While his mind still circled the monetary cost of war, Oskar caught movement elsewhere below.
Farther along the river road east of the castle, the street ran close beside the dark water of the Dvina. On one side lay the river, black and cold beneath the moon. On the other rose apartment houses and warehouses, their windows blind, their doors broken open by soldiers turning them into firing positions.
The street curved there.
That curve mattered.
Behind it, hidden from the Eternal Guard still dragging furniture and crates into place, a Russian force was gathering.
Not a patrol. Not a handful of militia.
A proper body of soldiers.
A company of infantry, perhaps two hundred men, with twenty or so cavalrymen behind them, lances lowered and waiting.
Another detachment of Saint Petersburg Guardsmen, by the look of their clean coats and bearing. Young, disciplined men with polished rifles and steady backs, forming under an officer who stood before them with his sword raised, voice sharp and furious as he forced them into order.
They were not cowards.
That much was clear.
They were preparing to rush the Eternal Guard with bayonets, numbers, courage, and the oldest answer soldiers had ever trusted: a mass of bodies driven forward all at once.
Oskar looked toward the Eternal Guard position ahead of them. His men had the beginnings of a barricade, but not enough. A piano had been dragged into the street. A cabinet lay beside it. Two soldiers were carrying a table between them. Another kicked crates into place. They were working quickly, but their attention was fixed on the street before them, not the hidden curve.
They would probably hold.
Probably.
The Eternal Guard were too well trained to break easily. If the Russians came around the bend in mass, the machine gun would speak, the carbines would hammer, grenades would bounce and burst, and the river road would become another butcher's lane.
But probably was not enough.
Thus, Oskar let go of the cross.
Stone cracked beneath his armored boots as he pushed away from the church crown. For one impossible heartbeat, the Iron Prince dropped through open air.
Then he hit the roof of the nearest apartment building.
The impact boomed through the structure like a falling safe. Tiles burst outward. Rafters groaned. Dust puffed from the upper windows. Somewhere below, glass shattered. The building had been built to carry winter snow, and that alone saved it from collapsing under more than three hundred kilograms of man, armor, sword, and wrath.
Oskar did not pause, he ran.
Heavy steps pounded across the roof, each one breaking tiles and sending fragments skittering into the street below. He leapt a narrow alley and landed on the next roof hard enough to crack the chimney from base to crown. Then another roof. Then another.
Soon enough, below the Russians heard him, not soft footsteps, but impacts. A hard thunder moving above them.
Men at the curve looked up, rifles half-raised, faces pale in the moonlight.
"What is that?"
"Above us!"
"It's him—the Iron Prince!"
Oskar reached the roof edge above them.
For one heartbeat he stood there, black against the sky, red cape snapping behind him, left arm lifting.
Mounted along that arm was the brutal iron block he had designed for moments exactly like this: six short grenade tubes fixed beneath armored plating, with the firing mechanism built into the gauntlet.
The Russians aimed up, but too late.
Oskar crouched, braced his right hand against the launcher, and fired three times, three thumps sounded.
The grenades dropped into the crowded curve.
The first explosion tore open the front rank and threw men backward into the river wall. The second burst among the men packed behind them, turning coats, rifles, faces, and hands into a red spray. The third struck near the cavalry and filled the street with smoke, blood, and screaming horses.
The formation broke at once.
Horses reared. Men stumbled. Officers shouted to restore order.
Then Oskar jumped.
A young Guardsman, his face blackened by smoke and wet with the blood of his friends, saw the dark shape falling toward him. He screamed and fired upward.
The shot missed.
Desperate, he thrust his rifle and bayonet toward the descending giant, as if steel on a stick could hold back a collapsing building.
Oskar landed on him, the bayonet bent first, then the rifle, then the man.
Cobblestones cracked beneath them. The Guardsman disappeared under black armor and force as Oskar's fists struck the street on either side of him. Dust, blood, stone chips, and fragments of bone blasted outward in a ring. Men nearby were knocked from their feet. One struck the river wall. Another crashed shoulder-first into a doorway and folded into the dark.
The Russians tried to aim, but they could not.
Smoke filled the curve. Dust hung low and thick. Men stumbled into one another. Horses screamed. Officers shouted. Rifles pointed everywhere and nowhere.
And in the middle of them moved Oskar like a black bull in armor.
