Behind the firing line, Kallionen waved the arriving reinforcements into the circular tower room at their backs. His outstretched hand shook almost beyond his control, but he continued shouting orders until the last of the men had taken their positions.
"Steady," he rasped, turning back towards the corridor. "Fire only when you have a clear shot."
Nobody answered. The eight Guardsmen remained motionless, their rifles trained on the distant doorway as smoke and dust drifted slowly through the opening. Somewhere behind them, a rifle bolt clicked, the small metallic sound carrying unnaturally far through the sudden silence.
Then came something heavier from beyond the haze.
Footsteps.
Slow, deliberate, impossibly heavy. Each metallic tread struck the stone floor like a hammer, sending faint vibrations through the corridor beneath the knees of the men waiting in the front rank.
At first, all they could make out were two cold blue eyes staring straight towards them from the hollow sockets of a skull-faced helmet. Then an enormous black boot emerged from the smoke, followed by a towering figure whose broad shoulders nearly filled the doorway. Shattered masonry had left his black armour powdered white, and in his hands he carried a monstrous greatsword. As the Guardsmen watched, he lowered the weapon before himself, turning the broad face of its blade towards their waiting rifles and planting its point against the stone with a heavy clang that echoed along the corridor.
Nobody fired. The men simply stared, seemingly unable to comprehend the enormous black figure standing before them. One of the kneeling Guardsmen swallowed hard and tightened his grip on his rifle, though the bayonet at its end continued to tremble.
Then Oskar stepped forward.
He pushed towards the firing line with the greatsword held before him like an enormous shield, its broad blade covering his body as its point scraped harshly across the stone. The sudden advance sent a visible shudder through the Guardsmen. Several flinched outright, their rifle muzzles dipping as they instinctively recoiled from the black-armoured giant bearing down upon them.
Kallionen stared at his hesitant men in disbelief, then roared, "What the hell are you waiting for? Shoot him! Shoot him now, you idiots!"
The command snapped the men from their horrified stupor. Years of training took over where reason had momentarily failed them, and eight rifles rose together as the Guardsmen instinctively settled into the familiar movements of a firing line. Oskar lowered his skull-faced helmet behind the broad blade of his sword just as they pulled their triggers, and the corridor erupted with a near-perfect volley. Eight shots cracked almost as one, their combined report thundering between the stone walls as bullets hammered against the black steel. Sparks burst across the sword and armour, rounds ricocheted with sharp metallic pings, and flattened fragments scattered across the floor. The impacts brought Oskar to a halt, his enormous figure standing motionless behind the blade while the echoes of the gunfire rolled through the corridor.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved. Smoke curled from the rifle barrels as the Guardsmen stared at the black knight, his head still lowered and his sword planted before him. Every man had fired, and nearly every shot had struck, yet there was no blood, no broken armour, not even the slightest indication that their weapons had accomplished anything. Then Oskar slowly lifted his head, revealing those cold blue eyes once more, and took another step towards them.
A shudder passed through the firing line. One Guardsman muttered something beneath his breath, while another glanced towards the tower entrance behind him, his body instinctively turning as though preparing to run. Yet none abandoned his position. They were Imperial Guardsmen, soldiers trained to hold their ground before the enemy, and although every instinct in their bodies screamed at them to flee, their discipline kept them rooted to the stones.
"Reload!" Kallionen bellowed, his voice cracking with fear and fury. "Reload, damn you! Fire at will! Fire at will! Kill him! Kill the bastard!"
The Guardsmen obeyed almost desperately, bolts snapping back as spent cartridges clattered across the floor. Their carefully coordinated volley gave way to frantic individual shots, each man firing the moment his trembling hands managed to chamber another round. One rifle cracked, then another, followed by two more in quick succession. Bullets struck the approaching knight with a succession of metallic clangs, sparking against his enormous sword and glancing from the curved plates of his armour. Oskar lowered his head behind the blade once more and continued advancing, his heavy footsteps growing faster as the weapon scraped across the floor with a savage metallic scream.
