The Unwanted Prince of Prussia Chapter 299: The Annexation of Salacgrīva

The rain began to fade as Oskar rode north from Katlapi, and above him the clouds slowly tore apart, allowing pale daylight to spill through in long silver shafts. The road ahead shone wet beneath the morning, first as dirt and mud, then gradually as old cobblestone where the countryside began to give way to the outer edges of Salacgrīva.

Fields stretched wide on either side, washed clean by rain, with puddles glittering in the low ground and distant roofs catching the weak light. Beyond them, the coastal town waited beneath the grey sky, quiet and tense, as if holding its breath before a blow.

Mixed with the soft patter of the last rain ca the heavier sound of Shadowmane's hooves. The black stallion moved at a steady gallop, splashing through mud and water as if the road had been made for his amusent. He wore no saddle, no reins, no armor, and no iron barding. Nothing human held him, and nothing human truly guided him. He moved because Oskar moved, and because the two of them understood each other in ways that did not require leather straps or spoken commands.

To anyone watching from a window, Shadowmane would not have looked like a horse. He would have looked like sothing that had escaped from an older hell: huge, black, intelligent, wet with rain, scarred from battle, his mane hanging wild against his neck, his eyes too aware and too cruelly alive. He snorted at the road, at the town, at the world itself, as if all of it existed only to be crossed.

Oskar sat upon his bare back, almost naked but for torn white trousers stained with mud and old blood. The ruined black sword lay strapped across his back, its cracked surface rising over his shoulder like a slab of night. In another life, he might have laughed at the sight of himself: Crown Prince of Germany, conqueror of Riga, rider of armies, now entering the Baltics like so barbarian king from a half-rembered saga.

At the mont, he was too tired to laugh.

He wanted food. That thought annoyed him more than it should have. Not sleep, not rest, not a doctor, not a council chamber, not a bath—food. at, bread, sothing warm if God felt generous. He had spoken too much, fought too much, killed too much, promised too much. Every village demanded words from him as if words did not also cost blood. Every stop forced him to beco prince, prophet, judge, executioner, lawgiver, recruiter, and miracle all at once.

For a short while, the quiet road nearly lulled him. The rhythm of Shadowmane's movent, the fading rain, the open fields, the pale light on wet stone—all of it pressed at his exhaustion until his eyelids grew heavy. For one dangerous mont, the peacefulness of the morning almost pulled him toward sleep.

Then the road curved toward town, and Oskar felt the world change.

He sensed it before he truly saw it: the tightening of breath behind walls, the shift of weight in mud, fingers closing around rifle stocks, fear trying to beco silence. His eyes opened fully. A curtain twitched and did not quite settle back into place. A rifle barrel withdrew too slowly from a second-floor window. A man behind a cart forgot to hide the edge of his boot. Sowhere ahead, tal scraped against stone. Cloth whispered against wet timber. A hamr was pulled back too quickly. A prayer broke off halfway through.

Russians.

They were not fools. They had chosen the approach well enough: n behind corners, n in windows, n crouched behind carts, troughs, fences, doorfras, and low stone walls. Militia stood mixed with Russian regulars, and among them were a few Guardsn still recognizable even beneath mud and fear. They had not simply gathered in the road to die. They had built a nervous little kill-box at the edge of town, as proper an ambush as frightened n could make under the shadow of a legend.

Then Oskar saw the gun.

A field howitzer was being dragged into the middle of the road ahead of him, a 122mm M1910, respectable enough to break a house, a column, a barricade, or a man if the crew had nerve and knew what it was doing. Its wheels cut through mud as the crew hauled it into position. One soldier slipped and nearly fell beneath the wheel. Another dropped a shell into the muck and swore aloud. An officer barked in Russian for them to hurry, while two n strained at the trail and swung the barrel toward the road.

Oskar smiled.

There it was.

A challenger.

Shadowmane's ears angled forward. The stallion had seen it too.

"Easy," Oskar murmured.

Shadowmane snorted. It did not sound like agreent. It sounded like contempt.

