Lieutenant General Leonid Artamonov stood among the wet trees with a pair of binoculars pressed to his face.
The morning was grey, raw, and dripping. The rain of the night had passed, but the earth still held it. Mist clung low over the fields, mingling with powder smoke and the first pale heat of dawn. Ahead, through that shifting veil, lay the German line before Soldau.
Or enough of it for him to judge.
Beyond the open ground, the enemy trenches cut across the landscape in three dark belts, each line broken by shell craters and protected by torn stretches of barbed wire. Russian shells were bursting steadily before the town and along the trench mouths nearest it, throwing up wet soil in heavy black fountains. Here and there the wire had been blown open, not everywhere, but enough—enough for a determined man to slip through.
Artamonov lowered the glasses slightly and smiled.
Many men—foreigners especially, and fools most of all—liked to sneer at the Russian attack. They called it crude. Primitive. A mass of peasants driven forward by officers too stupid to think.
He almost laughed.
They understood nothing.
There was method in this. There was order. There was discipline. There was timing.
The old Russian charge had not died after the Russo Japanese war. It had been studied. corrected. hardened. What looked to outsiders like madness was, in truth, simply a style of battle they lacked the stomach to understand. It was not a blind stampede. It was a sequence. Pressure. Skirmishers. Suppression. Weight. Then shock.
And now, on this damp East Prussian field, he would show the Germans exactly how it worked.
He lifted one gloved hand and pointed forward.
The officer beside him understood instantly.
A whistle cut the mist.
At first, nothing seemed to happen.
Then movement rippled across the tree line.
The first skirmish elements emerged in loose order, not as a wall of men, but in stretched intervals, each section moving by itself, then the next, and then the next again, until the whole front seemed to wake in sequence. What had begun as a few scattered figures became a broad advancing wave—thin, spread out, and purposeful.
To Artamonov's left and right, as far as he could see through smoke and trees, the same thing was happening. Skirmishers were spilling forward all along his sector, flowing over the wet ground in a grey-green line that was not dense enough to be a target and not weak enough to be ignored.
Behind them, rifle fire crackled from other Russian positions farther down the front, where the artillery was not firing. In those sectors, men were shooting hard and steadily toward the German line, not to kill so much as to keep heads down. Where there were no guns, rifles would do. Where there were too few machine guns, a mass of rifles could still serve the same purpose for a while.
And behind the skirmishers waited the real blow.
In the trees behind Artamonov stood battalions packed in depth, bayonets fixed, ranks dressed as tightly as the terrain allowed. More men stood farther back still—reserves, fresh units, supporting battalions, the weight that would be thrown in when the line ahead had been properly softened. Down the line, cavalry waited as well, ready to ride if the German defense cracked open.
The fog helped.
It blurred the field. It softened movement. It hid the exact shape of things. Even Artamonov could only catch fragments of the enemy—an occasional black helmet, a dark shape in a trench, a glimpse of movement near the edge of town. But that was enough.
More importantly, the Germans were not firing back with any real strength.
Excellent.
Pinned, he thought.
Or stunned.
Either was acceptable.
He watched the skirmishers continue forward, calm and measured, and soon enough they reached roughly the halfway point across the field.
That was when the guns behind him began to fall silent.
Not all at once.
One battery first.
Then another.
Then another after that.
The rolling thunder that had been hammering the German front began to break apart into gaps, until what remained was only scattered firing and then, all too quickly, almost nothing.
Artamonov's smile disappeared.
He lowered the binoculars.
"What is this?"
The officer nearest him turned sharply. "General?"
"Why have the guns stopped?" Artamonov snapped. "I gave no order to cease fire."
The officer looked confused, then turned to listen, as if the silence itself might explain things.
"Sir…"
"Well?"
The man hesitated. "It seems… the batteries have exhausted their ready ammunition."
Artamonov stared at him.
"Exhausted?"
"Yes, General."
His face darkened. "It has not even been three minutes."
The officer swallowed. "I will confirm it at once."
"Do so. And tell them to hurry. I want suppressive fire resumed immediately. Immediately. And keep the machine guns firing."
"Yes, sir!"
The officer ran off through the trees.
Artamonov looked past him and saw the truth with his own eyes. Gun crews stood around opened ammunition chests and empty limbers while teams farther back were dragging more boxes forward—large wooden shell crates, heavy enough that two men had to carry each one between them. Others struggled up through the wet ground from the rear, stumbling through roots, brush, and churned mud.
