It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to the north. Fadlan belatedly discovers that his job is to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings-but just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea....
Based on Ibn Fadlan's manuscript, relating his experiences with the Northmen in A. D. 922; this is a fictionalized version, with some alterations, of his Risalah-"the earliest known eyewitness account of Viking life and society."