Oskar heard prayers then, dozens of them, not clearly from one mouth but from many. Crosses kissed. Saints invoked. The Mother of God whispered to under trembling breath. Soone behind a wall muttered, "It is him." Another asked, "Are the stories true?" A third, sowhere in the upper floor of a house, whispered that no man could survive a shell.

Oskar did not slow. Shadowmane kept galloping toward the gun.

The range closed. Less than a kiloter. Eight hundred ters. The howitzer's barrel rose, and Oskar watched the angle with faint amusent.

Too high.

They were trying to hit him directly. One man. One horse. Moving. Close. Under panic. With a howitzer.

Brave, perhaps. Foolish under pressure, certainly.

So Oskar began to whistle.

The sound carried lightly through the wet morning, soft and careless, almost cheerful. At roughly seven hundred ters, the gun fired. The blast split the road; smoke burst around the howitzer, and the shell tore through the air with a heavy shriek, punching past with enough force to make the rain tremble.

Oskar did not move.

The shell passed over his head by nearly a ter and scread into the field behind him, where it exploded in a violent bloom of earth, water, and smoke, destroying one unfortunate scarecrow that had been standing with admirable neutrality until that mont.

Oskar's ears rang, yet he rely shrugged.

Shadowmane snorted with such clear disdain that Oskar almost did laugh.

Ahead, the artillery crew froze. For one second, no one reloaded, no one shouted, no one even breathed properly. Then the officer began screaming again, and the n scrambled. Hands fumbled. The dropped shell had to be wiped, lifted, cursed over. Soone ramd too quickly and slipped. Soone else shouted that the prince was still coming.

By the ti they fired the second shot, Oskar was much closer. This shell ca lower, and he dipped his head slightly as it passed, more from courtesy than fear. The round flew off to his left and burst in another field, throwing mud and torn grass into the air.

Still he ca.

The crew no longer looked like soldiers. They looked like n who had fired twice at a nightmare and discovered the nightmare was bored.

Oskar could have taken the gun then. He could have pushed Shadowmane into a charge, smashed through the crew, broken the weapon, torn the officer apart, and turned the road red in less than half a minute. But he did not, instead the infantry moved first.

Soldiers spilled from both sides of the road, forming a loose and frightened line before him. Rifles ca up. Bayonets shook. Boots splashed through puddles. More n erged from windows and alleys, and others slipped out behind him, trying to close the space without quite admitting to themselves that they were surrounding him. There were perhaps a hundred n near him now, with more hidden close enough to hear their own blood in their ears.

At their front stood a hard-faced older officer with a pistol in his hand. His mouth opened as though he had prepared a brave command, sothing proper, sothing imperial, sothing worthy of the uniform.

Then Oskar brought Shadowmane to a halt before him.

The officer looked up.

And up.

The words waiting in his throat died there.

Oskar looked down from Shadowmane's back, pale eyes half-lidded, wet blond hair clinging to his face and neck. His body was bare to the rain, scarred and massive, streaked with blood that had dried brown and red across muscle. The sword over his back seed too large for any ordinary man to carry, and the black stallion beneath him breathed like a furnace given flesh.

Then Oskar spoke in clear Russian, his voice low and rough.

"Who dares stand before the Iron Prince and his black steed?"

The officer stepped back before he could stop himself. So did the n behind him.

That was the mont when the ambush truly died. Not because they lacked weapons, and not because they lacked numbers, but because every man present felt the sa thing at once: the cold animal certainty that if they pulled the trigger and failed to kill him in the first breath, they would all die in the second.

It was not reason or cowardice. It was the body recognizing a predator.

Oskar's gaze moved over the line, as he then said to them, "Step aside."

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then the artilleryn moved first. One by one, they dragged themselves away from the gun. The infantry followed. Rifles remained raised, but the line opened all the sa. The officer backed away with his pistol still in one hand and the other clutching the cross beneath his shirt.

