Matthew Harffy · 2022 · overland

The ninth Bernicia Chronicle, and the one that takes Beobrand off his island. AD 652, and the warlord of Ubbanford is ordered to escort a party of pilgrims from Northumbria to Rome - a journey of a thousand miles through Frankia in a year when the Frankish kingdoms are tearing at each other, with a man who is ill, forty-something and in a foul temper.

1. 1
   Bebbanburg

   The fortress on the rock at Bamburgh, seat of the Bernician kings, where Oswiu gives Beobrand the errand he wants least - shepherding holy men south rather than fighting Penda, which he takes as a slight and probably is.

2. 2
   Cantware

   Down the length of Britain to Kent and the Channel ports, the pilgrim road every Northumbrian took to reach the continent - and the last of the country where Beobrand's name means anything at all.

3. 3
   Quentovic

   The great Frankish trading port at the mouth of the Canche, gone now under the dunes - where the pilgrims land and Beobrand discovers that a Bernician warlord abroad is simply a foreigner with a sword.

4. 4
   Frankia

   The Neustrian heartland in the years of the mayors of the palace, where Frankish factions are murdering each other over a boy king - and a party of English pilgrims is exactly the sort of thing that gets used.

5. 5
   Lugdunum

   South down the Rhone corridor through country where the roads are Roman and failing, the towns half-empty, and the forests hold men who take pilgrims for what they are carrying.

6. 6
   The Alps

   The Great St Bernard pass, the road every English pilgrim to Rome used - snow, mules, and a crossing that killed people routinely, undertaken by a man who has been ill for most of the book.

7. 7
   Rome

   The holy city, mostly ruins and a fraction of its old population, with the papal court in the middle of it - and Beobrand, who worships older gods, delivering Christians to a shrine he does not believe in.