Crusader's Torch is the second of Yarbro's novels about Olivia, the Roman woman who becomes the Count Sanct' Germain's truest love. In the year 1189 AD, battle rages on the islands of Crete and Cyprus; Saladin sits in Jerusalem, threatening Antioch and Tyre alike; Richard Couer de Lion rules England and France; and the Pope talks of preaching a new Crusade. Olivia lives in Tyre, but dares not face its occupation by Islamic forces. She is determined to return to the city of her birth..and death: Rome, the Eternal. Accompanied only by young Valence Rainaut, a Knight Hospitaler who much against his will has fallen in love with her, she makes her desperate way by land and sea through a world ruled by Death..and by men whose bloodlust runs stronger than her own.