The distance vanished alarmingly quickly. The Guardsmen had barely managed to fire their second shots when the black giant was already upon them, close enough that the kneeling men could see their own frightened reflections in the polished edges of his armour. Hands reached for bolts again, but there was no longer time. The sword was almost within striking distance, and the enormous skull-faced figure behind it showed no sign of slowing.
The Guardsman kneeling nearest the centre suddenly surged to his feet. Whether he meant to sacrifice himself to give his comrades another moment to reload, or whether terror had simply driven him beyond reason, nobody could have said. With a furious war cry, he levelled his bayonet and lunged towards the approaching monster, apparently convinced that sharpened steel might accomplish what rifle bullets had failed to do.
Yet the instant he lunged forward, Oskar stopped dead and swept his monstrous greatsword over his right shoulder with such effortless speed that its enormous weight might as well have been that of a wooden stick. He swung to cleave the charging Guardsman apart, but the weapon was far too long for the narrow corridor. Its upper edge smashed into the arched ceiling, tearing loose a shower of stone chips and powdered mortar. The collision knocked the blade sideways, turning its broad flat towards the approaching soldier instead of its sharpened edge.
The Guardsman saw the enormous slab of black steel descending towards him. His war cry died in his throat, his eyes widened in sudden horror, and he barely managed one final scream before the weapon struck.
It hit like a massive iron door dropped from the floor above, catching the Guardsman across the head and shoulders with a force no human body could possibly withstand. His skull collapsed between the steel and his spine, his neck disappearing as his head was driven violently into his shoulders. His rifle splintered between his hands, bones shattered throughout his chest, and blood erupted from his mouth and nose as the tremendous impact folded him towards the floor.
The sword continued downward, crushing the unfortunate man beneath it like a sack of rotten fruit caught under a falling anvil. His ribs burst apart, limbs twisted beneath the collapsing mass of flesh, and the broad steel drove what remained of him into the paving with a deafening crash. Stone cracked beneath the impact, dust shook loose from the surrounding walls, and blood sprayed across the boots of the horrified Guardsmen only a few paces away.
Where a man had stood moments earlier lay an unrecognisable ruin of broken bones, torn uniform and pulped flesh, flattened so thoroughly beneath the sword that little remained of his human shape. One boot gave a final, involuntary twitch before falling still.
Oskar stepped over the remains and lunged straight into the firing line.
The seven surviving Guardsmen recoiled at once. The three still kneeling scrambled to their feet while the four standing behind them stumbled backwards, their rifles tangling in the narrow corridor as they desperately tried to put some distance between themselves and the approaching monster. There was no room to withdraw in good order, and before they could untangle themselves, Oskar was upon them.
One Guardsman thrust his bayonet towards a gap beneath the black armour, but Oskar knocked the rifle aside and smashed his armoured fist into the man's face. His skull broke like a plaster mask beneath a hammer, scattering teeth, bone and blood across the corridor wall. Before the body had even fallen, Oskar brought his greatsword around in a shortened, brutal swing that caught another soldier across the chest. The broad steel crushed his upper body like a wooden crate beneath a wagon wheel, driving shattered ribs through his tunic and hurling him sideways against the stone. A third Guardsman managed to thrust his bayonet towards Oskar's throat, only for the vertebra-like pommel to strike him across the jaw with enough force to twist his head almost completely around.
What followed was less a fight than a slaughter. The Guardsmen fought back desperately, stabbing at the joints of Oskar's armour, swinging their rifles and throwing themselves against him whenever he came within reach. Yet every attempt ended almost as soon as it began. His gauntlets broke whatever they struck, and each movement of the enormous sword sent another man crashing to the floor. The blade was almost too large for the confined passage, repeatedly striking the walls as Oskar forced it through the soldiers, tearing chunks of masonry loose and showering the struggling men with stone and mortar.
Within moments, the corridor had become a slaughterhouse. Rifles shattered, bodies collapsed, and blood spread across the stones as Oskar tore through the remaining Guardsmen. Kallionen watched in horror as his firing line disintegrated before his eyes, each desperate attempt to resist ending in another brutal death. He began backing towards the northwestern tower entrance, scarcely able to believe how quickly his men were being butchered.
