Salacgrīva harbor was full of fear.
Fishermen, merchants, dockhands, women, boys, and newly sworn Red Turbans stood along the pier and the wet harbor road, all staring out across the Gulf of Riga. The clouds had thinned, and the sea lay calmer than it had any right to be, broken only by small waves pushed in by a light western wind. In the distance, smoke trailed from a Russian warship and drifted low across the pale sky.
The ship moved slowly beyond the harbor mouth. That was what frightened the fishermen most. Because she was not passing by, she was working.
At her stern, tiny black shapes of sea mines dropped one after another into the water.
The young Red Turbans had seen her some time earlier and had already sent word to the town square. Their task now was simple: watch, report any change, and try not to look as terrified as everyone else.
They failed at the last part.
On the pier, several of them stared through field glasses taken from dead Russian soldiers. One young man held a brass telescope in shaking hands, trying to make out the distant hull through the evening light.
"What ship is that?" he asked. "Can anyone read the name on her side?"
No one answered.
Then a rough voice came from behind them, "Give me that."
The young Red Turban turned, startled.
An old fisherman pushed through the men without asking permission. He was thin as driftwood, all bone, beard, and sea-weathered skin, with yellow teeth clenched around a large cigarette that had gone damp at the end. His beard was salted white, his back slightly bent, and his eyes still sharp with the kind of old hatred only the sea gave men who had survived it too long.
The young man hesitated. The old fisherman snatched the telescope from his hands anyway.
"Let someone who knows ships look."
He lifted it to his eye and stared across the gulf.
The others watched him.
For several breaths he said nothing. Smoke from the cigarette curled upward beside his cheek. Then his expression went still.
"That," the old man said, "is no common destroyer."
The young men leaned closer. So did the civilians behind them.
The old fisherman almost laughed, though there was no humor in it.
"That is Novik," he said in thick Russian. "The Tsar's newest and most modern destroyer."
The name passed through the pier like cold wind, some knew it, most did not. But all heard the way he said it.
"She is the Tsar's fastest hunter in these waters," the old man continued. "Fastest destroyer in the Baltic, some say. Over thirty-four knots if her engines are given their head. Four 102-millimeter guns, large enough to break a house from the sea. Four twin 457-millimeter torpedo tubes. At least fifty mines aboard her, and she is laying them now."
He lowered the telescope slightly.
"And near one hundred and forty men aboard who know their trade better than most in the Russian navy."
He spat into the harbor.
"If she finishes what she is doing, this harbor is dead. Any fishing boat leaving, any supply barge coming, any wounded transport, any ship foolish enough to try the channel will face death beneath the water. And there will be no warning then, just a mine under the keel, and then the bottom of the sea."
One of the Red Turbans swallowed and tightened his grip around the folded dragon banner in his hands.
"How far is she?" he asked. "Surely she will not bombard us here. This was a Russian town only this morning."
The old fisherman gave him a flat look.
"You think that matters?"
The young man said nothing.
"She is four, maybe five kilometers out," the old man said. "Close enough to threaten us. Far enough that her guns will not hit cleanly unless God is feeling Russian today. So yes, boy, we still have a chance of living."
The Red Turban looked down at the banner in his hands.
He had been sent to raise it over the harbor, but now the sight of the destroyer froze him. The cloth felt heavier than it had before. The black two-headed dragon, symbol of the new kingdom, hung limp in his grip as if waiting to be born or buried.
"May God stop that monster of the sea," he whispered.
The old fisherman snorted.
"And how will God do that?"
Then they heard fast, heavy footsteps.
Bare feet slapped against the wet stones of the harbor road with impossible force, each step splashing water from the puddles. Men turned. Some moved aside before they even understood why.
Oskar came running, barefoot, half-dressed, sword on his back, moving toward the sea with terrifying purpose.
Men stepped aside at once.
The young Red Turban holding the dragon banner barely had time to blink before Oskar reached him.
"I'll borrow this," Oskar said, plucking the flag from his arms. "Thank you."
Then he kept going.
"Your Highness?" someone called.
Oskar reached the end of the pier and jumped. The wood shook beneath the force of it.
For one breath, he flew over the water, body stretched forward, the dragon banner clenched in one hand and the black sword across his back. Then he struck the gulf with a heavy crash, sending white spray bursting upward.
Everyone stared.
The young Red Turban stood with his mouth open, unable to form a word. The old fisherman slowly raised the telescope again. Through the glass, he followed the long, violent disturbance cutting beneath the surface. It was not drifting. It was not fading. It was driving straight toward the distant Russian destroyer.
His face went pale.
"My God," he muttered. "Why is he heading for Novik?"
The young Red Turban swallowed. Then, with sudden trembling certainty, he said, "He is going to board it."
The old fisherman lowered the telescope just enough to stare at him.
