The legendary warrior Sigfrid Sigmundson was destroyed by a wronged lover's pain, the faithlessness of royal friends and the will of a god - impelling Gudrun, his grieving widow, to seek isolation in the charcoal burners' forest. Now duty demands she wed again. But the beautiful princess of the Niflungar can neither forgive nor forget a murderous treachery that must be answered in kind - even as she agrees, for the good of her people, to become the bride of the scourge Attila, he who will be Khan of Khans and master of the Sword of War. Yet it is the bitter blood of kinship that poses the greatest threat to a family already poisoned by hatred and guilt - as they await the final, fateful knotting of the twisted destiny they themselves have wound.