It all started on a terrible spring night in 1540 AD in a small Carpathian village. It just so happened that the thirteen-year-old son of a Saxon blacksmith tempered his first blade in his life in the blood of a Saracen warrior who killed his little sister. Having gone through the difficult paths of war, fighting either under the green banner of Muslims or under the banners of the Crusaders, the matured Matthias Tannhäuser comes to the conclusion that war is not the most important thing in a person’s life. But fate has a different plan. Having followed the mystery of the disappearance of the son of the Countess of La Penotier, he finds himself on the island of Malta at the very epicenter of the battle between the Knights Hospitaller and detachments of Turkish invaders. Accustomed to military everyday life, Mathias does not yet know that he should not be afraid of the enemy’s sword, but of that secret and terrible force that invisibly controls the ship of the bloody war.