King's swordsman Captain Buridan, hero of the Flanders campaign, returns to Paris to find it in a grip of fear -a "vampire/witch" in the "Tower of Sin" is luring young men to their deaths by offering them a night of sexual ecstasy followed by savage slaughter. Buridan is holding secrets of his own and his battle to save France from an evil Chancellor, an impotent King and a lascivious, wanton Queen make the battlefields of war seem like child's play.