After Apocalypse it will take centuries for Earth to rebuild a civilization--violent, hard centuries in which only the strong and those they protect will survive. In the bloody world of the neovikings, a powerful telepathic tyrant named Kazi is moving west against Europe with an irresistible army of Orcs at his back. The only hope of peace for the rest of the world is for Nils Jarnhann, the Yngling, to infiltrate Kazi's forces and assassinate him.

But neither Nils nor Kazi are aware that men from a star colony established by Earth centuries ago are about to return from the stars--or whose side they will take in the coming clash. . . .