Then a scream rose above the carnage, and Kallionen instinctively threw himself aside as a Guardsman came hurtling straight towards him. The man flew past almost horizontally, still screaming, before his shoulder smashed into the upper stone doorframe with a sickening crack. His body twisted violently around the impact and spun through the opening, crashing into the reinforcements inside the circular room. Two soldiers went down beneath him, their rifles clattering across the floor.
Kallionen scrambled through the doorway and forced his way behind the line of Guardsmen inside the circular tower room, nearly stumbling over the men knocked down by the flying body. "Form up! Get up, damn you!" he bellowed, pointing towards the corridor. "Rifles up! Fire! Fire!"
The Guardsmen hesitated only a moment. Beyond the entrance, screams mingled with the crashes of steel against masonry, while stone dust and smoke rolled through the doorway. Their rifles thundered almost together, muzzle flashes lighting the chamber as bullets tore into the haze. Fresh smoke spread across their sights, concealing whatever stood beyond the threshold.
Before the echoes had faded, Oskar's sword came hurtling through the doorway.
The enormous blade flew point-first like a spear hurled by a siege engine, striking the kneeling Guardsman at the centre of the formation through the face. Steel split his skull and tore into his upper body before punching through the lower chest of the standing man behind him. The momentum carried both backwards, their bodies folding around the blade until its point crashed into the floor. Blood sprayed across their comrades as the two men collapsed together, impaled upon the same weapon.
The Guardsmen recoiled, stumbling over the falling bodies and one another. Before they could recover, Oskar burst through the doorway like a battering ram. Rifles discharged at point-blank range as black armour drove into the opening. One shot tore through a comrade's shoulder; another struck Oskar's cuirass so close that sparks sprayed back into the shooter's face.
Oskar dropped low, planted one gauntlet against the floor and swept his armoured leg through the Guardsmen crowded before him. His shin struck their knees like a swinging iron beam, shattering bones and tearing joints as men were swept violently off their feet. Rifles flew from their hands, bodies collided, and within an instant the soldiers lay sprawled across the stones in a tangled heap of broken legs and screaming men.
Oskar rose while they were still falling. One Guardsman, his leg shattered beneath him, desperately tried to crawl away, dragging himself across the floor on his elbows. He had barely moved when Oskar's boot struck him in the midsection, folding his body around the impact before launching him across the room. His shoulders struck the curved wall first, followed by his head with a sickening crack. Blood burst from his mouth, and he slid down the stonework beneath a dark smear, motionless.
Another Guardsman had managed to regain his feet and was struggling to raise his bayonet when Oskar came towards him, stepping over the wounded men writhing across the floor. In his haste to reach the standing soldier, the black knight planted one enormous armoured boot directly onto the head of a Guardsman lying in his path. The skull burst beneath his weight with a thick, wet crunch, bone and brain spilling across the stones as the unfortunate man's body convulsed once and fell still.
Oskar did not even notice. Already shifting his weight onto the planted foot, he drove his other leg forward in a devastating straight kick that caught the standing Guardsman squarely in the chest. The blow struck like the front of a speeding motorcar, crushing the rifle against his ribs and launching him backwards into the wall. His chest collapsed with a sound like green timber splitting, and he slid down the stonework coughing blood, his mouth opening and closing around breaths his shattered lungs could no longer draw.
Another lunged from the side, driving his bayonet beneath Oskar's raised arm. The point scraped across a plate and caught against the padding before a black gauntlet closed around his throat. Oskar tore him from the floor and swung him into the approaching soldiers, one-handed, like a flail made of flesh and uniform.
The screaming body knocked two men off their feet. Oskar swung him back, driving his head across another Guardsman's face and breaking the man's nose and jaw in a spray of teeth and blood. Then he hurled his makeshift weapon upwards.
The Guardsman struck the vaulted ceiling with his back and shoulders, limbs flung wide against the stone. His body folded around the impact, ribs bursting through his tunic as blood splashed across the plaster. He rebounded and came apart on the way down, torn flesh and broken bone falling through the candlelight before the remains struck the floor.
