By the evening of the seventh of September, Oskar had returned to Warsaw.
The city did not greet him as a conquered capital might have done in some triumphal painting. There were no cheering crowds, no grateful banners hanging from windows, and no lines of local men standing behind police cordons with obedience forced upon their faces. The non-German male population was gone. Old men, young men, boys barely old enough to understand why their mothers had wept when the order came, and even infants carried east in the arms of relatives had all been removed from German-held territory and sent toward Russia.
What remained was a city overwhelmingly populated by women, girls and children, moving through the streets like the surviving half of a people. Some carried baskets or pushed barrows, while others led thin horses or dragged handcarts piled with firewood, potatoes, laundry, salvaged timber and anything else that might still prove useful. In the parks, ornamental flowerbeds had already begun giving way to vegetable plots, with women kneeling in the soil beneath the watch of German police to plant onions, cabbages and potatoes where children had once played. Courtyards had become workshops of necessity, filled with washing lines, repaired clothing, mended boots and the small exchanges of food, soap, kerosene and labour upon which ordinary life now depended.
Even the signs were changing. Polish lettering remained carved into stonework and painted across older walls, but above shops, police stations, railway depots, military offices and supply yards now hung clean German boards marked with orderly black lettering. The transformation was incomplete, yet visible everywhere: a new administration imposing itself one notice, permit and painted sign at a time.
Warsaw had not been destroyed, and that was something, but neither was it whole. The streets carried the peculiar tension of occupation. The scent of fresh bread drifted from reopened bakeries while German boots struck the pavements outside. Young soldiers on leave laughed beside cafés operating under new licences, while women who had decided survival mattered more than pride moved among them with very different expressions. In restaurants and small eating houses, German soldiers could increasingly be seen sharing tables with local women, buying meals, sweets or wine and attempting conversation through broken German, broken Polish and whatever gestures filled the gaps between them. Some of the women appeared grateful, others calculating or simply exhausted, while a few clung closely to the men beside them as though warmth and security had become commodities of their own.
No regulation compelled such attachments, something Oskar would have insisted upon if challenged. Women could trade goods or labour, refuse particular arrangements, seek employment, remain on farms, enter domestic service or leave German-held territory entirely. The occupation administration did not formally demand affection from them.
Reality, however, was less tidy than regulations. A German soldier possessed regular pay, food, physical strength and access to an administration that increasingly controlled the necessities of life. Many local women possessed homes but had lost husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, leaving them with children to feed, buildings to maintain and very little dependable income. Unsurprisingly, arrangements had begun to develop. Reports increasingly described German soldiers renting rooms from female households, paying toward food and upkeep and helping with work the missing men had once performed. Some arrangements remained purely practical; others were already becoming something more personal.
The occupation administration demanded primarily obedience and registration. Property was being surveyed, occupants recorded and rents gradually introduced, though the charges remained deliberately low while the new system established itself. Those who cooperated were generally left to build whatever life remained available to them. There was choice in all of that, Oskar supposed, though he understood perfectly well that choice became a complicated word when war had already stripped away most of the alternatives.
He watched Warsaw through the window as the convoy made its way toward the Royal Castle. His helmet rested beside him, leaving his face exposed while the fading evening light slid across the black plates of his armour. Captain Carter sat opposite, silent and watchful, while Third Company occupied the vehicles ahead and behind. Shadowmane had already been unloaded from the train and taken under guard toward the military stables, restless and thoroughly displeased with the arrangement but obedient enough to tolerate it.
Women looked up as Oskar's convoy passed. Some lowered their heads immediately, while others stared with fear, hatred or the strange fascination people sometimes directed toward someone whose decisions had already altered the course of their lives. Oskar offered little in return beyond the occasional nod toward a polite greeting or a brief acknowledgement of children who stopped to stare. He had neither the energy nor the desire for theatre that evening.
The Royal Castle was already alive with activity when his convoy entered the courtyard. Black Guard sentries stood at the gates and entrances while clerks, couriers and orderlies hurried between temporary offices, telegraph rooms and waiting vehicles. Motorcycles rattled across the stones, horses were led between wagons, and mechanics worked beneath lamps already beginning to glow against the evening gloom. With the eastern campaign preparing to move again, the place had acquired the atmosphere of a military headquarters rather than a royal residence.
At least, it would have done had Patricia and Elise not apparently declared war upon the castle's appearance in his absence.
