As war in 1680s Europe rages below, BOLESLAW RADOK shepherds and hunts in Poland's High Tatra Mountains. His father like all able bodied men is off at war and has neither trained his son in close combat nor left him a sword. Boleslaw is attacked by a wolf and limps home for bandaging, then barely survives a farm raid that kills his grandfather. Four Polish knights kill the brigands then deliver Bole's fallen father's sword, a dying comrade's last wish. Boleslaw struggles with two options: stay on the farm he cannot defend well or follow his father's path to a life at war. Why are the knights reluctant to train him? The Tatra Eagle is a completed 102,000-word historical novel climaxing in the 1683 Battle of Vienna, seat of the Holy Roman Empire. It is in the same genre as Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes and Ken Follet's Fall of Giants. Doctor Zhivago's epic romantic sweep also comes to mind.