“The Siege Master” Series
The Siege Master Series:
The First Crusade as never seen before.
Through the eyes of a siege lord!
Tom Vetter’s Siege Master series retells the epic story of the First Crusade through the first-person eyewitness recollections of Baron Godric MacEuan, Scottish knight in the army of Count Robert II of Flanders, who fights all the critical battles and witnesses the gripping key events of the First Crusade. At Godric’s side, readers live through the glory and horror of that epic struggle, a conflict of religions and civilizations that still echoes a thousand years later to overshadow our modern world today.
The series begins with Call to Crusade. In 1081 AD, young Godric is torn by tragedy from a life of privilege as a favorite in the court of King Malcolm of Scotland and plunged into slavery as a blacksmith on the estate of his half-brother, Andrew. With courage and wits he frees himself and his friends, becomes a squire of Count Robert of Flanders, and journeys with the count to Jerusalem. Along the way, he battles nomadic Pecheneg raiders and troops of the Islamic governor of Jerusalem. His deeds begin a friendship between Count Robert and Eastern Roman Emperor Alexios Komnenos, who is losing a continual series of invasions by Pechenegs, Turks and Norman invaders from Sicily seeking to seize his dwindling empire. Alexios needs a strong ally, and Count Robert’s Frankish knights are nearly invincible. These events are the catalyst that soon launch the First Crusade.
In The Siege Master’s Song, Godric tells us of his adventures as Sheriff-at-large for King Malcolm III of Scotland. When new King William Rufus of England covets Scottish lands along the border with England, Godric is pulled into the center of their feud. Then Malcolm is murdered by treachery, and Godric becomes his avenger, even though he must flee Scotland to survive. Serving Duke Robert of Normandy as siege master, we learn how Godric gained his reputation as victor in five historic sieges.
In March To Nicaea, Baron Godric answers Pope Urban’s 1095 call to rescue Christendom from relentless Islamic invasion, and leads a contingent of siege engineers in the army of Count Robert II of Flanders to Nicaea, a great stone-walled fortress city that controls the road to the Holy Land, recently captured by Islamic Seljuk Turks from Eastern Roman Emperor Alexios Komnenos. No Crusader has ever confronted such a tough siege before. Can the city be taken? Or will the huge approaching army of Seljuks crush the Crusaders outside its walls, just like every other army they faced?
Two more volumes will follow:
In Crisis At Antioch, the Crusaders face horrific new enemies: not only the Islamite army holding the greatest fortress in the Holy Land, but also thirst, starvation and disease. Compared to the last three, the great army of Kerbogha of Mosul is child’s play. But death is everywhere, and it is the Crusaders who are dying by the thousands. Can the city be taken and held before Kerbogha arrives to crush them against Antioch’s great walls? Only God knows!
In Triumph in Jerusalem, the Crusader’s face their greatest challenge: a great stone-walled fortress city built on rock, unapproachable from the east, and filled with Islamic warriors determined to fight to the death to hold it. Jerusalem will never fall without Godric’s great engines, the siege tower and the counterweight trebuchet. But to build those, Godric must have wood, and in that desert land, wood is even harder to obtain than water! Did they fight so hard and come through so much only to fail now? Or can Godric find a way? The key to Jerusalem is wood!
Join Godric and his companions – Baron Jean de Bethencourt, Father Anselm, Sir Hamish and all the rest – as they battle unholy men, starvation, disease and death across thousands of miles of inhospitable land to drive back the Islamites who invade and seize Christian lands and forcibly convert, enslave, extort or massacre all the Christians in them. Theirs is a holy war – a counter-invasion by self-funded Christian volunteers fighting to save all Christendom from the unrelenting global domination that Islam seeks. And they do it because…
“Deus lo vult! God wills it!”
The books are fiction …
but the story is true!
Read an excerpt: