Silk and Steel

In 1241 the Mongol armies were without peer and undefeated anywhere. Their leader was Subotai, one of the great generals of all time, the victorious veteran of Genghis Khan's campaigns. Against them stood the flower of Western chivalry: the Holy Roman Emperor, kings, dukes, counts, barons, Teutonic Knights, and Knights of the Temple, brave to the point of foolhardiness as individuals, but undisciplined and unable to fight as a coordinated body.

If The Name of the Rose was the medieval who-done-it, then "Silk and Steel" is the medieval spy story and political thriller.

Fast-paced action moves through the courts and cities of thirteenth-century Europe and the battlefields of the Mongol invasions. Sex, love, violence, treachery, intrigue, stupidity, and heroism are set against a realistic, vivid, and meticulously researched portrait of the pomp and barbarism of medieval Europe; of the military techniques of European and Mongol armies; and of the characters and behavior of kings, knights and ordinary people.