Arrows fly, swords clash, women are bedded, prizes are taken, nobles and churchmen are gulled out of their coins, and the French and Venetians are successfully blamed for things they did not do.

This is another exciting story in Martin Archer’s continuing and action-packed saga about the men of a company of English archers in the medieval world’s very real game of thrones. It is by far the longest and one of the most action-packed and wittiest. Flashman would be proud, Tom Brown appalled, and the men of the marines and the SAS would have felt right at home.

The year is 1219 in Constantinople and the recently widowed English-born empress of the great Latin Empire has donated enough coins to the pope to have been chosen by God to be her young son’s regent. She, in turn, has hired George Courtenay’s Cornwall-based Company of Archers to help her defend her throne against the many kings and princes who are trying to replace her.

This is the story of a real life game of thrones set in the early years when the first of the great heavily armed merchant companies were being formed and Britain was just beginning to grow into a naval and commercial powerhouse that would punch far above its weight in the centuries that followed.