Kallionen threw himself aside. A shard of bone clipped his sleeve, and warm blood splashed across his cheek. He wiped at it without looking, smearing it over the drying streaks already there. His mouth opened to shout, but nothing came.
The room had become a butcher's shed. Chairs lay shattered beneath bodies, rifles had broken under boots and armour, and wounded men crawled through blood that made their hands slip against the stones. A fallen candle had caught the cloth hanging from the damaged table, its flames creeping upward through the smoke. Among the wreckage stood Oskar, his black armour powdered white by masonry and streaked red with blood, his breathing rasping through the skull helm.
Kallionen stepped backwards and caught his heel against a discarded rifle. He glanced down, then snatched it up, scarcely aware of what he was doing. His trembling hands found the familiar mechanism. He dragged the bolt back, slammed it forward to chamber a fresh round, and pulled the stock firmly into his shoulder, wincing as pain flared through his injured ribs.
Across the ruined chamber, Oskar bent towards his greatsword, its blade still driven through the bodies of two Guardsmen and embedded in the floor beneath them. Kallionen raised the sights towards the black skull. As the giant closed a gauntlet around the hilt and began to wrench the weapon free, the colonel tightened his finger against the trigger.
The rifle cracked.
At that very instant, the skull-faced helmet shifted sharply aside. The bullet passed through the space Oskar's head had occupied and smashed into the wall beyond, scattering plaster across the stones. There was no metallic clang, no spark against the armour—only that slight movement, made without so much as a glance towards the rifle, as though the monster had somehow known the shot was coming.
Kallionen stood frozen, the rifle still pressed against his shoulder. He had aimed directly at the skull. The giant had been occupied with his sword, seemingly unaware of the weapon trained upon him. Yet at the precise instant Kallionen fired, Oskar had moved aside.
Had he somehow sensed the shot? Known that the bullet was coming?
The thought was absurd. Impossible. And yet Kallionen had seen it happen with his own eyes.
Then the black skull turned towards him, and those cold blue eyes found his own.
"Voi vittu…"
Terror seized Kallionen. He stumbled backwards, fumbling desperately with the rifle bolt as Oskar gripped his greatsword and wrenched it free from the floor and the two Guardsmen impaled upon it. Their mutilated bodies slid from the blood-soaked blade and collapsed onto the stones. The black knight straightened and began advancing, each heavy footstep echoing through the ruined chamber.
Kallionen scrambled backwards, still struggling to work the bolt with fingers that scarcely obeyed him. He had barely managed to pull it open when his back struck the wall. Looking up with wide, terrified eyes, he found Oskar already towering over him, the enormous sword rising towards his shoulder.
For one dreadful instant, it was as though Kallionen stood beneath a guillotine, watching its terrible blade being raised for his execution. He knew what was coming. The monster was going to cleave him in half, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Oskar raised the greatsword high above him, the enormous blade sweeping upwards with such force that a rush of displaced air struck Kallionen across the face. The colonel stared helplessly at the black steel poised overhead. A thin, pitiful sound escaped his throat as terror finally overwhelmed him. His bladder emptied involuntarily, hot urine soaking his trousers as his knees buckled beneath him. He collapsed heavily onto his backside against the wall just as Oskar brought the sword down.
The enormous blade descended towards the place his head had occupied, but its very length betrayed the stroke. Before the cutting edge could reach him, the upper portion of the weapon struck the inward curve of the masonry with a deafening crash. Yet Oskar's monstrous strength continued driving the blade downward, tearing through plaster and stone. Blocks split beneath the impact, mortar burst from their joints, and fragments of shattered masonry rained across Kallionen as the greatsword carved a deep wound through the ancient wall before finally becoming wedged in the broken stone directly above his head.
Dust blasted across his face, and a flying stone chip sliced open his cheek. He hunched instinctively beneath the trapped blade, his rifle still clutched across his lap, while loose mortar and fragments of broken stone rained down around him.
For half a heartbeat, both men froze.
