Godfrey's Crusade

Godfrey de Bastogne is the son of a duke, raised on stories of honour and chivalry and serving as squire to his cousin. After he defeats a vampire plaguing a nearby town he is knighted into his father's duchy — and when a military crusade is called to aid the Kingdom of Azgald, his mother's homeland in the frozen Nordslands, the young idealistic knight volunteers.

What Godfrey finds in the north is not the war he was promised. High Warlord Alvir of Clan Black Dragon and Nera, the Great Witch of the North, command an army of dark-god worshippers and creatures out of legend, but the crusade's deadliest threat is internal: rival lords, ambitious nobles and suspicious clergy who treat the campaign as an opportunity rather than a duty. Granted a divine vision and a holy blade, Godfrey must interpret what he has been shown and hold a fracturing army together.

He must also protect Madeline. Introduced to the company as a damsel, she is in truth a sorceress, and her magic would make her a target for the very men Godfrey is trying to unite. As a prophecy points toward a dragon — though dragons are believed extinct — Godfrey has to weigh what his oaths are actually worth, before Alvir and Nera loose an ancient evil on Azgald.

Godfrey's Crusade is Mark Howard's debut novel and the first book of The Griffin Legends, and it took a Readers' Favorite Gold Medal for epic fantasy in 2025. It is a coming-of-age story told in a grounded, low-fantasy register across the kingdoms of Lortharain and Azgald: sieges and skirmishes, court intrigue, and a knight learning the distance between the chivalry he was raised on and the war he actually rides into.