Love-at-Arms. Being a Narrative Excerpted from the Chronicles of Urbino, During the Dominion of the High and Mighty Messer Guidobaldo da Montefeltro

A condottiero of Urbino is ordered to court a woman he has never met on behalf of a man who is not worth her, and discovers he would rather fight the whole duchy. Sabatini was raised across Europe, spoke five languages, and chose English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; this is his Renaissance Italy - poison, siege engines, and a hero who argues in epigrams.