The Coburn. Rooster-Men of the Tin Isles. Proud and combative by nature, the coburn are an imposing race. The males, ever protective of their mates, fight to the death if threatened, especially against their own kind. Some, however, pursue a chaste life of chivalry and join the Valiant Spur, an order of coburn knights. Hopeful recruits must replace their drive to breed and covet with a will to serve, allowing only the most resolute to join the ranks of the Knights Errant. Bantam Flyn, hot-headed squire and wielder of the renowned sword Coalspur, yearns to be one of them. When Flyn returns to the ancestral stronghold of the Valiant Spur, he finds the castle under siege from within. Malevolent skin-changers, the gruagach, ruthlessly hunt a secret Flyn would die to keep. The swaggering warrior seeks unlikely allies, reinforcing his sharp steel with the keen mind of the castle's awkward chronicler, Ingelbert Crane, and the incisive tongue of gnome herbalist, Deglan Loamtoes. Fleeing the reach of the gruagach, the trio become ensnared by a dwarven prophet who believes Flyn to be the foretold slayer of a primordial evil known as the Corpse Eater. Venturing into the unforgiving cold of Middangeard, the companions find themselves far from the Tin Isles and close to the history that shaped the very world. Hindered by giants, trolls, bands of berserkers, throngs of restless dead, and haunted by the howling phantoms of his own barbaric past, Flyn must face an ancient horror that threatens not only his life, but the fate of his entire race.