A legion of elite, monastic fighting men, the Knights Templar were the most fearsome warriors of the Crusades, writing their legend in the gory sands of the Middle East with the blood of their enemies and their own. It was they who took the Holy Land, and they who held it. Answering only to the Pope, they bowed before no king or crown. Returned from the Crusades and stationed in Paris, Brother William has grown disillusioned with the Order and plans to leave it. But as their Paris stronghold is seized by royal troops, William leads a small band of Templars in a desperate escape, fleeing with them into the night. Alternately fighting and running, struggling to understand the world that has turned on them so viciously, they cross paths with a brutalized young prostitute. Open and proud about her sins, she ushers William and his comrades toward dark truths about the city festering around them, about its rulers and the church they've sworn to defend-all in a race to escape that will leave the streets of Paris bloody.