Then he looked back to the sea, to the distant warship, and to the impossible line still racing across the water.
"That is impossible."
But the water did not care. The line kept moving toward Novik.
Out in the Gulf of Riga, Oskar moved beneath the surface like a thing released from a weapon.
The September water was cold enough to steal breath from ordinary men. It closed around him, dark and heavy, dragging at his limbs and pulling at the ruined sword strapped across his back.
It did not slow him.
He slid through the water in silence, a long shadow cutting forward beneath the waves. For hundreds of meters he did not surface. There was no wasted motion, no hesitation, only arms, legs, and purpose.
When he finally rose, it was only to breathe. His head broke the surface, and took one breath.
Then he tied the soaked dragon banner tight around his arm and began to swim.
His legs kicked like propellers. His arms drove through the water like great oars, tearing white spray behind him with every stroke. The sea broke around his shoulders and closed again in his wake, unable to hold him, unable to keep him.
Ahead, Novik continued laying mines, utterly unaware that behind her, something was closing fast.
On her stern deck, men moved under sharp orders. Mines sat on rails like black iron eggs, wet with spray and oil, each one waiting its turn to roll into the gulf. The ship was not moving at full speed. Mine-laying demanded spacing, mapping, and precision. Her three propellers churned behind her, beating the water white. The sailors still called them screws, the old naval word for the great bronze blades that drove a ship through the sea, but there was nothing old or gentle in the force with which they tore the gulf apart. Even so, Novik held a careful pace across the harbor approach.
At her stern flew the Russian naval ensign: a white flag crossed by the blue diagonal arms of Saint Andrew, the old sea-banner of the Tsar's fleet.
Above it, sunlight broke through the thinning clouds and caught the flag in a sudden glow, turning the white cloth bright and the blue cross almost luminous against the grey sea.
Captain 2nd Rank Petr Petrovich Paletsky stood outside the bridge, one gloved hand resting on the rail as he watched the western horizon.
He was still in his early forties, young enough to feel the strain of command in his blood and old enough to know that the sea never forgave carelessness. Around him, his officers watched the water, the coast, and the sky. Some searched for submarines. Some looked for smoke that might belong to Prince Heinrich's Baltic Fleet. Others kept glancing up at the thinning clouds, half-expecting German aircraft to come screaming out of the pale evening light.
Already, this war had taught the Russian Navy caution. Small vessels had been caught in open water by submarines, aircraft, or guns they never saw until it was too late. Much of the fleet had drawn close to Saint Petersburg like a wounded animal guarding its den. But now Novik had come out into the Gulf of Riga to mine the captured coast, and every man aboard knew the risk.
They were ready, at least mentally for many dangers, but they were not ready for a man swimming toward them.
No mind aboard Novik had imagined such a thing.
Near the stern, Lieutenant Harald Graf supervised the mine party with tense precision. The black mines sat on their rails, slick with oil and spray, heavy iron spheres waiting to be rolled into the sea. Each one was checked, marked, and prepared before being sent overboard to vanish beneath the calm water.
Graf had a map in one hand and a pencil in the other, marking the next position in the line, when he glanced out over the stern.
His pencil slipped from his fingers.
At first, he saw only a disturbance in the water. A line, a shape, something moving faster than the sea around it. For one foolish instant, he thought of a seal. Then of driftwood. Then of a submarine periscope.
Then the shape dipped beneath the surface. Graf's mouth went dry.
"What is that?" a sailor asked.
Another man leaned over the rail, saw the wake, and pointed with both hands.
"Torpedo!"
The word ripped across the stern deck.
Men shouted. Boots hammered on steel. A warning bell rang. Graf seized the nearest speaking tube and yelled forward, his voice carrying through the brass pipe toward the bridge.
"Torpedo aft! Torpedo bearing aft!"
On the bridge, Captain Paletsky moved at once.
"Helm over! Increase speed! Evasive course!"
The engine telegraph clanged. Orders snapped down through the ship. The destroyer began to turn, her propellers churning harder, her stern wake widening behind her.
Captain Paletsky leaned over the bridge rail, searching the water. Then he saw it, and suddenly the wake changed course, it followed them.
For one frozen second, he went silent. No torpedo should have moved like that.
"Hard over!" Paletsky roared. "Hard over!"
On deck, men dropped low and grabbed whatever they could, already preparing for impact. Caps were clutched to heads. A mine handler threw himself flat beside the rail. Somewhere below, engines answered with a deeper growl.
Yet the shape simply vanished beneath the stern. No explosion came, nothing struck.
For two seconds, Novik waited for death.
Then the ship shuddered from below. A deep grinding shock ran up through the hull, as if something enormous had seized one of her propellers and refused to let go. Men stumbled. Steel trembled. Somewhere aft, metal screamed.
