into and over the shieldwall to be met with angry roars
from the Norsemen behind the barriers. A half-dozen blades plunged downwards
and man died before he was even aware of his state.
The lancers in the front rank
stabbed forward with their long spears, holding the weapons high and angling
downwards, trying to reach over the thin wall of shields to kill and bloody the
men crouching behind their protection. Norse grabbed at the spears and pulled
unbalanced riders from their saddles, to be butchered by the snarling, feral
men of the shieldwall. The leading rank of horsemen were pushed forward by the
milling lines behind them, the sheer weight of the horseflesh splitting the
unbroken shield wall, forcing men backwards in the soft sand, unable to hold.
A horse crashed down, a
spearpoint through its eye, legs thrashing, the fall opening a wide gap in the
Norse line that the nearest riders moved to exploit. A rider, his cloth-bound
helmet dangling loose by its straps, kicked his horse into a quick jump over
the fallen beast, crashing his animal into the Norsemen. He screamed as a vikingr
blade tore into his groin but his quick movement had broken the shieldwall, and
another half-dozen riders spurred into the gap, glistening swords rising and
falling in a bloody frenzy. The screams turned to shouts of triumph as more
riders poured through the gap, lancepoints thrusting and stabbing.
The Bláland riders drove forward into
the mass of men, turning and pivoting their mounts, trying to break the
shieldwall into smaller and smaller groups, each gap allowing more riders in,
turning on the flanks of the line and carving a horrific path through the Norse
ranks. A shouting Norse with a thin red beard, barely visible under the wash of
blood across his face pulled a rider from the saddle and hammered him down into
the sand, shattering his skull with a single axe blow. A long lance tore into
his arm, but the man merely snarled, plucking the weapon free like a man
flicking a fly from his skin, turned, and whipped his long-handled weapon into
the next rider.
An arrow caught a silver and
white-clad Bláland officer in the face, flicking his head back. He gave a sharp
cry, tugging at the projectile with his hands before falling backwards off his
white-plumed horse to vanish in the struggling mass of men. His comrades
shouted in anger, and drove their horses forward, stabbing and cutting at the
Norse shieldwall. A riderless horse, its pale, dappled hide sheeted in blood,
burst from the melee to run snorting down the beach.
“Get to the ships!” The bellowing shout was
enough to break what remained of the Norse discipline. The shield wall seemed
to fall away like a hot wind had blown through its ranks, the line shattering
into a dozen different groups, turning from a tight, ordered wall of killers
into a frantic, panicked mob of men.
They broke.
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