Showing results by author "Christian Cameron" in All Categories

September, 1356. Poitiers. The greatest knights of the age were ready to give battle. On the English side, Edward, the Black Prince, who'd earned his spurs at Crecy. On the French side, the king and his son, the dauphin. With 12,000 knights. And then there is William Gold. A cook's boy - the lowest of the low - who had once been branded as a thief. William dreams of being a knight, but in this savage new world of intrigue, betrayal and greed, first he must learn to survive.

Pisa, May 1364. Sir William Gold is looking forward to a lucrative career as a hired sword in the endless warring between Italy's city states. But when a message comes from the Grand Master of the Hospitaliers, William is forced to leave his dreams of fame and fortune behind him. The Hospitaliers are gathering men for a crusade, and Sir William must join them. Yet before they set out for the holy land, the knights face deadly adversaries much closer to home. In the twisting politics of Italy, no one can be trusted. And there are those who would be pleased to see the crusade fail.

1368. War is coming between France and Spain, and England, and in Italy the pope and the Visconti princes are battling for bloody supremacy. The worst years of Sir William Gold's life are about to begin. Leaving the side of his commander, Sir John Hawkwood, William embarks on a journey to serve the Count of Savoy, finding fame and favour in his service. But when his wife and children are struck down by the plague, William uses the poisoning of the Duke of Clarence as an excuse to escape on a witch hunt across Southern France and embark on a pilgrimage that he'd always pledged to do.

Arimnestos of Plataea has already lived through several lifetimes' worth of adventure, from being a rich man's slave in Ephesus to winning glory at the battle of Marathon against the might of the Persian Empire. But the gods - and the Persians - aren't finished with him yet. As an experienced sea captain - his enemies might say pirate - he has a part to play in the final epic confrontation of the Long War between the Greeks and Persians, the Battle of Salamis.

After the bloody trials of Alexandria, Sir William Gold is readying for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to ease the burden on his soul. He hopes, too, that the Holy City might allow his relationship with Emile, cousin of the Green Count of Savoy, to develop. But the Roman emperor of Constantinople has been taken hostage by an unknown enemy, and the Green Count is vital to the rescue effort. It is up to Sir William to secure his support, but he soon finds that his past, and his relationship with Emile, might have repercussions he had not foreseen.

Political alliances are beginning to rupture. No state is immune: England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Milan, Genoa, Venice, Constantinople.... Every mercenary knight for hundreds of miles must sharpen his sword and prepare for battle. But Sir William Gold has other problems. Just to reach Europe, he must capture its most unassailable fortress. He must also protect his liege-lord, the Green Count, from assassins hell-bent on his demise. The balance of power in the West will change. William Gold must trust to hope, and his men, that he lands on the winning side....

The Chivalry series follows young William Gold, who runs away from London to follow the Black Prince, from the killing fields of France, through life as a routier and criminal, and to redemption with the Knights of Saint John, further disillusion and an eventual career as a professional soldier and knight. Rich in the details of life in the High Middle Ages, the series also deals with modern issues about the role of violence in society, rules of conflict and war, and the price that people pay for using violence.

Troy: city of gold, gatekeeper of the east, haven of the god-born and the lucky, a city destined to last a thousand years. But the Fates have other plans—the Fates, and a woman named Helen. In the shadow of Troy's gates, all must be reborn in the greatest war of the ancient world: slaves and queens, heroes and cowards, seers and kings . . . and these are their stories.

Arimnestos is a farm boy when war breaks out between the citizens of his native Plataea and their overbearing neighbours, Thebes. Standing in the battle line for the first time, alongside his father and brother, he shares in a famous and unlikely victory. But after being knocked unconscious in the melee, he awakes not a hero but a slave. Betrayed by his jealous and cowardly cousin, the freedom he fought for has now vanished, and he becomes the property of a rich citizen.

The heroic story of Arimnestos of Plataea continues - a thrilling historical adventure set amid the epic struggle between Greece and Persia - perfect for fans of the blockbusting film 300. Slave, pirate, husband and lover: Arimnestos of Plataea has been many things in the course of his life. But men remember him best as one of the heroes of the Battle of Marathon, the epic victory that prevented all of Greece from falling under the Persian yoke. But now there is a new Great King on the throne, determined to succeed where his father failed.