Too fast, he thought bitterly.
He had pushed the batteries into position too quickly, not waiting long enough for the ammunition train to properly close up behind them. Fine for the opening blow. Less fine now.
He muttered a curse under his breath.
The roads behind were soft. The fields were worse. Carrying shells by hand through wet forest and broken ground was not fast work, no matter how loudly one shouted.
No matter.
He raised the binoculars again.
Now he saw movement in the German line.
Dark shapes rising where, moments ago, there had been almost nothing to see.
Men in black helmets and dark uniforms were appearing in the trenches. Others were moving through the communication trenches from the rear. More were coming out from the town itself and dropping into the forward line.
Artamonov narrowed his eyes.
So.
The clever bastards had not sat in the front trench to be shelled like obedient idiots. They had crouched in the deeper lines and rear shelters and waited out the bombardment, and only now—only now, when the Russian guns had begun to fall silent—were they moving forward to properly man the line.
He bared his teeth.
"Filthy little Germans," he muttered. "Hiding like rats until the noise stops."
If the batteries had kept firing even a few minutes more, the skirmishers might have reached the wire before the trench fully woke.
But now the defenders were back.
Fine.
Then the attack would proceed properly.
He lowered the binoculars sharply and turned.
"Prepare the assault!" he shouted.
The order rippled down the line like a current through water.
Behind him the second wave stiffened, men tightening their grips on rifles and bayonets while officers barked quick instructions.
For a brief moment there was only the sound of breathing, shifting boots, and distant rifle fire.
Then the sound came.
A deep, distant boom.
Artamonov turned instinctively toward the horizon.
Beyond Soldau, far behind the German lines, bright flashes began to bloom along the misty skyline.
German guns.
Heavy ones.
The first shells arrived seconds later.
They screamed overhead like tearing metal.
The impacts came a heartbeat later.
The forest behind and around the Russian positions exploded into violence.
Trees shattered into splinters. Whole trunks snapped in half and crashed into the mud. Earth burst upward in thick black geysers. The air filled with fragments of bark, steel, and stone that tore through the branches like storms of knives.
Men dropped instantly.
Some were killed outright.
Others screamed and clutched shattered limbs.
Artamonov ducked reflexively as a shell burst nearby, the blast slamming dirt and bark across his coat. He steadied himself against the tree trunk and looked back out across the battlefield.
More shells followed.
The German artillery had found its range.
Behind the advancing skirmishers, Russian batteries were suddenly under fire. Guns flipped sideways as blasts struck the earth around them. Horses shrieked and bolted from shattered harnesses. Ammunition wagons burst apart under the concussions, spraying splintered wood and loose shells across the ground.
Then another sound joined the barrage.
A deeper, shorter thump.
Mortars.
Small shells began dropping closer to the forward infantry lines, bursting in quick white flashes among the advancing skirmishers.
But the attack did not stop.
Across the field the Russian skirmishers dropped flat when the explosions struck around them.
A moment later they rose again.
They kept moving.
Artamonov watched through the binoculars with the same calm expression he might have worn while observing a training exercise.
To his left the line still moved forward.
To his right the same.
Only the immediate ground behind him had been struck hard.
Acceptable.
Losses were inevitable.
Losses were the price.
What mattered was that the line was still advancing.
He lowered the binoculars.
"Second wave," he said flatly.
A whistle shrieked through the trees.
Officers leapt forward immediately.
"Forward!"
"Forward, you dogs!"
"URAA!"
The shout rolled through the ranks like thunder.
Men surged up from the forest floor in a sudden eruption of movement.
Thousands of boots hammered into the wet soil as the second wave burst from the tree line and began driving across the open ground at a steady, brutal run.
Bayonets glinted in the dim morning light.
Officers ran ahead of their men, pistols raised, sabers flashing as they screamed orders and curses in equal measure.
"Forward, you sons of pigs!"
"Move!"
"URAAA!"
The roar spread across the battlefield.
Men ran because the line was running.
They ran because the officers were running.
They ran because to remain behind was to admit fear—and fear had consequences.
So they ran.
Through mud.
Through fog.
Through bursting shells and splintered earth.
The skirmishers ahead were now closing on the German positions.
