"All right," Oskar said. "Follow my lead."
Then he placed both hands against the rear of the ruined armored truck.
And pushed.
At first, the dead machine resisted him.
It sat crooked in the mouth of the side street, half sheltered by the western buildings of Thirteenth Street, its six chained wheels locked in mud, blood, and broken stone. Its armor plates were scarred by bullets. Its windows were gone. One door hung open like a broken jaw. The engine was dead, the axle damaged, the whole fra sagging with the weight of impact and fire.
Then Oskar's muscles tightened.
The black armor across his back shifted as the enormous body contained within gathered force. His shoulders bulged against the plates. His arms locked. His boots dug into the cobblestones hard enough that the stones cracked beneath the pressure.
The armored truck groaned.
For one impossible second, it seed as though the street itself was refusing him.
Then the wheels moved.
One chain link scraped forward.
Then another.
Then all six wheels began to roll.
The truck lurched out of the side street and into the open throat of Thirteenth Street, grinding across the cobblestones with a long tallic scream. Oskar stayed low behind it, driving it forward with steady, brutal force, using the wreck as a moving wall between himself and the Russian-held station on the eastern side.
The Eternal Guard squad crouched behind the corner of the western building and watched in stunned silence.
They had seen Oskar perform impossible feats before, but there was still sothing unreal about seeing one man push a dead armored truck into a machine-gun-swept street as if it were a siege shield made for his hands alone.
Farther along the western side of Thirteenth Street, other Black Legion soldiers stared from shattered windows, cellars, broken shopfronts, and alleys. n who had been pinned beneath Russian fire for nearly an hour now watched the Iron Prince move into the open.
Then the Russians saw him.
The western tower of the railway station erupted.
Two MG 08 machine guns opened from sandbagged windows, hamring the truck with long, tearing bursts. Bullets struck the armor in showers of sparks. Rifles joined from the station façade, the office blocks, the windows above the street. The dead truck rattled beneath the bullet storm, but Oskar kept pushing.
Step by step, ter by ter, Oskar forced the armored truck out across Thirteenth Street.
Then, from behind, ca the sound of hoofbeats.
The Eternal Guard sergeant turned his head.
Through the smoke and failing daylight, Shadowmane ca galloping down a street of ruin.
The sun had nearly vanished behind the western roofs, leaving only a dying red sar above the city. Most of the light now ca from fire: burning beams, shattered windows glowing orange, flas licking from broken houses and reflecting across drifting smoke. In that unsteady light, the black stallion looked almost unreal.
His armor caught the fire in dull, bloody flashes. The plates were dented, scraped, and sared with gore. Soot darkened the barding. Blood streaked his chest and legs. Broken chain still clattered beneath his neck. His nostrils flared wide, breath steaming through smoke, and his eyes burned with a savage intelligence that made even the Eternal Guards freeze for a heartbeat.
He did not charge straight into Thirteenth Street.
He broke right.
With terrifying purpose, Shadowmane cut along the western buildings, keeping close to the walls instead of exposing himself to the tower's guns. The movent was too deliberate to be instinct and too precise to be accident.
The Eternal Guards had only a mont to understand.
Then Shadowmane leapt.
The huge armored horse passed over them like a boulder hurled from a catapult, hooves tucked beneath him, black barding flashing in firelight. For one frozen instant, he hung above the squad, a nightmare of muscle, steel, smoke, and fla.
Then he crashed into the burning building beside them.
The wall gave way.
Wood, glass, plaster, fire, and sparks exploded inward around him. The building swallowed the stallion whole. Inside, sothing shattered. Then sothing else. Furniture broke. Beams cracked. Hooves hamred through rooms no horse should ever have entered.
The Eternal Guards stared.
Then the far wall burst open, and Shadowmane ca through the other side like a beast breaking out of hell.
Fire stread from the wreckage behind him. Smoke rolled around his armored body. Sparks clung to his barding. For one terrible mont he stood exposed on Thirteenth Street, south of Oskar's position, black and red and steaming beneath the gunfire.
Then he charged, not toward Oskar, but toward the station's flank.
Toward the western office tower.
The Russians in the tower saw him and faltered.
The machine-gun fire broke for half a second. One gun kept firing at Oskar's truck. The other stuttered, shifted, and tried to turn toward the monstrous horse charging from the south. Riflen shouted over one another. So fired at Oskar. Others fired at Shadowmane. Others simply froze, staring at the black stallion racing toward their flank through smoke and fla.
That mont of confusion and hesitation was all Oskar needed.
He stopped pushing.
The armored truck rolled another half-step on its ruined wheels, then settled crookedly in the middle of the street with a grinding tallic shriek.
Oskar rose behind it.
His left arm ca up.
The grenade launcher built into his gauntlet locked toward the western tower.
Thump.
Thump.
The first grenade punched into the lower machine-gun position. The second flew higher, vanishing through the upper window.
Both detonated and the tower flashed from within.