Arimnestos of Plataea was one of the heroes of the Battle of Marathon, in which the heroic Greeks halted the invading Persians in their tracks, and fought in the equally celebrated naval battle at Salamis. But even these stunning victories only served to buy the Greeks time, as the Persians gathered a new army, returning with overwhelming force to strike the final killing blow. For the Greeks, divided and outnumbered, there was only one possible strategy: attack. And so, in the blazing summer of 479 BC, Arimnestos took up his spear one final time at the Battle of Plataea.

Arimnestos of Plataea is a man who has seen and done things that most men only dream about. Sold into slavery as a boy, he fought his way to freedom - and then to everlasting fame: standing alongside the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon where the Greeks crushed the invading Persians. Sometimes, however, a man's greatest triumph is followed by his greatest sorrow. Returning to his farm, Arimnestos finds that his wife, Euphoria, has died in childbirth, and in an instant his laurels turn to dust. But the gods are not finished with Arimnestos yet.

Kineas, the Athenian cavalry commander, has come a long way since being dismissed from the army of Alexander and vengefully exiled by his own city. Together, his mercenary force and their Scythian allies have defeated a mighty Macedonian army at the Ford of the River God, and his adopted city of Olbia is now free once more. But his destiny will not allow him to enjoy the fruits of victory for long. Far to the east, at the farthest edge of the Sea of Grass, Alexander is threatening to crush the Scythian hordes once and for all.

As a boy, Alexander dreamed of matching the heroic feats of Achilles. At 18 he led the Macedonian cavalry to a stunning victory against the Greeks. By 25 he had crushed the Persians in three monumental battles and was the master of the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Men began to call him a god. But behind the legend was another, more complex story.

Meet the greatest Greek general you've never heard of: Philopoemen. In his day, a leader as skilled and as dangerous as Hannibal: a ferocious fighter, a superb general, and credited as the inventor of modern 'special operations'. More importantly, he was a brilliant political leader. He commanded Greek forces at the turn of the third century BC, when mighty Rome, fresh from the destruction of Carthage, and Imperial Macedon, the greatest power of the day, chose Greece as their battlefield.

1450s France. A young Englishman, Tom Swan, is kneeling in the dirt, waiting to be killed by the French who have taken him captive. He's not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for ending up in the midst of violence when he didn't mean to.

An action-packed tale of betrayal and revenge set amid the war between Alexander the Great's generals and climaxing in the most spectacular battle of the ancient world. Satyrus and Melitta, twin heirs to a rich kingdom on the Black Sea, become desperate fugitives when their mother, the Scythian warrior-princess Srayanka, is cut down in a savage act of betrayal. Accompanied by their tutor, the Spartan Philokles, they must make a perilous journey west, pursued by ruthless assassins, to find sanctuary with the army of their father's closest friend, Diodorus.

Arimnestos of Plataea grew up wanting to be a bronzesmith, like his father. Then, in the chaos of war, he was taken to a city in the Persian empire and sold as a slave. To win his freedom he had to show that he could fight and kill. Now, to preserve that freedom, he must kill again. For the Persians are coming. A vast army sent by King Darius to put down the rebellious Greeks and burn the city of Athens to the ground. Standing against them on the plain of Marathon is a much smaller force of Athenians, alongside their Plataean allies. To defeat such overwhelming force seems impossible.

They were born in the middle of a battle, into a world at war. And from their first moments of life, twins Satyrus and Melitta were fighting for survival. Their father, a Greek mercenary, was cut down not long after they had taken their first breath; their Scythian mother was cruelly murdered when they were still children.

Glory. Death. Well-born Athenian cavalry officer Kineas fought shoulder to shoulder with Alexander in his epic battles against the Persian hordes. But on his return from the east to his native city, he finds not glory but shame - and exile. With nothing to his name but his military skills, Kineas agrees to lead a band of veterans to the city of Olbia, where the Tyrant is offering good money to train the city's elite cavalry.