Oskar fell through the clouds with the cold wind screaming around his black armour and the parachute harness pulled taut by his weight. For several seconds there was no city beneath him, no river and no army, only torn layers of cloud rushing past, the broken moon appearing and disappearing overhead, and the relentless strain of the canopy above as it fought against the combined mass of man, armour, weapons and equipment.
Then Riga emerged beneath him.
The city lay almost completely dark along the Western Dvina, resembling something dead that had merely learned to imitate sleep. Roofs, streets, church towers, warehouses and railway yards appeared only in fragments whenever moonlight escaped the clouds. The river divided everything, broad and black beneath the night, catching the occasional silver reflection like a blade hidden beneath dark cloth. Close beside it stood Riga Castle, its pale walls enclosing a shadowed courtyard and its round towers rising from the corners like clenched knuckles. Nearby, the stone bridge stretched low across the Dvina, its arches fading into the mist above the water.
The bridge was the throat, and the castle was the hand wrapped around it.
Most of the old fortress remained dark, but one window still burned with light. It glowed from the southwestern circular tower, warm and strangely small against the cold stone, like a single eye left open in an otherwise sleeping face.
Oskar fixed the window in the hollow gaze of his skull-faced helmet and began angling toward it.
The parachute dragged violently above him. It was doing everything it had been designed to do and considerably more besides, fighting against his immense body, full armour, greatsword, launcher and ammunition. The other soldiers descending through the darkness drifted beneath their canopies with something approaching control. Oskar descended with noticeably less grace. He was falling faster than any sensible man should have been comfortable with, the black canopy straining overhead while the tower seemed to rise steadily toward him.
Inside that same tower, Colonel Arvid Mikhailovich Kallionen stood beside the illuminated window and looked out across the river.
The command room behind him followed the circular shape of the tower's old stone walls. A heavy iron chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, its candles burning low and yellow above a broad wooden table covered with maps of Riga and the surrounding countryside. The river, bridge, southern defensive works, harbour batteries, railway approaches, road toward Bauska and the defensive belts beyond the city had all been marked in careful lines of red and black pencil.
Seven officers stood around the table, not counting Kallionen, while two armed guards waited beyond the door. They had been awake too long, yet their uniforms remained properly arranged. Guard officers did not permit themselves the appearance of frightened peasants merely because the hour was late and the Germans were somewhere beyond the darkness. Collars remained straight, belts polished and boots clean despite the damp cold that seemed able to penetrate even the castle's thick stone.
Kallionen stood apart from them near the window. He was a large man, more than one hundred and ninety centimetres tall, bald and broad through the shoulders, with the dense build of someone command had not yet softened. One eye remained pale and steady, while the other twitched occasionally beneath three old scars running from his brow toward his cheek.
Men said a bear had given him those scars. Kallionen had never corrected them. Among some of the Finnish-blooded Guardsmen, the story had earned him the name Karhunarpi—the Bear-Scar.
He looked down toward the bridge before opening the pocket watch in his palm. Less than an hour remained before sunrise. Kallionen snapped the watch shut and allowed himself a small, confident smirk.
"The Germans have waited too long."
Captain Salov looked up from the map behind him. "The First Army headquarters reports no major movement from the south. City Hall remains confident. The outer perimeter is manned, the coastal defences are prepared and the ports are covered."
Lieutenant Vornanen, whose Finnish accent became noticeably heavier whenever exhaustion set in, tapped the bridge marked beside the castle. "The Guard detachments hold the castle, the bridge and the river approaches. The rest are spread through the port, railway district and government quarter. If the Germans mean to come through here, they must come through us."
Staff Lieutenant Orlov pointed farther south on the map, toward the small town of Bauska. "Bauska remains secure as well. Tenth Army headquarters is there, with sufficient formations to threaten any German force committing too deeply toward Riga. Between our troops here and theirs upon the flank, the enemy risks being caught if they advance foolishly."
Salov nodded. "By the latest estimate, we have more than three hundred thousand men throughout the wider region."
"More if the militia formations are counted," Vornanen added.
Kallionen gave a quiet huff of amusement and turned from the window toward the officers surrounding the table. "There. You see? We have nothing to worry about. Riga is not Warsaw. It is not some open road for the Black Legion to drive across. We have trenches to the south, guns covering the approaches, Guard troops holding the heart of the city, the river before us and the Tenth Army watching our flank."