Brick dust, smoke, sandbags, shattered glass, and torn bodies burst outward into Thirteenth Street. One MG 08 disappeared in the blast. The other fired a wild, climbing burst into the darkening sky before its crew vanished behind fla and dust.
Then the western tower fell silent.
Oskar moved at once.
He ca around the armored truck and charged across the last stretch of open street. Bullets still snapped around him from other windows, sparking from cobblestones and whining through smoke, but the murderous fire from the tower was gone.
Shadowmane struck first.
The stallion slamd into the side of the western office tower through a tall window, hitting it with the full force of armored muscle and speed. Glass and masonry blew inward. The window fra vanished beneath his chest. He crashed into the room beyond, hooves smashing furniture, ribs, desks, and n alike.
Oskar hit the front a heartbeat later.
He drove straight through the shattered lower opening his grenade had torn in the wall, shoulder-first through smoke, broken brick, and hanging dust. His sword ca free as he entered.
For a mont, the tower beca a box of thunder.
Screams burst from within.
Gunfire flashed wildly through the dust.
Sothing heavy struck an interior wall hard enough to crack it.
A Russian soldier flew backward through a window and hit the street below in a loose tumble of limbs.
Then Shadowmane roared from inside the tower, hooves crashed, wood splintered and a section of the second-floor wall burst outward, bricks flying into the street along with the mangled remains of two n.
Seeing it all, the Eternal Guard squad did not wait any longer, their sergeant rose first, carbine in hand, and roared: "For His Highness! Charge!"
The n surged after him.
Black armor broke from the western corner and drove across Thirteenth Street toward the station, carbines firing as they ran.
"For God and Fatherland—until the death!"
The cry cut through the smoke.
Then it spread.
Other Black Legion soldiers along the western side of Thirteenth Street saw the movent. They had seen Oskar push the armored truck into the open. They had seen Shadowmane smash through fire and brick. They had seen the tower's machine guns fall silent.
The impossible had beco an opening.
And the opening had to be taken.
The whole western side of the street erupted.
Carbines cracked from windows. Machine guns intensified from upper floors and shop fronts. Grenades flew across the road and burst among Russian barricades. Snipers shifted to new angles. Assault squads ford in doorways and alleys, n slapping fresh clips into rifles, checking grenade belts, tightening straps, and nodding once to one another before plunging into the street.
One squad crossed behind the Eternal Guard.
Then another.
Then more.
They moved in short, violent rushes: one group firing, another running, another hurling grenades into windows before diving through the smoke. Grenade launchers thumped. A machine gunner ran forward to cover the crossing. Ammunition bearers ca low behind him with clips, belts, and grenade rounds from the supply truck crawling up behind the western buildings.
The Black Legion had montum again.
anwhile Inside the station, the battle collapsed into chaos.
Oskar and Shadowmane were already moving beyond the western tower and into the main station complex, driving toward the eastern tower and the deeper Russian positions. Neither man nor beast paused to call for surrender. In the haze of blood, smoke, and dust, they beca two vast black shapes moving through the building with terrible purpose.
They did not use doors.
They made openings.
Oskar smashed through walls, throwing brick, plaster, and timber into the faces of the defenders beyond. Shadowmane crashed through rooms that had never been built to hold a warhorse, hooves breaking floorboards, desks, benches, ribs, and skulls alike. Smoke filled the interior. n fired blindly. Others scread and stumbled backward as the two black shapes ca through the dust, turning living bodies into broken at and scattering whole rooms before the Eternal Guards even entered.
Behind them, the Eternal Guard ca only to finish what had already been broken.
The remaining defenders began to run.
So fled through corridors.
So threw themselves out of windows.
So poured from the station doors into the street, only to find Black Legion rifles already waiting.
Oskar and Shadowmane burst out after them.
There was no rcy in that mont. The battle for Riga and the war as a whole had ground down whatever gentler thought might have lived in him. Killing had beco a task to be completed: one building, one room, one enemy position at a ti.
And each ti he saw one of his own n wounded or dead, sothing red and hot flared inside his chest, and Shadowmane seed to answer that fury as if the two shared one savage pulse.
Within minutes, the railway station—or what remained of it—belonged to Germany.
And still the battle for Riga dragged on.
Soon enough late evening sank into night. The last natural light died above the rooftops, leaving the city lit by fires, flares, burning buildings, muzzle flashes, and the dull glow of smoke reflecting fla. In sectors without armor, the fighting remained slow and exhausting. One building could take hours. A single staircase could cost n. A cellar might hold out until grenades or fire forced the issue.
But where tanks supported the assault, the advance moved faster.
And where Oskar and Shadowmane ran rampant, it moved faster still.
As the fighting continued, Oskar heard only broken reports from the south about the Russian counteroffensive, pressure all across the line, aircraft recalled, Hindenburg and Ludendorff ordering withdrawals, fires, demolitions, and staged retreat.
It concerned him deeply, but he could not leave Riga.
Not yet.