In the engine room, sailors stared in horror as the port shaft's revolutions dropped violently.
"Port shaft losing speed!"
"Steam is steady!"
"Then what is stopping it?"
The vibration worsened.
The whole shaft fought, jerked, and screamed.
A petty officer shouted before the machinery tore itself apart, "Cut steam to port! Shut it down!"
On the bridge, Paletsky roared, "What happened? Report!"
A voice came back through the speaking tube, strained and unbelieving, "Port shaft losing revolutions! We are shutting it down before the machinery breaks!"
Paletsky went pale, and for one mad instant, he imagined a torpedo caught in the screws. But that made no sense, a torpedo did not grab a propeller, a torpedo did not hold.
Then the ship lurched again. The center shaft faltered.
This time the shock was worse. A booming tremor hammered through the stern, metal resisting a force no machine aboard could explain. The destroyer yawed slightly. Men staggered across the deck. One mine rolled an inch in its cradle before two sailors threw themselves onto it and held it still with their bodies.
"Center shaft!" came the shout from below. "Center shaft dropping!"
Then the center propeller died.
A heartbeat later, the starboard shaft screamed as well, it slowed, jerked, fought, and stopped.
For a brief, terrible span of seconds, Novik ceased to be the fastest hunter in the Baltic and became a drifting hull.
No one understood.
The engine room stared at gauges. The bridge stared aft. The mine party stared at the water. Men knew, in some crude instinctive way, what sort of power lived in those propellers. They could cut sea life to pieces. They could chew timber apart. They could drive a destroyer through the gulf at speeds most ships could only envy.
And something had stopped them, one after another.
Soon men began moving aft. Gun crews turned from their weapons. Sailors came from hatches. Officers leaned from the bridge wings. Even men from below pushed upward, desperate to know whether they had struck a reef, a mine, a torpedo, or some new German weapon.
Then the sea behind the stern exploded. A column of water rose high into the evening air. And through it came a figure, huge, black sword on his back, red banner in one fist.
He rose from the gulf like something thrown up from the bottom of the world, cleared the rail, and struck the stern deck with a crash that made steel ring beneath his bare feet.
Every man turned and for a moment, no one moved.
A man stood before the stern flag, no, not a man. That was the first thought that passed through Novik's crew.
Not a man.
He was massive, broad as a bear and built with a thickness that made normal human bodies seem unfinished. His shoulders were unnaturally wide. His arms hung heavy at his sides. His neck was like a column. Water streamed from his hair, chest, and torn white trousers. The ruined sword still rested across his back, dripping black water onto the deck.
Then he unfastened it, and the sword struck the steel with a heavy sound.
Oskar turned his back to them.
Several sailors stepped back at once. The white-and-blue cross of Saint Andrew snapped above him. Beneath it, his back shifted as he breathed. Muscle, scar, and shadow moved under wet skin in ridges and valleys, forming something that looked less like flesh than a carved mask of violence. His shoulders became brows. The dark line of his spine became a nose. The great plates of his back became cheeks. The shadows beneath them opened like a mouth.
A demon's face.
It looked as if some beast were trapped beneath his skin, pressing outward, smiling at the world through his back.
One sailor crossed himself.
Another whispered, "Lord have mercy."
Graf stood frozen near the mine rails, one hand still gripping a mine cradle. His training screamed at him to shout. To order rifles. To call the gun crews. To move.
His body refused.
The thing at the stern lifted both hands to the flag rope, carefully, almost respectfully.
Oskar untied the lines holding the Russian naval ensign. The white flag with the blue diagonal cross of Saint Andrew dipped, fluttered, and came down into his hands. He did not tear it. He did not throw it into the sea. He folded it slowly, pressing white cloth and blue cross into order beneath his fingers.
Only then did he raise the red dragon banner. The soaked cloth climbed the stern line.
For a moment, it hung heavy and shapeless in the evening wind.
Then the air caught it. Red opened above Novik's stern. The black two-headed dragon spread itself where Saint Andrew had flown a moment before.
A sound moved through the deck, not a shout, a breath breaking. Every man understood what it meant. Their ship had been taken without a battle.
Only then did Oskar turn.
The men of Novik saw his face. And what they found there was not rage, not madness. Not the snarling mask of a demon come aboard to slaughter them. He smiled, gently, almost warmly. As if he had climbed from the sea to greet friends at dinner. That terrified them more than fury would have.
He took one step forward.
The sailors stepped back, all of them, not by order, not in formation, men simply moved. A rifle butt struck the deck. Someone stumbled into another man. A gun crew near the closest 102-millimeter gun shifted without raising their weapon, because the thought of firing that gun at one man standing among them seemed both necessary and impossible.
Oskar looked over them.