Kallionen stared up at the enormous sword wedged in the wall scarcely a hand's breadth above his head. Oskar jerked at the hilt, but the weapon refused to move. As he leaned forward to wrench it free, the nylon beneath his helmet stretched above the rim of his gorget.
"Perkele!"
With one final, desperate battle cry, Kallionen lurched sideways clear of the trapped blade and rose, thrusting his bayonet upwards with every ounce of strength he possessed. The steel tore through the black nylon, struck Oskar's exposed neck—and stopped.
The sensation was like trying to drive a bayonet into the trunk of an ancient oak. The point pierced the skin, drawing a thin line of dark blood, but the immense muscles beneath resisted the steel with impossible strength. Kallionen shoved harder, his arms trembling violently, yet the blade would go no farther.
Then Oskar looked down at him. The pale eyes within the skull narrowed, and Kallionen felt his blood turn cold.
Oh God.
Oskar released the trapped greatsword and seized the rifle barrel in one enormous gauntlet. With a savage wrench, he tore the bayonet from his neck and ripped the weapon from Kallionen's grasp as though snatching a toy from a child. He hurled it across the chamber, where it struck the far wall with a tremendous crack.
Then Oskar roared. The sound erupted from the skull-faced helmet like the bellow of some enormous wounded beast, so deep and furious that Kallionen felt it vibrating through his chest. His hands flew upwards instinctively, but before he could do anything more, the black giant surged forward.
Oskar slammed into him with the force of a charging bull.
The enormous black mass of him crushed Kallionen against the wall, shattering ribs and driving the remaining air from his lungs. The ancient masonry, already fractured by the greatsword embedded above them, cracked violently beneath the impact. Stone blocks shifted, mortar burst from their joints, and the entire section buckled under Oskar's tremendous weight.
Then the wall gave way.
Both men crashed through the collapsing stonework in an avalanche of masonry and dust. For one impossible instant, Kallionen found himself falling through empty air, the small square courtyard several metres below rushing towards him. He glimpsed a narrow paved pathway, low bushes and patches of dark grass between the stones.
Then he struck the ground.
His back smashed against the paving, his skull cracking violently against the stone as the impact shattered what remained of his ribs. Blood burst from his mouth, and for the briefest instant he lay staring upwards, his broken body refusing to obey him.
Before another thought could form, Oskar landed on top of him.
The immense weight crushed Kallionen against the paving like a falling millstone. His chest collapsed completely, ribs and spine shattering together as flesh and bone gave way beneath the black armour. The impact flattened his body against the stones with such tremendous force that scarcely anything recognisable remained of Colonel Arvid Mikhailovich Kallionen.
Oskar rolled partly onto his side as the shattered wall continued collapsing above them. Great chunks of masonry crashed into the courtyard, breaking against the paving and scattering fragments through the surrounding bushes. Dust billowed across the little square, whitening the colonel's mangled remains.
Another tremendous crack sounded overhead. The greatsword tore free from the crumbling wall and plunged through the dust, its point striking the pathway scarcely a few paces from Oskar. Steel split stone with a deafening clang, and for an instant the weapon stood embedded in the paving before toppling sideways into the bushes.
For several seconds, the clatter of settling rubble mingled with the faint crackling of flames within the ruined tower. High above, the cries of wounded men echoed from the gaping breach.
Amid the wreckage lay Oskar, half-buried beneath broken masonry, his black armour dented, scraped and streaked with blood. The shallow wound in his neck still bled, a dark trickle running across his gorget and down the raised ribs of his breastplate. His chest heaved, each ragged breath rasping through the skull-faced helmet.
Then a black gauntlet struck the paving.
With a low, furious growl, Oskar drew one knee beneath himself and began forcing his immense body upwards. Broken stones slid from his shoulders and crashed around him. Every movement was laboured, and blood still dripped from beneath his helmet.
Yet the fury in those cold blue eyes had not diminished.
And there, amid the drifting dust, shattered masonry and mangled remains of Colonel Arvid Mikhailovich Kallionen, the Iron Prince rose once more.