His first kick drove one man into a cluster of three others. All four crashed backward into the wall, rifles snapping, ribs cracking, mouths opening in blood and shock.
Another Guardsman lunged through the smoke.
Oskar caught him by the coat, pivoted, and swung him like a living club. The man's body smashed across two Russian faces in quick succession, then crashed into a third soldier's chest hard enough to drive the breath from him. Before any of them could recover, Oskar hurled the Guardsman over the heads of the formation like a soaked blanket flung from a giant's hand.
The body struck the side of a horse farther back with a heavy, wet impact.
The animal reared, screaming, and threw its rider hard onto the cobblestones.
Next to Oskar, a rifle cracked at close range.
The bullet sparked from Oskar's gauntlet and ricocheted into another Russian's cheek. The man shrieked, hands flying to his face as blood and teeth spilled through his fingers.
Another soldier fired blindly and blew three fingers from the hand of the man opposite of him.
"Stop firing!" someone screamed. "Stop firing!"
Oskar's boot found the man with the ruined hand.
The kick drove into his ribs and lifted him off the ground before the iron foot tore through fully. He flew sideways into two more Guardsmen, all three crashing down in a heap of broken breath and splintered bone.
Then Oskar surged forward and punched another Guardsman in the chest.
His armored fist drove through the man's sternum with a wet, cracking impact. The force carried through him and into the soldier behind, breaking that man as well and hurling both backward. Bone fragments burst outward like shrapnel, striking nearby faces and hands. One man fell screaming with a piece of another man's rib lodged beneath his eye.
Oskar tore his hand free and moved again.
A bayonet scraped across his side.
He answered with an elbow to the attacker's jaw. The man's head snapped farther than God had ever meant a man's head to turn, and he dropped bonelessly into the smoke.
A pistol flashed near Oskar's hip.
The shot struck the soldier Oskar had already seized by the belt, punching into the man instead of him.
A rifle used like a club crashed against Oskar's back.
He turned and backhanded the attacker with casual brutality. The blow lifted the man from his feet and sent him flying several meters into a window frame. He vanished through it in a burst of glass, shutters, and splintered wood.
Then, out of madness, desperation, or some final instinct of courage, the Guardsmen tried to dogpile him.
Oskar went low.
One gauntleted hand struck the cobbles. His armored leg swept around in a brutal arc.
The sweep hit shins and knees with the force of a scythe through wet reeds. One man's lower leg bent sideways and nearly tore free at the boot. Another flipped into the air, screaming. Three more went down together, knees folding, rifles flying, bodies tumbling into the men behind them.
Oskar rose with his sword in hand.
The great blade came free from his back in one black arc, dark steel flashing in the moonlight.
Then the lane became impossible as the sword moved like a slab of steel swung by a crane. The blunt force sent men flying. The edge split bodies apart. One Guardsman had his legs kicked from beneath him by Oskar and went cartwheeling into the air, only for the sword to catch him mid-spin and divide him cleanly. Both halves flew in different directions, blood raining across the street, the walls, the river stones, and the faces of the men still alive to see it.
Farther east, beyond the broken infantry, the lancers formed.
Brave men.
Doomed men.
They lowered their long weapons and charged as the Guardsmen scrambled aside. Their officer must have believed momentum could still save the moment. Perhaps he thought horse, lance, and discipline might drive through the chaos before it swallowed the whole column.
Or perhaps he no longer thought at all.
Oskar turned toward them.
He drove his sword through the back of a Guardsman trying to crawl away, pinning the man to the cobbles like an insect. Then he crouched, raised his left arm, and pressed the trigger.
The fourth tube spoke.
Thump.
The grenade landed among the horses.
By artillery standards, the explosion was nothing.
To horses, it was the end of the world.
They were not machines. They were panic wrapped in skin, muscle, bone, lungs, and huge terrified eyes.
One horse simply folded, its front half vanishing beneath itself as if the earth had yanked it down by the chest. Its rider flew over its neck and struck the cobblestones face-first, helmet, teeth, and nose all arriving at different conclusions.
Another horse screamed as shrapnel ripped through its foreleg. The limb snapped sideways with a wet, obscene crack, and the animal went into a wild half-flip, all hooves, blood, and flailing weight. It crashed down on top of its rider and flattened him beneath the saddle with a sound like a butcher slapping meat onto a block.