House Horn banners now hung prominently from balconies and windows, their deep blue fields, golden ornamentation and crowned white unicorns standing out against the older imperial decoration. Parts of the courtyard had been cleaned and repainted, flowerbeds restored, hedges trimmed and neglected corners brought back into order. Gold, blue and white had begun appearing wherever the two women possessed enough authority to place them, softening the severity of the military occupation in a manner Oskar found simultaneously impressive and faintly ridiculous.
The car stopped near the main steps. Its suspension shifted noticeably when Oskar opened the door and stepped down, the vehicle seeming almost relieved to be rid of more than two hundred kilograms of prince and armour. Nearby Black Guard soldiers immediately straightened, fists striking their chests as their heads inclined toward him.
Oskar acknowledged them with a slight nod before walking to the rear of the vehicle. One of his guards opened the compartment, revealing the enormous black greatsword secured inside. Oskar lifted it free with both hands, settled its harness across his back beneath the fall of his blood-red cape, and tucked the skull-faced helmet beneath one arm.
The effect was enough to quiet several conversations around the courtyard.
Heavy armoured footsteps carried him toward the castle. Soldiers and servants moved aside as he approached, while Black Guard sentries bowed their heads with fists pressed against their hearts. Oskar climbed the broad staircase without ceremony, passed beneath the House Horn banners hanging above the entrance and pushed open one of the great doors himself.
Warmth met him immediately. After the cool evening outside came lamplight, polished wood, candles and the mingled smells of wax, clean linen and food somewhere deeper within the castle. His eyes adjusted to the brightness, and then he noticed the reception waiting for him.
Six maids stood arranged inside the entrance hall. Helena stood at their head, with her cousins Johanna, Liselotte and little Emilie Falkenberg beside her, while Zofia and Maria completed the line. Their uniforms had clearly evolved beneath the influence of Patricia and Elise: black-and-white household livery made considerably more elaborate than Oskar remembered, with carefully pressed aprons, lace, ribbons and small touches of blue and gold announcing their association with House Horn.
Oskar stopped. Of course.
The moment he entered, all six lowered themselves into curtsies.
"Welcome home, Master."
The word struck him hard enough that one eyebrow twitched. Master? That had Patricia written all over it.
For a moment Oskar simply regarded them, standing there in several dozen kilograms of black armour with an enormous sword across his back and a skull-faced helmet tucked beneath one arm, while six women and girls bowed before him as though Patricia had somehow transformed the Royal Castle into her own private interpretation of aristocratic domestic life.
He sighed and waved a hand before any of them could bow lower.
"Enough of that. Heads up. You all know me well enough not to grovel."
They straightened, some more readily than others. Helena was already struggling not to smile, while Zofia's expression remained more guarded. Maria watched him brightly, Johanna and Liselotte maintained varying degrees of composure, and little Emilie simply seemed pleased that everyone had stopped bowing.
Oskar shifted the skull helmet beneath his arm and rolled one aching shoulder inside the armour. "More importantly, how are things? Is my room ready? Supper, something to drink, a bath?" He glanced down at the black plate enclosing him. "And preferably someone to help me escape this damned armour before any of that."
"Of course, Master," Helena replied automatically. "Everything has been prepared exactly as you prefer it. Your rooms, supper, bath, everything." Then, with complete seriousness, she added, "And the six of us are at your disposal. Whatever you require, you need only ask."
The entrance hall fell silent.
Helena seemed to realise how the last sentence had sounded at almost the same moment as the older women did. Colour rose rapidly into her cheeks. Zofia looked aside, lips tightening against a smile, while Johanna suddenly found the floor unusually interesting. Maria required another moment before understanding why everyone had gone quiet, and Liselotte flushed as soon as she caught on. Emilie merely looked from face to face in growing confusion.
Oskar stared at Helena for a moment before slowly rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.
"God help me."
That finally broke the tension. A few embarrassed smiles appeared, and Oskar found himself smiling as well despite his exhaustion. He had spent the entire journey dreading his return to the front, yet perhaps there were one or two advantages to being back in Warsaw after all.
Before he could say anything more, the sharp clicking of heels sounded from the corridor to the right, followed by the lighter patter of several smaller feet. Every head in the entrance hall turned as Patricia appeared first, carrying one of the babies against her breast with the easy confidence of a woman entirely accustomed to doing several things at once. The child rested contentedly against her while Patricia swept into the hall dressed in the full colours of House Horn. Deep blue and gold wrapped her in a richly embroidered gown, a white fur mantle resting across her shoulders and trailing behind her, while blue stones glittered at her throat and ears. A small crown had even found its way into her carefully arranged brown hair, completing the transformation from troublesome former princess into something dangerously close to a queen in her own right.
