Christopher Buehlman · 2012 · survival

Christopher Buehlman's 2012 medieval horror novel. In 1348, as the Black Death empties France, the disgraced knight Thomas finds an orphan girl, Delphine, in a dead Norman village; convinced her visions of a war in Heaven are real, he escorts her five hundred miles across a ravaged land - through a plague-shut Paris and down the Rhone - to the Papal seat at Avignon and the evil waiting there.

1. 1
   Normandy

   A dead Norman village where the disgraced knight Thomas finds Delphine, an orphan of the plague who says the pestilence is only the opening of a greater war between Heaven and Hell.

2. 2
   Paris

   The company reaches the capital as a walled necropolis - gates shut, the dead organizing into a grim society - and barely escape its horrors to press on south.

3. 3
   Lyon

   Down through a countryside unravelling into nightmare, following the valley of the Rhone toward the seat of the Church, the evil thickening as they near it.

4. 4
   Avignon

   The seat of the plague-era Papacy and journey's end, where Delphine's true nature is revealed and Thomas confronts the demonic power wrestling for the throne of Heaven.