Two six-year-old girls of noble families are thrown (literally) together in the midst of the Viking attacks in York England in the late ninth century. Their attachment grows stronger as the years go by, but at the age of eighteen they are forced apart by their parents and each must confront a father's pick for a marriage partner. The two girls, Leova and Hilda, deal with that order in separate ways; each must escape either by crossing dangerous moorland or deserting one's noble family. Leova is forced into one marriage and then into a second one, but she runs away. Hilda must suffer nine months of penance for a crime instigated by reading manuscripts. The two women eventually rediscover one another under unusual circumstances, but must still suffer vengeance, betrayal, and confrontation before their story ends.