BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2012
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Maps © John Gilkes 2012
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
FIRST EDITION
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Source ISBN: 9780007331840
Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007331888
Version: 2019-01-02
is for my grandson,
Oscar Cornwell,
with love.
‘The English are riding, no-one knows where.’
Warning sent in fourteenth-century France, quoted inA Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe
Contents
The Sharpe Series (in chronological order)
PROLOGUE
Carcassonne
He was late.
Now it was dark and he had no lantern, but the city’s flames gave a lurid glow that reached deep into the church and gave just enough light to show the stone slabs in the deep crypt where the man struck at the floor with an iron crow.
He was attacking a stone incised with a crest that showed a goblet wreathed by a buckled belt