He placed both hands against the edge of the table and looked from one officer to another. "To break us here, they need an army. A whole army. Tanks, artillery, engineers, bridges, pontoons, corps upon corps, and time. If they come, they bleed."
The words settled comfortably over the room because the men needed to hear them almost as much as Kallionen needed to say them.
Orlov exhaled and allowed himself the beginning of a smile. "Perhaps they have stopped because they understand that."
"Perhaps," Vornanen replied, though his gaze remained fixed upon the map. "Or perhaps they are preparing something."
Kallionen's smile thinned. For several moments no one spoke.
Then they heard it.
At first the sound was scarcely a sound at all, merely a faint pressure passing through the walls, a vibration so low that it seemed to belong to the castle itself. The flames of the chandelier trembled. One of the officers raised his head, and within another few seconds everyone in the room understood what they were hearing. Engine noise—distant still, but growing steadily louder.
Kallionen turned slowly toward the window as the noise deepened above the city. It was not the thin buzzing of reconnaissance machines, nor the sharper snarl of fighters. This was heavier and broader, a layered mechanical growl moving through the clouds over Riga.
"Air raid?" Orlov asked.
Kallionen frowned. "At this hour?"
He crossed quickly to the window and seized the latch. The swollen frame resisted him for a moment before scraping open beneath his hand, allowing a rush of cold air into the chamber. At once the sound of the engines became clearer, a deep mechanical growl rolling through the darkness above Riga. He leaned out and looked across the sleeping city, where the bridge stretched pale over the black river and mist drifted slowly between its arches.
Above him, the clouds shifted and moonlight caught the aircraft. Ten dark silhouettes moved high over Riga, their wings cutting across the broken silver edges of the clouds. They were large machines, bombers by the look of them, and Kallionen instinctively waited for the familiar whistle of falling bombs. Yet nothing came. There was no shriek from above, no explosion among the streets and no sudden bloom of fire below. Instead, he began to notice smaller black shapes dropping from the aircraft and disappearing through the cloud cover.
One fell, then another, and then dozens more.
Salov stepped closer behind him and stared upward. "Are those bombs?"
"No," Kallionen said, though his mouth had suddenly gone dry.
One of the shapes blossomed beneath the moonlight as dark fabric opened above it. A parachute. Another followed, then another, spreading across the sky in patterns none of the officers had expected to see. Vornanen stared upward for several seconds before whispering in Finnish, "Perkele... mitä helvettiä?"
Then Kallionen noticed something larger.
It was descending faster than the others, not drifting gently beneath its canopy but plunging toward the tower like an incoming projectile. The dark mass grew with terrifying speed. Moonlight flashed across black metal, and something red snapped violently behind it. For one impossible instant Kallionen saw the pale face of a skull staring directly back at him through the night.
His body understood the danger before his mind could comprehend it.
"Get down!"
Kallionen hurled himself backward just as the figure slammed into the tower with the force of a cannonball.
Glass exploded. The arched window frame disintegrated, and the surrounding stonework burst apart beneath the impact, sending a violent shower of bricks, mortar, splintered wood and powdered lime across the chamber. Behind the intruder, the parachute lines snagged against the shattered masonry and snapped, leaving the torn canopy thrashing in the darkness outside.
The impact was less a crash than a detonation.
Three officers died almost instantly. One was crushed beneath the immense weight of the armoured intruder, blood bursting from his mouth and nose. Another flew headfirst into the wall, his skull splitting on impact. Staff Lieutenant Orlov vanished beneath the collapsing window frame, his scream cut short as the masonry crushed his chest.
The map table lurched sideways. Candles flew from their holders, papers scattered in every direction, and a thick cloud of dust swallowed the chamber.
For several seconds, Kallionen could see nothing. His ears rang from the blast, powdered stone choked his throat, and somewhere beyond the swirling haze, broken masonry continued to clatter against the floor.
Then something moved inside the dust.
The black armour rose in the command room like a knight dragged from a northern nightmare, skull-faced helm lowered and enormous shoulders powdered white by shattered stone. In that moment, he seemed less like a man than a concentration of mass, darkness and violence forced into human shape. One armoured boot remained planted upon the crushed chest of the officer who had fallen beneath him, the man's broken body lying motionless among the rubble.