Besides, he trusted Hindenburg and Ludendorff. They had been left in command for exactly this reason. If the Russians had chosen to attack across the broader front, then his generals would bend the line, bleed them, and preserve the army until he could return.
So Oskar continued.
Riga first.
Everything else after.
Yet as he pushed east through the city, through screams, smoke, and rooms full of dead n, another thought began to take shape beneath his anger.
He needed to begin implenting his real plans for this city and the Baltic region, or else soon there would be nothing left.
He needed locals who could be turned, ard, fed, paid, and taught that Germany was not rely a conqueror, but the future. He needed the Baltic peoples to see a path other than hopeless resistance or annihilation. He had already chosen the symbol for that future: General Paul von Rennenkampf, the defector, the Baltic German, the man who could be shaped into a puppet ruler for a German-protected Baltic order.
Sure Oskar could kill everyone. He knew that. He could turn cities to ruin and clear the land of all traces of civilization, but that was not the victory he wanted.
Everyone deserved one chance to submit before death.
So as darkness settled fully over Riga and the fighting slackened in places while n gathered in buildings to rest, reload, and wait for the next push, Oskar began looking for that chance.
He led a small assault group forward through the city, supported by a tank grinding slowly behind him. Shadowmane followed at his back, black armor dull beneath soot and firelight. Infantry squads moved along both sides of the street, hugging walls, rifles ready, boots crunching over glass, plaster, spent cartridges, shattered icons, and the ruined fragnts of hos that had once held quiet families.
Then Oskar saw movent ahead.
n were running across the street in the distance.
At first he thought they were simply fleeing from another part of the battlefield, driven by the sound of the tank's approach. But they were not running deeper into the city. They were running toward an Orthodox church that stood at a crossroads, its dark do rising above the smoke like a wounded moon.
At the church doors stood an old priest.
He was letting them in.
More than that, he was ordering them to leave their weapons outside.
The fleeing n hesitated at first. Then one threw down his rifle. Another dropped a pistol. A third cast aside an axe and stumbled up the steps. Cartridge pouches, sabers, rifles, and belts clattered onto the stone before the open doors. One soldier looked back, saw the German tank grinding toward him, saw the black-uniford infantry, saw Oskar, saw Shadowmane—and flung his saber aside so hard it skidded across the steps before he vanished inside with the others.
The priest waited until the last man had stumbled inside. Then he looked down the street and saw the Iron Prince himself, towering in dark armor, with the blood-dark shape of Shadowmane behind him, accompanied by a single tank and many dark figures hidden at the sides.
For one mont, the old priest flinched.
Then he crossed himself quickly.
His beard was white. His robes were dark. Beneath the church façade, he looked impossibly small.
But he did not run.
He murmured a prayer, pulled the door shut, and disappeared behind it.
Oskar and his n stood in the street and watched.
Only then as silence settled did Oskar notice the sign above the entrance. The Orthodox Church of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God.
It was quite a long na.
A heavy na.
He looked down at the pile of weapons scattered across the steps: rifles, pistols, sabers, cartridge pouches, axes, belts. By the look of it, the Russians had gone inside unard. Or close enough to it.
For a mont, Oskar felt sothing almost like confusion.
Had they gone in because they believed God would protect them?
Or had the priest demanded that they leave the war outside his door?
Behind him, the tank's hatch opened.
The driver looked out, face blackened with smoke, eyes bright with the blunt confidence of a man who had spent the day solving problems by destroying them.
"Your Highness," he called, "give the word and I'll put a shell through the door. We can blast the whole place open."
Several n around Oskar said nothing.
No one objected.
That disturbed him more than the offer itself.
Once, German soldiers might have hesitated at the thought of firing on a church. But these were New Dawn n now, or near enough. To them, the old sanctities had faded. Orthodoxy, Catholicism, the older Protestant forms—all of them had beco lesser things beneath Oskar's new faith, his new order, and the half-holy myth Germany had built around him.
This was not their church. It was only another building, and the n inside were enemies.
The answer seed simple to them.
Too simple.
Oskar felt the weight of that simplicity and disliked it. It was too fanatical for his taste.
Yet so part of him liked it too.
His n would do whatever he ordered. Without hesitation. Without argunt. Without the old moral brakes that had once made kings negotiate with priests and soldiers lower their eyes before altars.
That obedience made him powerful.
And that was exactly why it had to be controlled.
"No," Oskar said. "Hold your fire."
The tank driver blinked, then nodded.
Oskar kept his eyes on the church doors.
"I would prefer words, if possible. Let us see whether these people have been shown enough of our strength, or whether they require another lesson."
He turned slightly.
"Eternal Guard, with . The rest of you secure the periter. No one enters. No one leaves unless I allow it."
The n moved at once.
Rifles shifted. Squads spread along the street. The tank settled into position with its gun still aid toward the church, silent but ready.
Oskar walked toward the doors.
Shadowmane followed behind him.
And behind them ca twelve heavily ard n of the Eternal Guard.
User Comments
0 comments from readers