Templar Robert of Hadlow rides again
Templar Assassin, Book 2 of my Mongol Knight trilogy, will be published next week (27/08/26) by Canelo. And so I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you a little about the set-up and plot of my new novel.
It is late summer of 1241 and Robert of Hadlow, an English Templar knight, is on trial for his life in Vienna Castle. He is accused of being a traitor to Christendom because he chose to side with the enemy of all God-fearing folk, the fiendish Tartars, as Europeans call the Mongol nation.
These swift-riding horsemen erupted out of Asia a few years before and, in a series of whirlwind victories, defeated all their opponents in eastern Europe – the Russian dukedoms, the King of Hungary and the massed Polish knights – in battle after battle. Now this terrifying horde of seemingly inhuman, unstoppable, horse-warriors threatens all the kingdoms of Western Europe.
Christendom is, quite frankly, quaking in its boots.
Robert was captured riding with a company of Mongol scouts on the banks of the Danube and imprisoned by the Duke of Austria (see Templar Traitor) in his deepest dungeon. He is asked to give an account of his actions over the past twenty years to the ducal court, and this is how his story unfolds, as a series of flashbacks related by Robert in the dock. If the Englishman is found guilty, he will be summarily executed, and his guilt looks certain to the worthies of the Vienna court who stand in judgment over him.
Robert claims he was sent on a secret mission by his Templar masters twenty years ago to bring the Mongols west to join in the Fifth Crusade, which is was then raging in Egypt and the Holy Land. His goal was to recapture Jerusalem for Christ, with the help of a powerful Mongol army. But his story seems wildly implausible to the perplexed European lords trying him.
If his mission was to bring the Mongols into the war against the Ayyubid sultanate in the Holy Land, the hated Saracen enemy of all good Christians, why has he not done so? Why did he spend so long making a lucrative trade treaty on behalf of a Venetian merchant? Why did he ignore his Templar vows of chastity and father a child with a Mongol beauty? Things look very black for Robert, and his situation is made worse by the presence of an enemy close at hand, who pretends to be his good friend and advisor.
Robert tells the court how he sacked and burned the Genoese trading city of Soldaya in the Crimean peninsula with a Mongol force, destroyed the Russian princes on the Ukrainian steppe at the Kalka River, then rode thousands of miles east to take part in Genghis Khan’s brutal campaign against the Hexi Empire in China (map below). As Robert recounts his bloody adventures in the Mongol army, and his rise through their ranks, he reveals why he had to turn assassin to survive, serve his cause and save his family.
I don’t want to give too much away here but I can promise you that Templar Assassin is a rip-roaring, full-blooded story of love and war, friendship and betrayal, politics and passion, which spans the globe from the endless grasslands of the Eurasian steppe to the burning sands of the Gobi desert and beyond.
And while you can certainly read Templar Assassin as a standalone novel, it is probably a good idea first to read Templar Traitor (Book 1), which happens to be on sale just now as an eBook for only 99p. I hope you enjoy them both!
In other news . . .
I have just published my 12th and final Outlaw Chronicles novel. Robin Hood and the Holy Grail is now available from Amazon as an eBook and paperback. The audio book will hopefully be out soon.
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