A third bolted in pure madness. It smashed through two infantrymen, dragging its rider sideways in the saddle, lance bobbing uselessly like some ridiculous parade stick, and then hurled itself straight over the river wall. Horse, rider, lance, and dignity vanished into the black Dvina with one enormous splash.
The rest of the cavalry dissolved into chaos.
Horses reared, slipped, collided, screamed, kicked men in the face, and crashed into their own infantry. One rider was thrown backward into a knot of Guardsmen and took three of them down like bowling pins. Another horse spun in panic, causing it's rider to accidentally drive his lance through the coat of a man trying desperately to get out of the way.
A few still came through.
Oskar ripped his sword free from the pinned Guardsman and charged straight at them.
Thus the fighting in and around Riga went on without pause.
Meanwhile, south of the city, beyond the Western Dvina, the German armored fist waited in darkness, mud, and engine smoke.
The command post stood on a slight rise behind the artillery line, close enough that every gunshot seemed to strike the chest before the ears heard it. Ahead, rows of German guns flashed and recoiled in the night, their crews working like men inside a furnace: load, step back, fire, open, clear, load again. Beyond them, farther forward in the dark, the 1st Armored Division waited.
One hundred and fifty tanks sat in long, low ranks, their steel hulls beaded with dew, exhaust pipes coughing faintly into the cold. Behind them stood two hundred and sixty armored trucks, packed with infantry, ammunition, tools, stretchers, engineers, signalmen, and all the ugly necessities that followed a breakthrough. Men tightened straps, checked rifle bolts, adjusted helmets, swallowed dry fear, and stared toward the distant flashes over Riga.
They were waiting for the barrage to end.
That was the plan.
Five minutes of artillery, then advance.
A short, brutal stunning blow. No long bombardment. No wasted hour of warning. Five minutes to break the forward Russian positions, then Rommel's armor would move.
Lieutenant General Hans von Seeckt, commander of XVII Corps, stood near the map table with his staff, watching the timing markers and listening to reports. Beside the armored division's forward command car, Erwin Rommel stood over a map spread across the hood, one hand gripping a field telephone, the other stabbing at roads, trench lines, and timing marks as officers hurried around him.
And near the trees, under guard, Shadowmane waited in full armour.
Even the Black Legion men kept their distance from him.
They had faced Russian artillery, cavalry charges, night raids, burning villages, and the screaming chaos of modern war. Yet the great black stallion made seasoned soldiers shift their feet and avoid standing too close. He was too large, too intelligent, too viciously alive. Nearly a ton even before the armor, a towering male stallion black as wet coal, with a neck like a carved pillar and shoulders that looked built to break gates. His black barding made him seem less like a horse than a siege engine that had chosen to breathe.
Oskar had given Rommel one simple order.
Take care of him.
Rommel had accepted the order seriously, because no man with sense treated anything belonging to Oskar as ordinary. Especially not Shadowmane.
The stallion stood bound by a heavy iron chain looped around a thick tree trunk. His armored head was lifted toward Riga. His ears lay back. His nostrils flared. Firelight and artillery flashes slid over his barding in red fragments.
He smelled powder, oil, wet soil, sweat, iron, and human fear.
He heard the guns. Saw the flashes. Felt the violence trembling in the ground.
Most of all, he knew his master was there and he was not.
Rommel's men barked into field telephones and radios. Small, busy, necessary men with maps, watches, flags, and orders. Useful men, perhaps. Brave men, perhaps.
But they were not Oskar.
They were not the one who laid a heavy hand against his neck, fed him apples, wrestled with him in the yard like some overgrown child too old for such things, and spoke to him as a comrade rather than a beast.
Shadowmane pulled against the chain.
Iron creaked.
The nearest orderly went pale and backed away at once.
No one reached for the reins.
No one was stupid enough.
They treated Shadowmane with a wary respect that sat only a little above fear. He was not the biggest horse in the world, nor the heaviest, but there was something wrong in the best possible way about his build—some unnatural thickness through the neck, shoulders, chest, and haunches, some brutal density of bone and muscle that made him stronger than any horse alive had any right to be.
He had been chained to a great oak at the edge of the command post, an old tree with a trunk broad enough that two men would have struggled to get their arms around it. The chain about his neck was not some light tether, but a heavy iron length fit for hauling machinery or restraining an animal most men would have called impossible to restrain in the first place.