Elise followed beside her with another sleeping infant nestled securely in her arms. Her own gown carried the same blue, ivory and gold, though everything about it seemed softer than Patricia's deliberate splendour. Ribbons had been woven through her pale braids, lace spilled around her shoulders and skirts, and the baby resting against her seemed entirely unconcerned by the grandeur surrounding it.
Oskar stared for perhaps a second longer than dignity required. There were moments when he genuinely wondered how he had ever allowed these two women to cause so much trouble in his life. Then he looked at them properly—their beautiful faces, their ridiculous gowns, the children in their arms and the unmistakable happiness that appeared when they saw him—and remembered perfectly well.
Some mistakes, apparently, remained extremely beautiful.
Patricia's face brightened at once. "Oskar!"
Whatever queenly dignity she had accumulated disappeared almost immediately. Leaving Elise to manage the small procession of children following behind them, Patricia crossed the hall toward him with all the restraint of someone who had spent far too long waiting for her opportunity.
She stopped directly before the towering wall of black armour and tilted her head back. Even in heels she came nowhere close to meeting his height, but that did not prevent her from rising onto the tips of her toes and looking up at him with sparkling expectation.
She said nothing. She hardly needed to.
Oskar knew that expression well enough by now, and amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth. Deciding to indulge her, he bent until their faces were level, whereupon Patricia immediately caught the edges of his breastplate and pressed her lips against his.
The kiss began softly enough, but Patricia had never possessed much talent for restraint. Within moments she was leaning eagerly into him, eyes closed, turning the greeting into something considerably more enthusiastic while Oskar responded in kind. When they finally parted, she followed him for another fleeting instant before settling back onto her heels, flushed, breathless and altogether too pleased with herself.
Oskar remained bent slightly toward her while Patricia slowly ran her tongue across her lower lip. Her blue eyes narrowed with wicked amusement.
"Good heavens, Oskar. I can still taste the other women on your lips." She gave a delighted little smirk. "I suppose I'll just have to kiss every last one of those little hussies out of you."
Oskar grinned despite himself.
"You're certainly welcome to try, Patricia. Though I suspect you've got quite a bit of work ahead of you."
Beside them, Elise had waited with considerably more restraint, one arm supporting the sleeping baby against her while her pale blue-grey eyes remained fixed upon Oskar. When he finally turned toward her, she straightened instinctively and looked up at him with an expression so openly hopeful that whatever composure she had been maintaining began to slip.
"Please," she murmured, clutching the child a little closer. "Can I?"
Oskar smirked. The contrast between her and Patricia never ceased to amuse him. Patricia demanded affection as though it already belonged to her by right; Elise still asked for it, even when both of them knew perfectly well what his answer would be.
He bent toward her, and Elise rose as far onto her toes as she could without disturbing the baby. Her kiss began softly, almost cautiously, but the hesitation did not last. Oskar lingered with her, one hand settling gently against her side while the kiss deepened at its own unhurried pace. Elise relaxed into him with a quiet sigh, careful of the child between them yet unwilling to let the moment end too quickly.
When they finally separated, she remained close for another moment, cheeks flushed as she looked up at him shyly. Patricia, by contrast, wore a thoroughly satisfied smile, clearly enjoying both the reunion and the effect it had produced. Only then did Oskar notice that the six maids behind them had gone remarkably still, their expressions ranging from embarrassment to curiosity while little Emilie simply looked confused as to why all the adults had suddenly begun behaving so strangely.
Fortunately, the children provided an immediate distraction. Arthur, Alfred, Victoria and Alice crowded around Oskar almost at once, small hands reaching upward toward him. Arthur stretched both arms particularly insistently, and Oskar misunderstood completely.
"Oh, you want this? Here you go."
He lowered his skull-faced helmet to the floor in front of the boy.
Arthur's eyes widened. "Wow!"
Alfred immediately pushed closer. "Let me touch it!"
Within seconds all four children had gathered around the helmet like moths around a lamp, poking cautiously at the black metal and staring into its hollow eye sockets with delighted fascination. Oskar watched them with an amused smile, momentarily forgetting everything beyond the hall.