They had expected to die here. That was the strange thing. Every one of them had likely imagined himself firing bravely at the monster from the rumors, dying for Tsar and Russia beneath the hooves of the black horse. It was easy to die in imagination. It was easy to picture courage when the enemy was still only a story.

Reality was different.

Oskar had not charged. He had not roared. He had not raised his sword. He had simply told them to move.

And because none of them truly wished to die, they moved.

So a strange procession entered Salacgrīva. Oskar rode at the front, calm and bare-backed upon Shadowmane. Behind him followed the Russian soldiers at a nervous distance, rifles still in their hands but no longer quite aid. The artillery crew, desperate not to abandon their pride entirely, dragged the howitzer after them with shaking hands, as if they might still use it once they reached the square, as if so better angle or braver mont waited for them there.

Oskar heard them dragging it.

He did not bother to look back.

As they moved deeper into town, faces appeared. A curtain shifted. A door cracked open. A woman leaned out from an upper window and vanished when Oskar's gaze passed over her. Children peeked from behind shutters. n erged from alleys, not brave enough to block the road but too curious to hide. Sowhere a dog barked once, then whimpered into silence when Shadowmane turned his head.

By the ti Oskar reached the town square, Salacgrīva was watching.

He stopped before the town hall, a handso building set above the square on stone steps, its pillars wet with rain and its windows dark. Around it spread the cobblestone square, slick and shining beneath the fading storm. Soldiers gathered behind him in a rough half-ring. The artillery crew managed, with great effort and no courage, to drag the howitzer into the far edge of the square. They turned it slightly, as if still pretending they might fire.

Then Shadowmane looked at them.

The stallion did not rear, did not scream, did not move toward them. He rely turned his black head and stared.

The crew stopped touching the gun.

Civilians kept farther back, packed beneath awnings, along walls, and in doorways. So had fled upstairs. Others had co down into the square because fear and fascination were stronger than sense. They stared at Oskar as if at a figure out of so half-pagan, half-Christian nightmare: a blood-marked prince on a horse from hell, claiming their town beneath a clearing sky.

Oskar turned Shadowmane slowly so that all could see him. Then he spoke in Russian.

"Fear not."

No one looked reassured.

Oskar smiled faintly.

"I have not co here to massacre you. Your lives are spared, if you are wise enough to keep them."

That seed to convince them more.

He let the silence settle.

"All within this town and the lands around it now have a choice. Join the Northern Baltic Kingdom and co under my protection, under the rule of King Paul von Rennenkampf in Riga, and under the law I carry north from that city."

He looked across the square.

"Or flee. Leave this place. Take what you can carry and run for your lives."

A few people shifted, but no one spoke.

"And if you believe my claim unjust," Oskar continued, "if any man here believes my words false, if any among you thinks he has the courage to deny —then step forward."

The soldiers stared. The civilians held their breath. The artillery crew looked at their gun and then away from it.

"Alone or together," Oskar said. "It makes no difference. Co forward, face , and prove wrong."

No one moved.

Before them sat the legendary Iron Prince himself, alone on his black horse, claiming their town as if he had already conquered it. He was outnumbered. Surrounded. Half-naked, without armor, without an army standing at his back. By all sane asures, he should have looked vulnerable.

Yet none of that seed to matter.

Then a voice roared from the crowd.

"You butcher!"

n were shoved aside as a large, brawny officer forced his way forward. His uniform was wet and muddied, but the rank on his shoulders still showed clearly enough. He had the thick neck and heavy face of a man accustod to command, and rage burned in him so fiercely that for a mont it overca fear. In his hands he carried a rifle.

"I am Lieutenant General Andrei Ugryumov of the First Infantry Division!" he shouted. "I will not let you deceive my n with your poison! Die, butcher!"

Shadowmane scread.

The sound tore through the square like sothing dragged out of hell. Horses nearby reared against their reins. A child began crying. Several soldiers flinched as if the scream had passed through their bones.

Oskar moved at the sa instant.

He leapt from Shadowmane's back and struck the cobblestones with a heavy thump, bare feet landing in a splash of rainwater. The force of his landing made the nearest soldiers stumble back. Ugryumov fired.