Shadowmane snorted hot breath into the cold night air and stared toward Riga, toward the fire and thunder and the black-armored fool of a master who had, once again, thrown himself into danger before anyone else could reach it.
He stamped once.
The ground shuddered.
He stamped again.
Mud jumped beneath the armored hoof.
Then he leaned into the chain.
The links went tight. Leather strained. The oak groaned softly but held.
"Sir," one officer said, voice thinning, "the horse—"
Shadowmane kicked and his rear armored hoof slammed into the trunk.
The sound was like an axe blow delivered by a cannon.
The oak cracked deep, and every man nearby froze. For a moment even the artillery seemed far away.
Then Shadowmane lunged again.
The split in the trunk widened with a hard ripping groan. Wood fibers tore. The old oak bent, shuddered, and then broke apart under the sheer violence of him. Its roots ripped loose from the wet earth in a spray of mud and torn grass, and the whole tree toppled sideways with a crashing roar.
That was when the men lost their composure.
"Move!"
"Get out of the way!"
"Christ—down!"
Rommel himself threw himself sideways into the mud as the falling oak smashed down where he had been standing only a heartbeat before. Officers stumbled over one another. Orderlies scattered. One signalman lost his cap and his dignity in the same instant.
Shadowmane did not so much escape as erupt.
He surged out of the wreckage like a black avalanche, dragging broken chain and splintered wood for a few strides before they tore free behind him. His barding flashed under the artillery glare. His armored hooves ripped up mud in great clods. He thundered forward through the command post, past men, maps, and motorcars, magnificent and insane, heading straight for Riga.
Rommel pushed himself up from the mud, staring after him in disbelief.
For one stunned heartbeat, the commander of the 1st Armored Division could only watch the great stallion run alone toward a modern battlefield.
An officer beside him shouted, half horrified and half confused, "Sir! What do we do? Shadowmane is gone!"
Rommel spat mud, then looked down at his pocket watch.
The barrage had not quite finished. The plan had been to wait for the last of the five-minute bombardment, then unleash the full armored assault.
The guns were still speaking.
The proper time had not yet come.
Shadowmane, of course, did not care.
Rommel stared at the watch for half a second longer, then snapped it shut and looked to his side.
Nearby stood Lieutenant General Hans von Seeckt of XVII Corps, who had seen the same thing everyone else had just seen: a monstrous black warhorse break an oak tree with one kick and charge for the city like a herald of lunacy. Rommel met his eye.
For a moment, neither man said anything.
Then Seeckt gave one short nod.
Yes.
Rommel smiled.
"Well," he said, "it is a little early."
He looked toward Riga again, toward the dark shape of Shadowmane vanishing into smoke and distant flashes.
"But so be it."
He drew himself up and raised his voice until it cut through artillery thunder, engines, and shouting men.
"We charge!"
Heads turned.
Rommel pointed after the stallion.
"We follow that horse. That glorious horse!"
Something like disbelief flickered across several faces.
Then disbelief became excitement, and excitement became something worse and better, "Faith."
Rommel's fist struck his chest.
"For God and Fatherland—until death!"
Seeckt answered at once, voice like iron.
"For God and Fatherland—until death!"
The salute spread in a wave. Men straightened where they had crouched or stumbled. Hands struck chests. Officers roared the words. Tank crews shouted them from hatches. Infantry took them up in armored trucks and behind gun shields.
"For God and Fatherland—until death!"
"Mount up!"
"Engines on!"
"Forward!"
"Follow Shadowmane!"
"Follow that horse to Riga!"
Then the line came alive.
Tank engines roared awake in a long, violent wave. Tracks bit into mud. Armored trucks lurched forward with infantry packed inside, men hauling doors shut, locking latches, pulling down hatches, checking bolts one last time in the shaking dark. Drivers gunned engines. Officers blew whistles and swung arms. Men rose from trenches to watch in amazement as the armored beast of Oskar himself went first, charging ahead towards shell flashes and smoke.
Shadowmane thundered forward over torn ground, past tree lines, over shallow trenches, through the edge of no-man's-land, black barding gleaming and chain fragments still clattering from his neck. Men in the forward positions turned and stared as he passed, some crossing themselves, some laughing, some shouting in disbelief.
And behind him, while the last shells of the bombardment were still falling, the German armored fist surged into motion.
Led into battle by one glorious, deranged horse, the whole machine of steel and men began its charge on Riga.