When an escaped Northern prisoner reaches Union lines, his tales of abuse at Libby Prison set up the perfect justifications for a daring raid on Richmond. Johannes Wolf has made a crucial mistake. He’s volunteered for a secret raid, dragging along with him his unit of misfits. They fall under the command of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren and set out on a quest for redemption and vengeance that will strike at the head of the Southern Cause. Will they become famous for their glorious raid as knights of the North? Or will they become savages? Or even forgotten corpses?

It is late 1862, and the United States has been ripped apart by civil war for over a year with no end in sight. The war is a distant thought to Johannes Wolf, a young German immigrant with a crippled leg keeping him off the muster lists. Desperately dredging the gutters for recruits, Wolf cons his way into the depleted, demoralized, and poorly run Union army, and is promptly placed in the undesirable F Company of the 13th Michigan Cavalry.

Winter, 1364. Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has travelled to France to secure Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a Castilian boy, Lazaro, who just witnessed the murder of the young queen. It is suspected that the king - along with Velasquita Alcon de Lugo, the beautiful witch who serves him - assassinated his queen. But Lazaro knows that is not the case. With the king in hiding and the French army advancing Castile is on its knees. So Blackstone is ordered to Castile, to defend England's ally from the French.

Only just recovered from his wounds, Captain McGuire must now sail south to the confusion and error of the Boer War. After his return from the war in the Sudan, McGuire had expected to spend time recovering with his family. It was not to be, and his regiment is called urgently to South Africa to counter the threat from the Boers. Disparaged as mere farmers, the Boers were to administer a savage lesson to the British Army.

The first attempt by the Norse explorers to settle in the New World has ended in disaster. With most of their better warriors dead in a battle with the Penobscot tribe, the survivors decide to head home across the wide and empty seas. They would risk a battle with King Harald Finehair. What they do not know is that they have left their Navigator alone and surrounded by enemies.