It was while watching them that he became aware of someone else observing the scene.
Oskar lifted his gaze toward the staircase and found Franz Ferdinand standing alone upon the upper landing, one hand resting against the balustrade as he surveyed everything below. His eyes travelled slowly across Patricia, Elise, the six maids and the children gathered around Oskar's helmet before finally settling upon his friend.
Ferdinand raised one eyebrow. The meaning was unmistakable.
Really?
Oskar coughed lightly and abruptly remembered that he had, in fact, returned to Warsaw for reasons considerably more important than domestic reunions.
"As much as I would like to continue from here and have something to eat before anything else, it seems duty calls." He looked toward the women with an apologetic smile. "So please, women, be patient. I will join you soon."
Patricia smiled knowingly, while Elise, still holding the sleeping baby against her, gave him a gentler nod. The maids bowed their heads with varying degrees of amusement. In Patricia's arms, the other infant had already lost all interest in Oskar's return and was fussing impatiently against her mother in search of milk.
Oskar looked down at the four older children, still utterly fascinated by the skull-faced helmet between them.
"And children, look after my helmet. I'll be back soon."
"We will!" Arthur declared.
"Bye, Papa!" Victoria called cheerfully.
Oskar smiled despite himself, gave Patricia and Elise one final look, then turned toward the staircase. Behind him the children immediately resumed their inspection of the helmet while the women watched him go.
Ferdinand waited until Oskar reached the upper landing before falling into step beside him. They had barely gone several paces when he leaned closer.
"So," Ferdinand murmured, glancing back toward the hall, "how many of those women are yours?"
Oskar looked sideways at him.
"I want to know," Ferdinand continued. "And while we are discussing mysteries, precisely how many children do you have now?"
"Not now, my friend," Oskar grumbled.
Ferdinand's mouth twitched.
"We have rather more important matters to discuss. The Russians, for one." Oskar's expression softened slightly as they continued along the corridor. "More importantly, how is Sophie?"
The amusement disappeared from Ferdinand's face.
"Recovering," he answered. "Slowly. She is still weaker than she admits, and the doctors would prefer that she rest far more than she actually does." A faint warmth returned to his expression. "Which, as you know, means she has already decided she is perfectly healthy."
Oskar smiled. "That sounds like Sophie."
"It does." Ferdinand walked beside him in silence for several more steps before glancing over again. His eyes travelled across Oskar's enormous armoured frame, and the amusement in his expression gradually gave way to genuine curiosity.
"Which brings me to something I have been meaning to ask. You were shot as well, Oskar. More than once. Yet here you are, walking around as though bullets were little more than bad weather."
He studied him for another moment.
"What is your secret?"
Oskar smiled faintly and kept his eyes upon the corridor ahead. "Well, my friend, let us simply say that a man of vision may fall many times, but you will never find him grounded for long. The vision will always lift him again."
Ferdinand studied him for a moment, clearly unconvinced. "That is not an answer, Oskar. I would prefer a proper one."
"No," Oskar admitted with a faint smile. "But all will be revealed in time, my friend. If not in this life, then in the next."
Ferdinand slowed by half a step, confusion crossing his face at those last words, but before he could question them, Oskar continued. "You believe in Heaven, do you not? Then surely you believe that the road does not end where the body falls."
For once, Ferdinand had no immediate reply. Oskar turned his attention forward again, his smile gentle, almost distant. "Some doors open only after a man has stopped trying to force them."
He offered nothing further, leaving Ferdinand to follow beside him with an expression suggesting he was unsure whether he had just heard a confession, a prophecy or merely one of Oskar's jokes dressed in scripture. There would be time enough for explanations later, just as there would be time for his women, his children and all the softer complications of the household below. For now, the eastern war was moving again, and Warsaw had become less a palace than the brain of an army.
Oskar led Franz Ferdinand through the upper corridors toward the strategic meeting room, conscious all the while of the strange weight of history walking beside him. This was the man who should have died in Sarajevo, whose death should have opened the gates of hell and set Europe ablaze. Yet Ferdinand remained alive, troubled and stubborn as ever, still walking beside Oskar as friend and ally.
The thought amused him in a bitter sort of way. The old bastard had survived history; now he would have to help shape it.
