Protectors of the Black Prince is the first book in an epic trilogy about the heretofore unknown teenager, Michael Cotswain, England’s greatest longbowman, the heroic focus of an original, unflinchingly realistic and action-packed novel series about an astounding, four-thousand-mile overland journey from Damascus into the unknown, unexplored jungles of Central Africa, the dark continent of Africana, as it was known in 1191. Michael, his lord and knight, Godfrey of Hampstead, and Baints, the sergeant of their company of champion longbowmen, all fall victim to royal intrigue in the Holy Land and are betrayed, captured, sentenced to death, and taken to Muslim held Damascus for execution. A brilliant African prince, Mantuka, a pigmy and interpreter for his people, enslaved twenty years before - who managed to rise to a position of physician to the Muslim elite - secretly offers them escape if they vow to help him return to his distant jungle kingdom and claim his throne. He offers the added reward if they succeed of "The Relics of the True Cross", stolen by him from Saladin’s personal treasury, captured from the Crusader army at the Battle of Hattin four years earlier.