Oskar tilted his head aside.

The shot passed where his skull had been a heartbeat earlier.

Then he lunged.

It was not a wild charge, not so frenzied rush of a madman eager for blood. It was short, brutal, and precise, almost like a boxer closing distance: one great step, then another, and suddenly the space between them vanished.

Oskar seized the rifle by the barrel. Ugryumov tried to pull it back, but Oskar bent it upward with one hand and then wood cracked, tal shrieked. The barrel twisted like soft wire beneath his grip. The general's face went white, and for one frozen heartbeat the entire square saw the difference between a strong man and sothing beyond one.

Then Oskar grabbed Ugryumov by the front of his coat and threw him into the air.

The lieutenant general rose like a man fired from a cannon. dals tore loose from his uniform and scattered across the cobblestones below. His scream rose with him, high and terrified like a pig, stripped of all rank and dignity.

n stumbled backward. Won scread. A soldier fell onto his backside and dropped his rifle. Most simply stared as the general flew nearly twenty ters into the air and then began to fall.

Oskar did not look up at once, instead he looked around at the soldiers, at every face in the square. And as if understanding his silent aning, one by one weapons lowered.

Then one rifle struck the cobblestones, then another, then many. Only then did Oskar step beneath the falling general.

He caught Ugryumov at the last instant.

Not gently. He caught him like a man catching a sack thrown from a roof. Then he turned with the force, spinning once to break the fall's montum, and hurled the general across the square.

Ugryumov hit the wet stones, rolled several tis, and ca to rest near the edge of the crowd, alive but shaking.

For several seconds, he could not speak.

When his senses returned enough for him to understand that he still lived, he looked back toward Oskar. The anger was gone. Only terror remained.

Oskar stood in the center of the square, bare feet planted on the wet cobblestones, rainwater dripping from his hair, blood drying on his chest.

Lieutenant General Andrei Ugryumov, who monts earlier had roared defiance before his n, found himself utterly lost for words.

Oskar looked down at him for a mont.

Then he turned away.

"Now," he said, voice calm again, "we can speak."

No one dared answer.

Oskar walked back to the town hall steps and sat down as if the entire affair had been a minor interruption. The gesture unsettled the square almost more than the violence itself. He sat there barefoot and blood-marked, a prince in rags with a ruined sword across his back, and looked over the town like a tired judge.

"Bring food," he ordered. "at, bread, water. Quickly."

People stared.

Oskar's eyes moved to a clerk standing pale near the edge of the crowd.

"I have not rested or eaten properly for several days," he said. "I am hungry."

That moved them.

A few townspeople scattered at once. So ran into houses. Others vanished into shops and kitchens. A woman brought bread first, hands trembling so badly that she nearly dropped the basket. Then ca smoked fish, cheese, boiled eggs, and finally a roasted chicken carried on a wooden platter by a man who looked as if he expected to be killed for serving it too slowly.

Oskar took the chicken, tore off a leg, and began eating.

He did not eat delicately.

He ate like a starving wolf that had learned table manners only for the sake of frightening people less. at vanished between his teeth. Bones cracked. Grease ran over his fingers, mixing with rainwater and old blood.

Shadowmane lowered his head beside the steps and sniffed at the offerings with obvious disdain until a butcher, either brave or foolish, brought out a bloody joint of beef still hanging from a hook. The stallion turned his black head toward it, eyes gleaming with too much intelligence, then bit down. Bone cracked between his teeth.

The square went silent again.

Horses did not eat at, but whatever Shadowmane was, he had long ago ceased to be rely a horse. He chewed with slow, monstrous satisfaction, rain running along his neck, while Oskar sat above the square and spoke.

He did not repeat every word he had spoken in Katlapi. He did not need to. The law would be read later. Paper would do what mory could not. Clerks would explain. Captain Carter would make sure the machinery began. But the town needed the shape of the thing first, and Oskar gave it to them while eating from the chicken in his hand.

