Talon

Talon de Gilles, son of a Christian knight of Jerusalem during the time of the Crusades, is only 13 when ferocious Saracens attack his family's caravan and take him captive. Instead of selling him into slavery, or ransoming him, his captors impose a dire fate upon the boy, forcing Talon to become one of them, an Assassin of the Ismaili, the most feared and hated sect in all of Persia, and beyond.

A joyous homecoming turns into a nightmare, as a trained assassin must do the one thing he didn't want to do -become an assassin again. Talon, a young Frank, returns to France with his uncle Phillip, a Templar knight, to be reunited with his family who lost him to the Assassins of Alamut when he was just a boy. When he arrives, he finds a sinister threat hanging like a pall over the joyous reunion. Ruthless enemies, who will stop at nothing to destroy his entire family to achieve their ends, are challenging the inheritance of his father.

Talon is returning to the Holy Land to search for his beloved Ravan, but Fate has other plans for him. When his ship is wrecked off the coast of North Africa in a storm, Talon and Max, his sole surviving companion, escape captivity and the threat of execution, only to risk their lives preventing a massacre. Barely surviving the ambush they interrupted, they find themselves in the care of a wealthy Egyptian family in a region known as the Fayoum.

Imprisoned for brawling in Acre, a coastal city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Talon and his longtime friend Max are freed by an old mentor from the Order of the Templars and offered a new mission in the fabled city of Constantinople. There Talon finds that winning the emperor's favor obligates him to go to war to free Byzantine lands from the Seljuk Turks.

Talon has returned to Acre, the Crusader port, after more than a year in Byzantium. He is now a rich man, the owner of ships and in possession of a license to play the merchant within the Empire to the north. However, riches bring enemies and his past is about to catch up with him as accusations of witchcraft have followed him from Languedoc. An investigation is about to disrupt his life but then everything is changed when he travels to a small fort with Sir Guy de Veres, his Templar mentor.

Talon stared wide-eyed at the devices, awed that they could make such an overwhelming, head-splitting noise. His ears rang and his eyes were burning from the drifting smoke that carried with it an evil stink. “That will show the bastards,” Hsü told him with one of his rare smiles. “The General calls his weapons ‘the Dragon’s breath.’ They certainly stink like it.” Talon, an assassin turned knight turned merchant, is restless. Enticed by tales of lucrative trade, he sets sail for the coasts of Africa and India.