Kallionen pushed himself upright. Blood ran down his scalp, his ribs burned with every breath, and the scarred eye beneath the old claw marks twitched so violently that half the room seemed to blur. Through the dust and candle smoke, he watched the black figure turn towards him.
For a single heartbeat, rank, maps, armies and the coming dawn vanished from Kallionen's thoughts. He saw only a beast standing in his command room, like some enormous German bear wrapped in black iron.
Then he saw the bodies around it.
His officers. His men. Sons of Guard families, forest families, Petersburg families, Finns and Russians alike, crushed and broken beneath stone and steel.
Rage overtook reason.
"Get out of my command room, you bastard!" Kallionen roared as he charged, throwing every ounce of his strength into a shoulder-first collision with Oskar.
The impact was tremendous, but Oskar scarcely moved. One armoured heel scraped half a step backwards through the rubble beside the shattered window, and no more.
Kallionen fared considerably worse. Agony exploded through his shoulder. The collision drove the breath from his lungs, sending a sickening jolt through his entire body. Yet even as he gritted his teeth and pushed with everything he had left, the towering figure before him remained immovable.
For one dreadful instant, Kallionen had the absurd sensation that he was trying to uproot the oldest tree in the forest. And that the tree had finally noticed him.
An enormous black gauntlet closed around the back of his uniform, its iron fingers tightening like the jaws of a vice. But before Oskar could do anything more, three of the four surviving officers hurled themselves into the struggle with fists and shoulders.
Yet the fourth officer remained farther back, staring at the desperate struggle as though his mind had simply refused to comprehend what his eyes were witnessing.
But for the briefest of moments, the combined weight of Kallionen and the three officers accomplished what the colonel alone could not.
Oskar staggered. It was scarcely more than a shift in his footing, but it was enough. The Iron Prince twisted towards the shattered window, his armoured boots grinding against the rubble as the open night yawned beyond the ruined wall.
Captain Salov saw his chance.
Releasing his grip on Oskar's armour, he snatched the knife from his belt and lunged upwards, driving the blade towards the narrow opening beneath the skull-shaped helm.
"For the Tsar!"
The blade never reached him. Oskar's hand snapped forward and seized Salov by the front of his uniform. The captain had scarcely enough time to understand what had happened before Oskar hurled him upwards. Salov struck the vaulted ceiling with a wet crack, bounced away from the stone and crashed bodily into the circular iron chandelier.
The chain screamed beneath the sudden weight and tore loose.
Iron, candle wax, flame and flesh came down together. The chandelier smashed across the map table hard enough to split it through the middle, scattering burning candles across military charts and dispatch papers. Flame caught along the edge of the southern defensive plan and began creeping through Riga's carefully drawn fortifications.
Then Oskar regained his footing completely. His gauntlet tightened around the back of Kallionen's uniform, and with one brutal movement, he hurled the colonel across the chamber. Kallionen flew through the air like a rag doll, smashed through a shelf filled with field manuals and dispatch folders, and struck the floor beneath a rain of splintered wood and scattered paper. Pain tore through his ribs so violently that for several seconds his lungs refused to draw breath.
Somewhere inside the smoke and dust, Vornanen swore. "Voi saatana—"
The curse became a scream.
Oskar had turned upon the two officers still clinging desperately to his armour. He dragged them along as though their combined weight amounted to nothing. Seizing Vornanen, he drove him face-first into the jagged stone edge of the shattered window. Teeth scattered across the sill, his skull split against the masonry, and his broken body dropped twitching onto the floor.
The second officer tried to release his grip, but too late.
Oskar caught him by the back of the neck, drove one gauntleted hand down along his spine and pulled with terrible force. A sickening crack tore through the chamber as flesh split and bone wrenched free, strips of bloody meat still clinging to the exposed vertebrae. The officer's scream rose into a high, wet animal sound before his body collapsed forward, his legs kicking once against the floor before falling still.
Oskar flung the torn length of spine across the room. It struck the burning remains of the map table and slid through the flames like an offering thrown onto a butcher's pyre.
