Iron Crescent

Prioritize family or defense of country? The fourth book of the adventures of Captain Bathory, who finds his lost son, rescues a young noblewoman and, despite his waning strength, resolves to defend not only his homeland - Upper Hungary - but the whole Christian world from the conquering Turks. The year is 1663, the Turkish army is at Ostrihomi and is about to conquer Vienna. In his way stands the Slovak fortress Újvár (Nové Zámky), whose commanders must defend it at all costs. It is not just the conquest of more territory by Ottoman invaders, but the conquest of the Christian world. Before the outbreak of another war, Captain Bathory finally finds his son, who has been surviving among robbers and rapists after the devastation of the family mansion. The aging father, with the help of the Cossack Voronin, rescues not only his son Michael, but also the kidnapped landlady Juliana, during an ambush by a gang of other outcasts. However, his son does not fall around his neck at first, and Bathory apologizes: "You knew me as a man who cared little for his family. But that pompous, self-absorbed man with his reputation is gone. Too much. It's like he died." Pride may have left the captain, but the choice of whether to put family or fatherhood first returns and drives him into the fury of war.