Author(s): James Jackson

Fiction

1212. In the streets of Cologne, thousands of children gather. Inspired by preachers and the promise of eternal salvation, they pledge to recapture Jerusalem for Christendom and find the True Cross, the holiest of relics lost to Islam at the Battle of Hattin twenty-five years before. Among the crowd are twelve-year-old Kurt and his older sister Isolda, with others from their Rhineland village, alive with adventure. But what begins a religious quest soon turns into a harrowing nightmare of hardship and danger. On their journey they will encounter allies and friends: Otto, the young noble in search of his vanished knight father, the beautiful Lady Matilda of Acre, Sergeant Hugh, former bodyguard to Richard Coeur de Lion and the mysterious Franciscan Brother John, on a secret mission for the Pope They will need all the help they can muster. Threats lie everywhere: the murderous fanatics of th Assassins sect, the marauding leper knights of St Lazarus, vengeful Cathars, scheming Tenplars. Even within their own band of travellers And in the Holy Land, the Lord of Arsur waits.He has plans, an objective that neither the Crusaders nor the leaders of the Latin kingdom could dare to imagine.