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Lightning lit the early evening sky.

Rain poured down under the flagstones of the old Roman road.

Thunder cracked in rule, drowning out the pounding of the horse's hooves on the pavement.

The rider was soaked to the bone.

His hat, a soggy mess, and his cloak weighed down with hours worth of pounding rain.

He shivered in the late winter glue.

His thighs chafed and his hips aching from the effort of gripping the horse as it galloped down the road.

There was no time to waste here in February of 1454.

His leather saddlebags carried urgent diplomatic dispatches,

vital information for the Duke of Milan,

an experienced backstabber and ex-mercenary named Francesco Sforza.

The dispatches would tell Sforza precisely what Cosimo the Medici,

the de facto ruler of Florence, intended to do.

There was a possibility of peace, an end to decades of costly warfare between Florence, Milan, and Venice.

But the endless double-dealing of Italian politics meant that only reliable information

could make a peace a reality.

If the career failed, if the information in his saddlebags proved to be wrong or out of date,

this road could just as easily hear the footsteps of thousands of well-paid mercenary soldiers

when spring began.

Francesco Sforza, a man who could reputedly bend iron bars with his bare hands

...