And through the mist they finally saw them.
Figures rising slowly from the trenches.
Black shapes.
At first the Russians thought they were shadows.
Then the fog shifted.
Steel helmets.
Dark armor.
Faces hidden behind metal masks and goggles.
Not men staring back at them.
But iron visages.
A long line of black steel rising from the earth like something ancient and patient.
Rifles came up.
Machine guns swung into position.
Lieutenant General Artamonov saw the Germans about to unleash death upon his men and did not so much as blink.
He merely lowered the binoculars, slowly, almost lazily, as though he were watching the opening moves of a game whose ending had already been decided. His expression did not change. His mouth did not tighten. His eyes did not narrow.
He was already preparing to feed more men into the fire.
"Third wave," he said quietly.
"Prepare to charge."
He had seen at once what the Germans had done.
They had not crowded the forward firing steps when the Russian artillery opened. They had not stood there like idiots to be torn apart for the comfort of Russian gunners. They had crouched deeper in the trench system instead, helmets low, rifles ready, waiting in the rear bends and dug-in recesses while the shells burst over mostly empty forward works.
They had let the bombardment spend itself.
They had waited for the Russians to commit.
Now his skirmishers were out in the open.
Now the second wave was coming behind them.
Now the Germans meant to kill.
Artamonov was not impressed.
It was sensible. Clever, even. But only in the way a rat was clever when it hid under the floorboards before biting.
The Germans had saved themselves from shells.
Good for them.
Now they would have to survive Russians.
Then, just before the trench line fully opened—just as the foremost skirmishers were already well past the halfway point across the field—the mines began to trigger.
A boot struck a hidden wire.
There was a faint metallic snap.
Then a dull cough from beneath the soil.
A black cylinder sprang upward from the earth.
For one absurd instant it seemed to hang there, suspended in the mist.
Then it burst.
Fragments ripped outward in a vicious circle. The nearest man lost half his face before he even understood he had died. Others dropped screaming as steel tore through thighs, bellies, throats, and eyes. Mud leapt. Blood followed it.
Another mine jumped.
Another burst tore open the line.
Men stumbled, fell, spun, and collapsed into the wet grass. One dropped to his knees clutching at a leg that was no longer there. Another tried to scream and produced only a red bubbling hiss.
The skirmishers hesitated.
That was all the Germans needed.
The trench line erupted.
"Fire! Fire!"
Machine guns roared to life.
The sound was monstrous—canvas ripping, boards sawing, iron teeth grinding into wood. Long streams of bullets tore across the field and through the fog, low and flat and merciless. Men went down instantly. Some folded where they stood. Others jerked, twisted, and collapsed as if their bones had been cut out from under them.
Rifle fire joined in at once.
The Black Legion infantry did not stand in one neat row waiting to be seen. They were spread through the zigzag trenches and supporting cuts, firing from angles, corners, traverses, and firing steps, each little knot of men covering its own patch of death. One squad fired low. Another swept the ground farther back. A third shifted to catch men trying to throw themselves sideways into shell holes.
Grenade launchers thumped.
Mortars coughed.
Rifles cracked in hard, disciplined rhythm.
The field became a killing ground in seconds.
Russian skirmishers flung themselves into the mud as bullets hissed over and through them. Some crawled forward stubbornly, dragging rifles and torn legs alike through the wet earth. Others rolled into shell craters left by their own artillery and hugged the mud like frightened animals.
And still others kept coming.
A few reached the first belt of wire.
Without hesitation they tore off coats and cloaks and flung them over the barbs, trying to press the steel down with fabric and flesh long enough to crawl across. One man threw himself bodily over the wire to make a bridge of his own back.
Most died for the effort.
Machine-gun bursts cut them apart before they could rise or roll clear.
The artillery had blasted a few gaps, yes—but the gaps became traps almost at once. Men lunged toward them, jammed into them, stumbled over one another, and fell in heaps as bullets punched through chest and spine and skull. Bodies began to pile in the openings, turning broken wire into red, twitching causeways.
Still they came.
Across the whole front, the same scenes were unfolding.
Russian infantry spilled forward in waves.
In some sectors there had been little artillery preparation at all—only rifle suppression and the weight of men emerging from forests and tree lines, stepping into the open under the full gaze of the German line as though sheer numbers could frighten bullets into missing.