Young faces. Hard faces. Bearded faces. Pale faces shining with sweat despite the cold. Men in naval coats and caps. Men with knives, rifles, belts, oil-blackened hands, and the smell of machinery, rope, salt, and war clinging to them.
Trained men all of them, aboard one of the finest ships Russia possessed. And yet, in that moment, they looked to him like schoolboys trapped in a room with a bear.
No, that was unfair to bears.
It was more like a Russian bear in a kindergarten, he thought. Wonderful. That is what I have become.
His smile did not fade, and when he spoke, his Russian was clear, heavy, and calm enough to carry over the waves, the wind, and the fear.
"Germany must win this war."
No one moved.
"Therefore I will work. I will save. I will sacrifice. I will endure. And I will fight cheerfully, as if the whole issue of this great struggle depended upon me alone."
His eyes moved across them.
"Can you say the same of your Tsar? That man who believes himself chosen by God to rule? Has he stood where you stand? Has he placed his body between Russia and ruin?"
The red dragon snapped above him.
Oskar lifted one hand.
"Look upon me and ask yourselves who has truly been chosen to command this age. Him, far away behind palace walls? Or me, standing here before you?"
The words settled over the deck strangely. Some men stared in horror. Some in confusion. Some with the first dangerous flicker of belief.
No answer came.
Oskar's voice softened, but it did not weaken.
"Join me. Place your solemn fate in me, and I will work to bring not only this struggle, but one day all struggles between mankind, to an end."
For a moment, the crew remained frozen.
Then the crowd parted, as a young sailor burst through with a rifle in both hands, bayonet fixed. His cap was gone. His face was red with fear and fury, his eyes wide and wet.
"For the Tsar!" he roared. "For the Motherland! Die!"
He stopped only a few meters from Oskar, raised the rifle, and pulled the trigger.
The shot cracked across the stern deck, but Oskar had already moved. He dropped low, swept the sailor's legs from under him, and the bullet flew harmlessly into the evening sky.
For one ridiculous instant, the young man floated horizontal above the deck, rifle still in his hands, mouth open in shock.
Then Oskar caught him.
One hand closed around the sailor's ankle. The other seized his wrist. The rifle clattered uselessly to the deck. So did the folded Russian flag, falling wet at Oskar's feet.
The men of Novik gasped.
Oskar straightened, holding the sailor stretched between his hands as if the man weighed no more than a length of rope.
The young sailor screamed. Prayers tumbled from his mouth in broken whispers, but Oskar only smiled. He widened his stance. His muscles flexed, veins standing out beneath wet skin like thin cords, every carved line of his body clear in the fading light. He looked less like a man with muscles than a creature built entirely from them, layer upon layer, until no weakness had been left uncovered.
Then he lifted the sailor across himself like a grotesque sash.
"I call this technique," Oskar said pleasantly, "the Royal Dress."
No one understood the name. They only understood the sight of the Iron Prince wearing a living man as if he were a piece of clothing strapped over his body.
Then Oskar swung him, not hard enough to kill. Just hard enough to make everyone understand that he could.
The movement was fast, smooth, and horrifying. The sailor's body cut through the air like a living weapon, coat snapping, boots flinging water, his scream stretching into something thin and animal as Oskar spun him once across the stern deck.
The crew broke apart in panic. Men stumbled backward. Several threw themselves aside. One sailor fell flat on his back. Another slammed into the mine rail and nearly knocked himself senseless. Rifles were raised and then lowered again, their owners frozen by the sheer impossibility of what they were seeing.
This was not a ship. This was not an army. This was not any force the Russian Navy had trained them to face.
Oskar stopped before the sailor struck anyone. The young man hung limp, fainted from terror, force, or both. Oskar settled him across one shoulder as easily as a hunter carrying a deer. Then he looked over the crew again.
"Now then," he said, still smiling, "it is your move."
No one spoke.
The words made the whole moment worse, as if the Iron Prince believed this was some game of chess and the men of Novik were simply taking too long to choose their next piece. Yet the only move any of them could imagine was abandoning ship.
Oskar's eyes found their leader.
Captain Paletsky stood among them, pale but upright, one hand locked around a revolver. Around him, officers and sailors stood frozen in terror. One man had begun crossing himself again and again, each motion smaller than the last.
Oskar smiled at him.
"So," he said beneath the red dragon banner, his voice calm and terrible, "since none of you choose action, I ask again."
The banner snapped behind him, its black two-headed dragon spreading in the sunlight that broke through the thinning clouds.
"Will you join me, Captain, or die in the defiance of me?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"It is your move. Your free choice."
Every eye turned to Paletsky.
The captain stared at the beast before him: the impossible man standing on his stern, a faint smile on his face, a Russian sailor draped across his shoulder like a wet towel, and the foreign dragon flag flying where Saint Andrew had flown only moments before.