The White Dragon

by Peter Darman Book 2 in the Catalan Chronicles series.

First published 2020

Amazon

4.4(1,086)

Set in Thrace and Gallipoli around 1305, after the rupture between Byzantium and the Catalan Company, cry ‘havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.
After its great victories in Anatolia, the mercenary Catalan Company has been grossly betrayed by its paymasters. Now cornered on the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Byzantine emperor is determined to wipe it out for good.
But the Catalan dogs of war have other ideas, none more so than Luca Baldi, now a hero among his comrades and a young man who thirsts for battle and glory.
The Byzantines have a assembled a great army to crush the Catalan mercenaries and afterwards wage a crusade against the Muslim Turks in Anatolia.
The stage is set for a battle that will decide the fate of Luca Baldi, the Catalan Company and the Byzantine Empire, which will echo down the ages.

The break between the Catalan Company and Byzantium became irreversible after the murder of its commander Roger de Flor in 1305. The surviving Almogavars answered with the so-called Catalan Vengeance, devastating imperial territory in Thrace and defeating forces sent to destroy them. The novel's siege and counterattack therefore unfold within a real collapse of trust between mercenaries and the empire that had invited them east.