The last surviving subordinate officer, who had kept his distance throughout the struggle, had managed to wrench open a locked cabinet and retrieve his revolver. With trembling hands, he fumbled fresh cartridges into the cylinder. By the time he snapped it shut and turned towards the fighting, the other officers were dead. Through the drifting smoke, he saw the enormous black-armoured figure standing among their mutilated remains. His hands began shaking so violently that he could scarcely keep the revolver steady.
His gaze flickered from the burning maps to the scattered bodies, and finally to the blood-soaked monster before him.
Whatever remained of his discipline shattered. Panic seized him, and he turned and bolted for the door. But he had scarcely taken a single step before Oskar was upon him.
A black gauntlet drove through the officer's back and burst from the front of his chest, snapping ribs outward in a spray of blood and splintered bone. The man's entire body convulsed, his boots scraping uselessly against the floor as his mouth opened in a scream that never found enough breath to become sound.
Oskar lifted him partly from the ground, the dying officer's legs kicking helplessly beneath him. Then, with a single savage movement, he tore his hand back through the ruined chest and came away holding the man's still-beating heart in his fist, wet and steaming in the candlelit dust.
At that very moment, the chamber door burst open with a deafening crash, slamming violently against the wall. Alarmed by the thunderous impacts and bloodcurdling screams erupting from within, the two guards stationed outside charged through the doorway, their heavy boots pounding against the floor, rifles raised and fingers poised over their triggers.
Then they stopped dead in their tracks. Before them lay a scene of utter carnage.
The window had been shattered. Maps burned upon the table, their curling edges crumbling into ash. Bodies lay sprawled across the floor, surrounded by overturned furniture and spreading pools of blood.
And there, amidst the devastation, stood the Iron Prince.
His towering figure was clad in black armour, its dark plates streaked with fresh blood. In one enormous gauntlet, he held a freshly torn human heart, dark blood dripping from his iron fingers and splattering onto the floor beneath him.
For half a second, nobody moved.
"Holy Mother of God…" one of the guards whispered, his voice barely audible as his horrified gaze settled upon the grisly object clutched in the monster's hand.
But before either man could recover enough to pull the trigger, Oskar suddenly drew back his arm and hurled the heart straight at them.
It struck one of the guards squarely across the mouth and eyes with a wet slap. Blood splashed across both men, and they recoiled in horror, their rifles discharging almost blindly. One bullet punched into the ceiling, while another tore through the plaster beside the shattered window.
Oskar seized the dead officer by what remained of his chest and hurled the corpse toward them.
The body struck both guards and drove them backward through the doorway into the stairwell. Rifles clattered against stone. One man slammed into the wall hard enough to lose his breath, while the other rolled down several steps, gagging through blood and dust.
Kallionen finally managed to stand.
For several seconds, he could only stare at the carnage surrounding him. His command room lay in ruins, his officers dead and mutilated, and amid the destruction stood Oskar von Hohenzollern, black-armoured and skull-faced, blood dripping steadily from one enormous gauntlet.
Only then did Kallionen truly understand.
The reports, the rumours, the terrified accounts of Russian soldiers who claimed that a single black-armoured German had torn through entire formations, slaughtering men as though they were little more than cattle. He had dismissed such stories as exaggerations, excuses invented by cowards to explain their defeats.
But they had been telling the truth.
Those men had not fled because they were cowards. They had fled because they had seen what now stood before him, and understood that no amount of courage or discipline could save them from it. Running had been the only sensible thing left to do.
"My God," Kallionen whispered. "He is a monster."
Then the skull-faced helmet turned towards him, two cold blue eyes found his own, and Kallionen ran.
"Alarm! Alarm!" he bellowed, stumbling towards the doorway. "The castle is breached! The Iron Prince is here!"
He burst into the circular stairwell, leaping over the first fallen guard and nearly losing his footing as he stumbled past the second, who lay sprawled across the steps below.
Behind him came a deafening crash.
Oskar smashed through the narrow doorway, splintering the wooden frame and sending chunks of stone flying into the stairwell.
The first guard barely managed to raise his head before the Iron Prince struck him at a run. The tremendous impact drove him against the stone wall, crushing his body with a sickening crunch.
The second guard screamed and desperately tried to crawl aside, but it was too late. Oskar thundered over him without breaking stride, one enormous armoured boot shattering his pelvis, the next crushing his chest against the steps.
