The great powers, Spain and France, embroiled in their own internal problems, have lent only token aid to the island’s defense. Now, as the Ottoman tide is ready to break on Malta, Jean de Valette, Grand Master of the Knights of St. A dozen of so years later, Tannhauser and a pair of friends, English soldier Bors of Carlisle and Sabato Svi, Jewish trader, have established themselves as important arms and opium dealers in Messina, Sicily. Every five years, the Turks would take Christian boys, convert them, and raise them up to be ferocious, elite soldiers, known as the Janissaries.įor thirteen years, Tannhauser served as a true and loyal soldier of the sultan, but eventually he leaves and returns to the West. At the age of 12, Mattias’ mother and sister are killed by Ottoman militia and he is taken captive. Into it, Willocks introduces the rogue Mattias Tannhauser, son of a Saxon blacksmith from Transylvania. That noble genre continues today in Tim Willocks’ insanely violent The Religion: Vol 1 of the Tannhauser Trilogy (2006), for one, set in the cauldron of the Great Siege of Malta. One of sword & sorcery’s primary inspirations is historical adventure, like that of writers Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy.
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