He told them that Salacgrīva now stood at a gate between two futures.

One future was Russia: retreating officials, broken armies, desperate orders, more sons taken, more hunger, more rumors, more fear, more war.

The other was his order, The New Northern Baltic Kingdoms order.

A kingdom under King Paul von Rennenkampf in Riga Castle, protected by Germany, bound by law, and built not upon old divisions but upon service, language, faith, and loyalty. Its people would not instantly beco citizens. Not yet. They would begin as protected residents, guests beneath the new roof. They would have peace if they obeyed, work if they offered their hands, food if they accepted order, and a path upward if they served.

"Understand this clearly," Oskar said, looking across the square. "You are not being asked to love today. Love is too expensive a thing to demand at sword point. You are being asked to choose whether you will live under the law I offer, leave peacefully, or stand against ."

He tore another piece of at free.

"If you stay, you obey the charter. If you serve, you rise. If you bleed for the kingdom, you rise faster. If you refuse peacefully, you may go. If you take up arms after hearing my offer, you die."

A murmur moved through the square, soft and fearful.

Oskar let it live for a mont, then continued.

He spoke of mayors and councils, elected by town and village. He spoke of taxes collected openly and recorded so the poor no longer suffered beneath invisible hands. He spoke of estates remaining in private hands, but no longer standing above the town like little kingdoms. He spoke of courts where rich n and poor n could both be nad, accused, judged, and punished. He spoke of German schools, because a people divided by ten tongues could not beco one state unless one language carried law, science, dicine, engineering, and command.

That drew anger from so faces.

He saw it.

"Your mother tongue remains yours," he said. "Your songs remain yours. Your childhood prayers remain yours. No soldier of mine will strike a woman for singing to her child in Latvian, Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Estonian, Livonian, or any other tongue. But the state will speak German. The courts will speak German. The army will speak German. Higher schools will speak German. Learn it, and the road upward opens. Refuse it, and do not complain that you cannot climb."

Then he spoke of religion.

Lutheran, Orthodox, Catholic, Reford, Old Believer—loyal Christians would not be hunted for their crosses. Their churches would remain. Their clergy would register. Their sermons would comfort the faithful and teach obedience to law. But no altar would be allowed to beco a Russian recruiting station. No pulpit would preach ethnic hatred or rebellion and still call itself holy.

Above them, slowly but certainly, the Church of the New Dawn would rise.

At that, so crossed themselves. Others looked at him with open fear.

Oskar did not soften it. He was too tired to pretend conquest was a polite invitation.

From the edge of the crowd, several Polish refugees pushed forward. Their clothes were poor, their faces hollow from the road. One man spoke for them, voice rough with anger and grief.

"You take our lands," he said. "You drive n from their hos. Now you tell us we are no longer Poles? That we must beco whatever you na us?"

The people around him tried to pull him back, but Oskar lifted one hand.

"Let him speak."

The man trembled, but held his ground.

Oskar stared at him for a long mont, then answered.

"Your blood remains yours. Your dead remain yours. Your songs, your mories, your mother's tongue, your childhood prayers—those are not things I can strip from you with a decree."

The Pole's jaw tightened.

"What I demand is not that you forget where you ca from," Oskar said. "I demand that you choose where you are going."

The square fell silent again.

Oskar stood then, still holding the half-eaten chicken in one hand, absurd and terrible all at once.

"I am sick of small nas," he said. "Sick of tribe against tribe. Village against village. Church against church. Language against language. Nation against nation. I am sick of n killing sons over lines on maps and graves dug by grandfathers. I am sick of each people teaching its children that another people is the reason they suffer."

His voice deepened.

"You think I want rely to make you German? No. German is a tool. German is the ladder. German is the language by which this new state will work. But my final dream is greater than Germany, greater than the Baltics, greater than Russia, greater than Poland, greater than every little flag n cling to while burying their sons beneath it."

He looked over them, and the strange fire in his eyes made even the disard soldiers listen.

