
A battle‑scarred Englishman named Godwin finds himself stranded in a merciless desert, rescued by three unlikely companions just as a dying messenger delivers a desperate warning. A Saracen warlord’s sorcerer, Mufaddal al‑Mamun, is preparing a ship laden with plague‑carrying rats that could devastate England and halt the Crusades forever. The desert heat, ancient curses, and the faint hope of salvation set the stage for a perilous quest.
Joined by a quick‑witted maiden and a grizzled veteran, Godwin must race against time to locate the cursed vessel and thwart the dark magic that fuels it. Their journey will lead them across hostile lands, into secretive enclaves, and into confrontations where steel meets sorcery. As the fate of a nation hangs in the balance, the group’s courage and cunning become the only weapons against an invisible, deadly enemy.
Language
en
Duration
~2 hours (141K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2021-09-01
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
1919–1980
A versatile mid-20th-century American writer, he moved easily from pulp-era science fiction to westerns, historical novels, and movie tie-ins. Many of his best-known speculative stories appeared under the pen name Geoff St. Reynard.
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