The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty

raised as Islamic warriors. He learned that the bloody heathens, who impaled their enemies’ heads upon stakes as trophies, stopped to pray five times a day. Before they prostrated themselves before God, they washed themselves. He learned that on the battlefield, where there was no water, they rubbed themselves with sandy dirt, cleaning behind their ears and rubbing their hands from the forehead to the nape of their necks, as a cat would lick itself clean with the crook of its paw.
    Heathens
, thought Matthias, leaning to spit over his boot in the stirrup. Yet the barbarians were banging a mighty fist on the front gates of Europe, once again threatening Vienna itself, as they moved ever closer to the heart of civilized Christendom.
    It was Matthias and his Holy Roman armies—led by men like Nadasdy—on the wild Hungarian front that held back the infidels’ armies. His brother, King and Emperor Rudolf II, had given him a perilous honor: commander-in-chief of the Ottoman War.
    Rudolf would like to see my head stuck on the tip of an Ottoman spear, the crows pecking at my eyes
, thought Matthias.
At last he would be rid of me.
    Rudolf feared Matthias, for the king had no legitimate children. He put every obstacle in his younger brother’s way to keep him away from Prague and the throne.
    Matthias looked down at the crushed poppies on the ground and thought of his lovely cousin, Anne of Austria. He swallowed hard, knowing that as long as King Rudolf was alive, Matthias could never ask for her hand, or any other woman’s for that matter.
    It was not enough that the king had begrudged Matthias permission to marry; the warrior archduke was called away from his home in Linz to plan and fight battles, both offensive and defensive, against the encroaching Ottoman armies. He had no life but war, year after year.
    How he wished he could shift this burden to his older brother’s shoulders! But Prague did not concern itself with Hungary and its scorched lands, the wounded, the dead. King Rudolf spent his gold on alchemists, astrologists, and the occult. He washed his hands of Hungary, leaving its defense to Matthias and his allies.
    The king’s only concern with Royal Hungary was taxing the Protestant majority into poverty and ruin as they fought to save their ancient kingdom. If it weren’t for the money that Petr Vok Rozmberk now poured into the Turkish campaign, the Ottomans would have long since taken Moravia, Bohemia, and Vienna.
    Matthias saw a thin wisp of smoke snake up over a hill in the distance. His stallion nickered, no doubt calling to the mares in the Ottoman camp.
    We will attack at dawn
, he thought.
If we circle the encampment and cut off escape into Buda, we stand a chance of halting their progress into Royal Hungary.
The scouts to the north and east would no doubt report other incursions that evening, for the Ottomans were always on the march.
    Matthias reined his horse back toward camp, where he and the commanders would plan their attack.
    But before he spurred his horse, he took a second look at the flower-strewn countryside and the rolling green hills. Someday all this would be part of his kingdom. Someday he would rule as Holy Roman emperor.
    His numerous spies in Prague kept him informed. They came to the Hungarian front to find him, all with the same report, eager for the silver their sharp ears and wagging tongues earned them.
    The king’s son Don Julius is mad! The people of Prague spit and whistle at the rogue when he walks the streets, yet the king does nothing to contain him.
    The Achilles’ heel of his brother Rudolf was his favorite son. Matthias’s informers told sordid tales of scandals in the streets of Prague and Vienna, and in the brothels of both cities, dark stories of the lunatic bastard, who even prostitutes feared.
    Now there were whispers that Rudolf considered incarcerating Don Julius—his own son.
    Know your enemy, Nadasdy had said. And find his weakness.
    One day my young nephew will