The year is 1606 and the Anglo-Scottish Borderlands have been subject to a brutal and ruthless programme of ethnic cleansing since the union of the crowns under Scottish King James VI three years earlier. John Charleton is the son of a notorious riding family from North Tynedale who must give up the traditional way of life based on plunder, raid, feud and theft that had made the border one of the most dangerous places in Europe for around two hundred years if he is to survive- as well as fighting his own personal demons as the bloody era comes to a prolonged, violent close. This is the end-time of the Reivers, who gave words such as Scott-free, blackmail and bereaved to the English Language, in a poetic and supernatural story set on the Border.