The commanders had already gathered by the time they entered the meeting room. Maps covered the walls and lay spread across the great round table beneath brass weights, depicting the Eastern Front from the Baltic to the Carpathians, together with Russian railways, rivers, roads, depots, known reserves and supply lines. In the north, circled heavily in black pencil, lay Riga.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff stood among the senior German commanders, studying the maps with the sharp concentration of men who had spent too many years imagining battles and now finally possessed one enormous enough to justify them. Representing the navy was Oskar's uncle, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, commander of the Baltic Fleet. Heinrich had long regarded his nephew as perhaps the most interesting thing the Hohenzollern bloodline had produced in generations, and now he had come east to help his brother's son alter the course of the war.
Several Austro-Hungarian generals stood near Ferdinand, carrying themselves with the stiff mixture of pride and unease that seemed increasingly common among officers whose armies had fought hard, bled heavily and survived partly because German victories elsewhere had relieved the pressure upon them. General Paul von Rennenkampf was present as well. The Russian defector stood slightly apart from the others, fully aware that his usefulness had brought him into a room where entire nations were being discussed as though they were pieces upon the table.
Oskar took his place without announcement. None was necessary. The room simply settled around him.
Blocks and pins marked the armies: black for the Black Legion, white for Austria-Hungary and yellow for Russia. The figures were reviewed quickly because every man present already understood the scale. Oskar's Black Legion held the northern blade with roughly one hundred and eighty thousand men. Austria-Hungary carried the greater burden in the south, four armies amounting to nearly seven hundred thousand. Against them stood the Russian mass: nine armies in the field, reinforced in places by formations drawn from the Sixth Army around Petrograd and supported by militia, labour formations and rear-area troops that could push the total available strength well beyond two million.
Russia possessed the numbers. Russia always possessed the numbers.
That was precisely why Riga mattered.
Oskar moved one black marker northward and set it against the city. "Our wider strategy is simple. Austria-Hungary's eventual road is Kiev and Ukraine. Ours is the Baltic, then Minsk. Those are not today's objectives. They are what this operation makes possible."
He tapped Riga with one finger. "This is the door."
Every eye shifted toward the city.
"The Russians have reinforced it with remnants of the First Army and elements of the Tenth. They believe that if they hold Riga, they can anchor their northern line and force us to pay for every step eastward. So we will not pay. We will break the position quickly, and once we do, they will have to react. They will send men north to close the wound. Every division committed to Riga is one that cannot be used against Austria-Hungary. Every reserve drawn toward the Baltic weakens both the road to Minsk and the road to Kiev."
His eyes moved briefly toward Ferdinand. "That is the purpose. Not merely to take a city, but to make Russia move where we want her to move."
No one interrupted.
Oskar had no intention of drowning them in unnecessary detail. No plan survived first contact with the enemy, and he had little patience for commanders who mistook arrows upon maps for the movements of living men. What mattered was that every man in the room understood the shape of the operation well enough to continue it when circumstances inevitably changed.
"Prince Heinrich's fleet will move under darkness," Oskar continued. "The first targets are Daugavgrīva, Bolderāja, Mangaļsala, the harbour batteries, the searchlights and any guns capable of threatening the landing lanes. Riga itself is not to be smashed. It is a port, a railway hub, a bridgehead and a city we will require after the battle. We take it. We do not grind it flat."
Heinrich inclined his head. "The fleet will be in position before dawn."
"Good."
Oskar turned toward Seeckt. "XVII Corps attacks from the south. Rommel opens the way with the First Armoured Division: one hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred and sixty armoured trucks, with infantry following close behind. The attack begins with five minutes of concentrated artillery fire, no more. We strike violently and briefly. The purpose is not to turn the Russian positions into mud. It is to stun the first line long enough for the armour to reach it."
Rommel's attention sharpened. "Speed, then."
"Speed and control," Oskar replied. "If your tanks outrun the infantry and die in the streets, you will have achieved nothing except an expensive funeral."
Rommel nodded once.
Oskar moved his hand to the northern edge of the city. "Ten thousand marines land north of Riga before first light. They are not to charge blindly into the city. They secure the northern approaches, block reinforcement routes and begin closing the noose. The Russians must feel pressure from the sea, from the south and from the north, while the east appears to remain their only escape."
"Appears," Ludendorff observed.
Oskar nodded. "At dawn, the air force closes it. Two hundred aircraft: ten H-1 bombers, eighty F-2 fighters and the older F-1s in support. The bombers strike railways, stations, moving trains, artillery parks and dense road columns. Fighters sweep the roads. Anything moving east in organised military strength is to be treated as hostile movement."