They outnumbered the defenders heavily.
But numbers meant little when men had to cross open ground beneath prepared fire.
A single German squad—one machine gun properly placed, a handful of disciplined riflemen beside it—could stall an entire Russian company if the ground favored them.
And here, the ground favored the Germans.
Still, the Russians did not stop.
Men dropped into the mud.
Men screamed.
But behind them more men kept coming.
The second wave pressed forward through the wreckage of the first, and already the third wave was forming back in the trees, tightening into ranks while officers cursed and shoved them into position.
Those who tried to stay low—those who hugged the earth in shell holes or hid behind the bodies of the fallen—did not remain there long.
Russian officers moved among them like hounds among sheep.
Lieutenants and captains ran through the mud with pistols drawn.
"Up! Up!"
Boots struck backs and ribs.
"Forward, you dogs!"
Men were dragged to their feet by collars and straps and shoved toward the killing ground again.
"Forward! Forward!"
And then the cry began.
"URAAA!"
It started in one knot of men and spread outward like fire in dry grass.
"URAAA! URAAA!"
The shout rolled across the field, echoing through the fog and smoke, thousands of voices rising into one long savage roar.
Behind them the artillery, finally resupplied, began thundering again.
Russian guns resumed their work, shells screaming overhead and crashing into the German trenches in ragged bursts. Dirt and timber erupted into the air. For moments at a time defenders were forced to duck under the renewed bombardment before scrambling back up to fire again.
Bullets ripped through the mist in both directions.
Russian rifles were firing as fast as men could work their bolts now. So many individual shots cracked together that the sound blended into a continuous rolling roar.
And then, amid all the chaos, one man moved differently from the rest.
He did not run.
He did not crawl.
He walked.
He was old—far older than most of the soldiers around him. His beard was grey and rain-dark, and his officer's coat hung heavy on his shoulders like a relic from another war. His boots moved steadily through the mud while shells burst nearby and bullets snapped through the air.
He had seen war before.
Many times.
Enough times that fear had worn itself out inside him.
He looked down at the men crouching in the mud—hiding behind corpses, pressing themselves into shell holes—and he laughed.
"Boys!" he shouted over the gunfire. "What are you doing lying here like frightened chickens?"
A shell burst somewhere behind him, showering the ground with dirt.
He did not even turn.
"This is not how war is fought!"
He raised his pistol and fired once toward the German line.
"Up! For the Motherland! For the Tsar!"
Then he started forward again, stepping calmly over bodies as if crossing stones in a stream.
"Kill the Hun!"
"URAAA!"
For a moment the men watched him.
A strange silence seemed to fall in their heads, even while the battlefield roared around them.
Then the old officer's head vanished.
A single rifle cracked somewhere far away—nearly a kilometre distant, fired from one of the castle towers overlooking the field.
The sniper's bullet struck clean.
The old man's skull burst into a red cloud and his body folded instantly into the mud without a sound.
For a heartbeat the men froze.
Then one soldier rose.
Then another.
Then another.
"URAAA!"
They surged forward again.
Another officer climbed up from the mud, screaming the cry at the top of his lungs.
"URAAA!"
And the wave rolled forward once more.
From the rise behind the lines, Lieutenant General Leonid Artamonov watched the battle unfold like a grand spectacle.
Through his binoculars the chaos of the battlefield resolved into patterns.
The Russian advance was working.
Men were dying—yes—but the line was moving.
And that was all that mattered.
Across the open ground the first wave had reached the wire. Bodies hung tangled in the barbed coils, uniforms ripped and darkened with blood. Yet behind them more soldiers climbed forward, stepping onto the fallen as if they were stones in a river.
Then Artamonov saw it.
The Imperial flag.
A standard-bearer had forced his way through the storm of bullets and planted the banner directly against the first belt of wire. For a moment the cloth snapped proudly in the wet wind, the double-headed eagle visible even through drifting smoke.
Artamonov's lips curled with satisfaction.
Good.
Then the man carrying the flag was struck.
The banner slipped from his hands and fell across the wire.
But another soldier immediately seized it.
Without hesitation the man clambered onto the bodies crushing the barbed coils, dragging himself across the metal thorns while bullets cut through the air around him. He leapt down into the open ground before the first trench and rushed forward three more steps—
A burst of machine-gun fire caught him.
