In the fourteenth century the English were just beginning to discover their national identity, and one of the strongest elements of this was the overwhelming success in battle of the English bowmen.England′s archers crossed the Channel to lay a country to waste. Thomas of Hookton was one of those archers. When his village is sacked by French raiders, he escapes from his father′s ambition to become a wild youth who delights in the opportunities which war offers - for fighting, for revenge and for friendship.But Thomas is hounded by his conscience. He has made a promise to God to retrieve a relic stolen in the raid from Hookton′s church. The search for the relic leads him into a world where lovers become enemies, enemies become friends and always, somewhere beyond the horizon that is smeared with the smoke of fires set by the rampaging English army, a terrible enemy awaits him.That enemy would harness the power of Christendom′s greatest relic - the grail itself. In this, the first book of a new series, Thomas begins the quest that will lead him through the fields of France, until at last the two armies face each other on a hillside near the village of Crecy.

zlib/no-category/Bernard Cornwell/Harlequin_27149315.azw3

The archer's tale

Harper Collins Books

Mills & Boon

Pavilion

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Grail quest, London, 2000

2020

2009

At dawn on Easter morning 1343, a marauding band of French raiders arrives by boat to ambush the coastal English village of Hookton. To brave young Thomas, the only survivor, the horror of the attack is epitomized in the casual savagery of a particular black-clad knight, whose flag -- three yellow hawks on a blue field -- presides over the bloody affair. As the killers sail away, Thomas vows to avenge the murder of his townspeople and to recapture a holy treasure that the black knight stole from the church.To do this, Thomas of Hookton must first make his way to France; So in 1343 he joins the army of King Edward III as it is about to invade the continent -- the beginning of the Hundred Years War. A preternaturally gifted bowman, Thomas quickly becomes recognized as one of England's most deadly archers in King Edward's march across France. Yet he never stops scanning the horizon for his true enemy's flag.When Thomas saves a young Frenchwoman from a bloodthirsty crowd, her father -- French nobleman Sir Guillaume d'Evecque -- rewards his bravery by joining him in the hunt for the mysterious dark knight and the stolen holy relic. What begins as a search for vengeance will soon prove the beginning of an even higher purpose: the quest for the Holy Grail itself.

Harlequin begins a series of stories set in the middle of the fourteenth century, an age when the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem to have been released over Europe. This first book tells how Thomas of Hookton leaves his native Dorset to fight aginst the French in Brittany and, afterwards, at the battle of Crecy in Picardy. It is a tale of longbows and butchery, especially when England's archers swarm into the Norman city of Caen. And over it all, like a dream, hovers the grail which is the epitome of chivalry and Christian decency, qualities which are in desperately short supply as the armies of France and England struggle at the beginning of what will be known as the Hundred Years War

In the 14th century, dark days fell on the Church as two popes, one in Rome and the other in Avignon, each supported by different political empires, struggled for supremacy. Hearing of a secret which may bring them victory, one side hired a mercenary to retrieve this priceless information. Thomas of Hookton is an English archer. When his village is sacked by raiders, he escapes and becomes an archer in the army of King Edward III. The King and his son are going to France with a great force of knights and men-at-arms, led by great lords. But it is the archers, the common men, who will decide the success or failure of the invasion

The first book in Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling GRAIL QUEST series, in a bright and bold repackage.

2023-12-16