His hand then shifted toward the centre of the city, settling upon Riga Castle and the adjoining bridgehead district.
"This is the hinge."
The atmosphere around the table tightened almost imperceptibly.
"I will drop with Third Company before the main attack begins. Two hundred men. We seize Riga Castle, the bridge approaches, demolition points, signal stations and whatever command posts we can reach. Once the bridge is contested and the castle secured, we fire the flare. That will signal the fleet, artillery, armour, marines and aircraft to move together."
Ferdinand stared at him in disbelief. "Wait, you mean to personally jump into Riga with only two hundred men from Third Company, while wearing that black armour?"
Oskar nodded calmly. "Precisely."
Ferdinand exhaled slowly through his nose. "That sounds like an extremely risky plan."
"It is the plan," Oskar replied. "If every bridge is destroyed, the battle becomes slower, bloodier and more destructive. Our engineers will repair them eventually, but the day will be lost and perhaps parts of the city with it. The crossing beside Riga Castle must therefore be contested before the Russians fully understand that the battle has begun."
Ludendorff folded his arms. "And if Third Company is surrounded?"
"Then the First Armoured Division and XVII Corps had better move quickly."
Rommel and Lieutenant General Hans von Seeckt exchanged confident smiles.
Oskar's gaze cut toward them. "I mean that literally."
The smiles disappeared.
"Yes, Your Highness."
Oskar looked around the table. "This battle is intended to be decided in a day. We shock them, blind them, split their command, seize the crossing, strike from the sea, strike from the south, close from the north and break their retreat from the air. If we do it properly, Riga falls before the Russians can decide whether they are defending a city or escaping a trap. If we do it badly, we receive street fighting, burning bridges, wrecked rail yards, dead civilians and another month of repairs before we can move east."
Nothing further needed to be said on that point.
Oskar turned toward Rennenkampf. "And you, General."
The Russian straightened. "Your Highness?"
"Once Riga is secure, you will establish your headquarters there."
Rennenkampf went very still.
Oskar placed another marker over the Baltic region. "Germany will not govern every Baltic village with German blood. We have neither the men nor the time to police every road, bridge and settlement ourselves while simultaneously fighting Russia, Britain and France. We therefore require a local solution: a Baltic state beneath German protection. A subject state, certainly. A puppet, if one wishes to use the uglier and more honest word. But it will possess its own administration, its own armed men and its own stake in its survival."
Rennenkampf swallowed. "You wish me to govern it."
"I wish you to begin it," Oskar replied. "You will speak to the Baltic peoples and offer them the choice plainly. They may remain Russian subjects and share Russia's defeat, or they may take up arms beneath German protection and earn a future as German subjects rather than Russian ones."
The room remained silent.
"I will provide rifles, uniforms, helmets, food, pay, instructors and officers where necessary. Once the city is secure, you will begin gathering local men willing to serve. Those prepared to fight beside us will be armed. Those unwilling to choose will be judged according to their usefulness and the danger they present."
A faint sheen of perspiration had appeared upon Rennenkampf's forehead. "And if they refuse?"
Oskar's expression did not change. "Then they will not remain in our rear as a threat."
Everyone understood what that meant.
"This is arithmetic, General. Germany cannot waste trained soldiers watching every road, station, bridge and village while the Russian army still exists. Either the Baltic peoples help us secure their lands, or we secure those lands without them."
Rennenkampf nodded slowly. "Yes, Your Highness."
"Good."
Only then did Oskar turn back toward Ferdinand.
"Well then, my friend. You know my way of doing things. You have seen Warsaw and the territories behind our advance. You have seen the order it creates and the fear it leaves behind."
Ferdinand's expression tightened. "I have."
"Germany will push forward. We will take territory and break Russia's northern line. When Russian reserves begin moving north, can Austria-Hungary exploit the opening? Can you take what must be taken and govern what you take afterward?"
The Austro-Hungarian generals stiffened. Hindenburg and Ludendorff exchanged a glance that was not particularly charitable. Neither fully trusted Austria-Hungary's ability to sustain a major advance. Galicia had held, certainly, but at a monstrous cost. Austro-Hungarian armies had lost tens of thousands of men, with far more wounded, maimed, missing or broken by disease and exhaustion. German victories had helped prevent something worse, and every man around the table knew it.
Ferdinand accepted the silence with dignity.
"We held Galicia," he said.
