Roger de Flor was the medieval world’s most dangerous kind of man: a battlefield genius with no country, no leash, and an army that only obeyed pay and fear. He began in the orbit of the Knights Templar, then slid into the rougher business of ships, profit, and survival in the collapsing Crusader East. By the early 1300s he was leading hardened Catalan and Aragonese fighters—almogavars, veterans of brutal frontier war—into one of history’s strangest employer–employee relationships. The Byzantine