Kallionen did not dare look back.
He half ran, half stumbled down the narrow, winding staircase, one hand scraping along the cold stone wall for support while the other remained clamped against his injured ribs.
"Alarm! To arms! To arms!" he bellowed, his voice echoing through the tower. "The Germans are inside!"
Behind him came the thunder of enormous footsteps. The spiral stairwell had been built for ordinary men, and Oskar was anything but ordinary. His immense armoured frame barely fitted within the confined passage, his shoulders scraping against the curved walls as he forced himself around each bend. Stone cracked beneath his weight, mortar showered from the ceiling, and the whole stairwell seemed to tremble as the black giant came crashing down through it.
Kallionen reached the bottom and burst through a wooden door into a circular chamber, where three Imperial Guardsmen stood with their rifles. They turned towards him in bewilderment, startled by the colonel's bloodied appearance and the tremendous noise descending through the tower behind him.
"Colonel! What's happening?"
"The tower!" Kallionen gasped, scarcely slowing as he hurried across the room. "The tower has been breached! Stop him! Stop the bastard!"
He was already rushing through the doorway on the opposite side of the chamber when a tremendous crash erupted behind him.
Oskar had reached the bottom of the staircase.
The immense black knight came hurtling around the final bend, his armoured shoulder smashing into the stone doorframe with such force that the masonry cracked and splintered outward. The wooden door was torn from its hinges, and Oskar burst bodily into the circular chamber amid a shower of broken stone, splintered timber and powdered mortar.
The three Guardsmen were utterly caught off guard.
One stumbled backwards as the enormous skull-faced figure emerged through the dust. Another instinctively raised his rifle, while the third stood frozen, his mouth hanging open in disbelief at the monstrous apparition that had come crashing into their room.
Before any of them could recover from their shock, Oskar tore the enormous greatsword from his back and swung.
The first Guardsman came apart from shoulder to hip, his body opening beneath the monstrous blade in a diagonal burst of blood that painted the wall behind him. The second scarcely managed to blink before the returning stroke sheared through both his arms, sending his rifle clattering across the floor. He staggered backwards with a scream, blood pouring from his ruined shoulders, only for Oskar to reverse the blade and take his head from his body with another savage blow.
The third Guardsman managed to fire. His rifle cracked, and the bullet struck Oskar squarely in the breastplate, throwing a shower of sparks across the black steel before ricocheting into the stonework.
Oskar did not even flinch. He stepped forward and brought his greatsword down. The Guardsman split beneath the blow, and blood struck the stones in a hot sheet.
By then, Kallionen was already fleeing down the corridor beyond the chamber, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he struggled to put as much distance as possible between himself and the pursuing monster.
"Alarm!" he screamed. "The Iron Prince is here! He's inside the castle!"
Behind him, the sounds of destruction continued to echo through the passageways.
Ahead, men came running from the northwestern tower and the temporary barracks where a Guard detachment belonging to the Sixth Army had been quartered. Boots hammered against stone, doors flew open, rifles were snatched from racks and bayonets slid into place with sharp metallic clicks. Officers shouted for order, demanding to know what had happened, but Kallionen scarcely heard them.
He staggered into the long corridor outside the northwestern tower, one hand clamped against his injured ribs. Blood ran down the side of his face, and the eye beneath his old bear scars twitched uncontrollably. Somewhere behind him, the heavy footsteps of the pursuing monster continued to echo through the castle.
"Form line!" he roared at the approaching Guardsmen. "Form line, damn you! He's coming!"
Eight Russian Imperial Guardsmen rushed into position across the corridor. Four dropped to one knee while the remaining four stood behind them, their rifles levelled towards the distant doorway. Fixed bayonets glinted in the candlelight, their steel points trembling despite the men's efforts to hold steady.
Kallionen stumbled behind the formation, waving the other arriving soldiers towards the northwestern tower entrance.
At the opposite end of the corridor, dust and smoke drifted through the distant doorway, slowly spreading across the stone passage.
A tremendous crash echoed from somewhere beyond it, followed by the sound of splitting masonry.
Then a man screamed.
The cry ended abruptly, and the gunfire that had been rattling through the castle moments earlier fell silent.