"You did," Oskar replied. "Against the greater weight of Russia. That matters."
Several of the Austro-Hungarian officers looked almost surprised.
Oskar meant every word.
"I am not asking whether Austria-Hungary can fight. You have proved that already. I am asking whether Austria-Hungary can fight, advance and govern at the same time, because the lands ahead of us are not only vast; they are inhabited by tens of millions of people."
Ferdinand lowered his gaze toward the map and remained silent for several moments before finally looking up again.
"Your plan is sound," he said. "Riga may draw Russian strength northward and open opportunities elsewhere. I understand that. My generals are eager to move, perhaps too eager. Serbia continues to bleed us. Belgrade has not fallen as quickly as we hoped, and the Serbs fight with a stubbornness entirely disproportionate to their size. But yes. If Riga weakens the Russian line, we can press."
He paused, and something more serious entered his expression.
"But I must ask something else."
Oskar waited.
Ferdinand looked directly at him. "Must it always be done this way? Your methods work. I do not deny that. But I have also seen the fear they leave behind. Families broken apart, men driven east, women surviving beneath another flag. These are not merely Russians we face. The Tsar's armies are filled with Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Latvians—men born into an empire they did not choose. Is there no way we could do this in a more merciful manner?"
Oskar's mouth curved faintly, not in mockery but in something closer to sadness.
"Tell me, Ferdinand. Have you ever heard of such a thing as a merciful war?"
No one answered. The question settled over the room like ash. Every man around the table understood the truth beneath it. Strip away the flags, prayers, speeches and carefully coloured maps, and war remained what it had always been: men standing in clean rooms deciding where other men would be sent into fire. They were those men now, architects of destruction who killed at a distance with pencils, timetables and orders.
Ferdinand looked away first.
Oskar did not press him.
The discussion continued behind the closed doors of the Royal Castle, but the war outside had no intention of waiting for signatures, arguments or final words. Preparations were already moving forward.
Along the front, armour assembled beneath darkness while artillery batteries were drawn into position gun by gun and shell by shell. At ports and river landings, ships were loaded with men, ammunition, fuel, food and the thousand hard necessities upon which armies depended. Supply columns crawled along newly repaired roads. Telegraphs clicked, orders travelled, engines turned, and entire formations shifted through the night like enormous iron limbs preparing to strike.
Across the line, the Russians knew only that something was coming.
Fog and rain had kept much of the front blind, while the constant pressure of Black Legion artillery, the distant growl of engines and the sudden terror of aerial attack had already become part of the unnatural rhythm of the new war. The Russians did not know precisely where the next blow would fall. They knew only that it would come, and that when it did they would be expected to stand and fight because few still trusted retreat to save them.
By the ninth of September, the preparations were complete enough for Oskar to hand Shadowmane over to Rommel.
"Keep him close," he told him. "I'll need him later."
Oskar rested one gauntleted hand against the great black stallion's neck and offered something almost resembling an apology. Whatever Shadowmane himself might have thought of the matter, dropping an eight-hundred-kilogram warhorse into Riga beneath a parachute struck Oskar as neither practical nor particularly kind.
Shadowmane answered by huffing hot breath through his nostrils and stamping one heavy hoof, as though personally offended at being excluded.
Oskar smiled faintly. "You'll survive."
Then he turned away.
The bomber waiting for him carried no bombs that morning. It carried men.
Ten aircraft stood in the darkness before dawn, their engines growling softly while the soldiers of Third Company climbed aboard with weapons, radios, ammunition and parachutes. Oskar joined them, and one by one the aircraft began rolling forward before lifting into the night.
Elsewhere along the front, Black Legion soldiers prepared in their own quieter ways. Rifles were checked and polished, straps tightened, helmets adjusted and ammunition counted. Some men bowed their heads in prayer. Others forced down hot food while they still had the opportunity. Some joked more loudly than necessary, while others sat in silence and waited.
Sniper teams had already slipped forward beneath cover of darkness, taking positions from which they could deal with exposed Russian strongpoints before the bombardment began should the artillery fail to silence them.
Farther away, ships moved toward their assigned stations. Naval guns were loaded, artillery crews waited beside stacked shells, and camouflaged armoured vehicles were uncovered one after another, their dark shapes emerging from tarpaulins and branches like steel beasts waking from sleep.
Across the entire northern front, everything was moving toward the same place.
Everything was converging. And although the sun had not yet risen, the battle for Riga had already begun.