"One day, if God allows to live long enough, n will not stand as tribes gnawing at one another in the mud. They will stand as mankind. People of this earth. One family beneath heaven. Looking outward together instead of inward with knives."

So stared at him as if he were mad. Others as if they had heard scripture.

Oskar saw both and accepted both.

"I know how absurd that sounds," he said. "I know many of you cannot imagine it. I know so of you wonder who I am to speak such things."

Then, a broken voice ca from near the fountain.

Ugryumov had managed to push himself upright. His body still trembled from the throw, but so last splinter of pride remained in him.

"By what authority do you do this?" he rasped. "What law gives you the right? You are only the Crown Prince of Germany, are you not?"

Oskar looked at him almost casually, as if the question amused him.

"I do this by my own authority, of course."

The square went still.

He touched two fingers to his bare chest.

"Just look at , and look well. Do you think this body that is stronger than the bodies of other n, and this mind that carries my will of iron is the makings of this earth? No I tell you, it is God that set fire in my heart and sent into this age, and since that hour mortal ans have failed to silence , and armies have broken themselves against my path."

He let the words hang over them.

"I need no law written by frightened mortal n to tell what I may do. For I have power enough to make my words real, and so I will make them real by the will of God. That is my authority."

No one answered. Not the soldiers. Not the townspeople. Not Ugryumov.

Oskar's gaze cooled.

"You may question with respect. You may bring grievances, fears, complaints, and warnings. I am not afraid of words. But act against , betray the order after accepting its protection, or mistake rcy for weakness, and you will die."

He looked across the square.

"There will be no halfway. You will join the new order, or you will stand against it. Choose carefully."

Ugryumov looked away first, and the crowd felt the shift in the air.

After that, Salacgrīva began to yield.

Not with cheers. Not with love. But with the slow, frightened understanding that the old power had fled, and the new one sat barefoot on the town hall steps, tearing at from bone and speaking law like prophecy.

By the ti Oskar's n arrived, the town had lost whatever will to resist remained. The Eternal Guards secured the town hall and the main streets. Rifles were gathered, pistols surrendered, and the howitzer was dragged aside under guard. Red Turban legionaries spread through the streets, reading Oskar's law aloud, registering households, marking those who wished to stay, and driving out those foolish enough to resist openly.

Before the town hall, Captain Carter nailed the charter of the Northern Baltic Kingdom onto a public board for all to see. Above the tallest buildings, the new banners were raised: red cloth, black and white bands, golden shield, and the black double-headed dragon watching east and west.

So townspeople recoiled at the sight. The change had co too quickly. One hour they had belonged to Russia. The next, dragon banners flew above their roofs.

The children reacted differently. They stared upward with open mouths, whispering excitedly at the black dragon snapping in the damp wind. A few young n, caught between terror and wonder, ca hesitantly before Oskar and asked to join the Legion. He gave them red turbans, placed rifles into their hands, and made them swear with fist to heart: sacrifice, duty, obedience, and service beneath the New Dawn.

All the while, Shadowmane lay beside the town hall steps like a black beast guarding a throne, chewing slowly on the remains of the butcher's offering. The sound of bone cracking between his teeth kept the nearest townspeople several ters away.

Then the last of the rain passed.

Sunlight touched the square, glinting across wet cobblestones, raised rifles, red turbans, and the dragon banners above. It fell upon Oskar where he sat on the steps, blood-marked and half-naked, eating like a beast while founding a kingdom beneath the open sky. For one strange mont, even the frightened townspeople could not help but see it as beautiful.

A new dawn had truly co to Salacgrīva.

Then Captain Carter pushed through the crowd.

He moved quickly, black armor streaked with mud, a backpack radio strapped to him, its wires and aerials rising behind his shoulders like so modern burden carried into an old-world town. His expression was hard enough that Oskar noticed before he spoke.

Carter stopped at the foot of the steps and struck his fist to his heart.

"Your Highness."

Oskar lowered the piece of at in his hand.

"What is it?"

Carter glanced once at the watching town, then back to Oskar.

"Urgent news from the front."