The Executioner's Apprentice

“The job of an executioner is never an easy one, but it is not hard in the ways you might expect it to be. The key to success is for you to put aside the fact of you being a man. Consider yourself a cog, a part of the gallows or the mechanism of the chopping block. You are helping to make the job happen but you yourself, as a person, are not there. You so not feel. You do not think. You are a tool.”

Set in 1141 AD, during the chaotic period of English history known as 'the anarchy,' The Executioner's Apprentice introduces Ulfric of Bayne, a sixteen year old sneak thief who is saved from prison by a mysterious stranger on the condition Ulfric agrees to assist him in his career as official hangman to a powerful baron. But when the two travel to Lincoln in order to dispatch a popular and charismatic rebel, Ulfric's fragile loyalties are tested to the limit and he is soon faced with a split second decision that will have lasting consequences not just for himself but for the entire nation.