The soldier collapsed instantly.
Yet the flag did not fall far.
It struck the earth at the edge of the German trench line, the staff embedding itself upright in the mud as if the ground itself had claimed it.
For a moment the banner stood there alone.
Artamonov smiled.
Behind the fallen flag-bearer, the Russian infantry roared.
"URAAAH!"
The cry rolled across the field like thunder.
More men surged forward, climbing over bodies, throwing themselves through the broken wire, rushing toward the trenches where the banner now stood like a marker of conquest.
Artamonov lowered the binoculars for a moment, breathing deeply.
The killing did not disturb him.
On the contrary—it filled him with a dark pride.
Look at them.
Look at how they came on.
Men from half the empire—Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Tatars—bleeding together under the same banner, still advancing beneath a storm of steel.
That was Russia.
That was loyalty.
That was faith.
They died for the Tsar.
They died for the Empire.
And they did it willingly.
The thought filled him with a savage satisfaction.
He lifted the binoculars again.
The field was still a furnace of gunfire. German machine guns hammered the advancing ranks. Mortars burst among the attackers. The strange armored infantry of the Black Legion fought stubbornly in their trenches.
Artamonov watched the flashes with narrowed eyes.
Yes…
Of course.
The Germans had concentrated everything here.
Their best troops. Their best guns. Their best machines.
They must have thrown all their strength onto this sector to hold Soldau.
But that meant something very simple.
If he broke them here, the rest of the front would collapse.
No army could maintain such firepower everywhere.
Victory here would break the German line entirely.
He began preparing to send the fourth wave forward.
His hand rose slightly as he turned to his officers—
Then he paused.
Something moved through the smoke.
Artamonov blinked and lifted the binoculars again.
At first he thought it was just another mounted officer.
But the shape was wrong.
The rider was too large.
Too dark.
Through the fog he saw a huge black horse emerging from the direction of the town, moving steadily toward the front lines.
And upon the horse—
A giant.
Black armor covered the figure from head to foot. The helmet was shaped like a skull, its empty eyes staring across the battlefield. A blood-red cloak whipped behind him in the wind. Across his back rested a massive sword, broad and brutal, like the weapon of some ancient executioner.
The rider did not hurry.
He rode forward calmly through the storm of bullets as if the battlefield belonged to him.
The fog swirled around the horse.
Shell smoke drifted across the armored figure.
For a moment Artamonov felt something cold move along his spine.
Then realization struck.
There was only one man in Germany large enough to look like that.
Only one man foolish enough to ride openly into a battlefield like this.
Artamonov slowly lowered the binoculars.
His eyes widened.
"By God…"
He whispered it.
"The Iron Prince."
He stared again, making sure he had not imagined it.
No.
It was unmistakable.
The massive rider.
The skull helm.
The red cloak.
The soldiers in the trenches turning to look at him.
Prince Oskar of Germany.
Artamonov's mind exploded with possibilities.
What was the prince doing here?
Was he mad?
Did he wish to die?
Or—
The thought hit him like lightning.
What if he captured him?
Promotion.
Glory.
A ransom beyond imagination.
A victory remembered forever.
Perhaps even the end of the war itself.
Artamonov barked out a sharp, barking laugh—half triumph, half madness.
He wheeled toward his staff.
"Get me the cavalry!"
The officers stiffened instantly.
"All of them!"
His arm shot out, finger stabbing toward the battlefield where the black rider cut slowly through the smoke like an omen.
"I want that man alive!"
The words came out as a snarl now, loud enough to cut through the thunder of guns.
"Fourth wave forward! Cavalry with them! Drive down the northern road and the southern road—break those trenches open!"
He slammed his fist into the air.
"Full assault!"
Then his voice rose to a roar that made the men around him flinch.
"Bring me the Prince!"
The officers did not hesitate.
Orders exploded outward from the command group as men scattered through the trees.
"Fourth wave forward!"
"Cavalry to the front!"
"Prepare to charge!"
Whistles shrieked along the tree line.
"URAAAH!"
The cry rose from thousands of throats as fresh companies surged from the forest and into the smoke. Behind them cavalrymen swung into their saddles, sabers flashing as horses stamped and snorted, the long lines of lances lifting like a forest of steel.
The ground itself seemed to shudder as the attack gathered.
Artamonov raised his binoculars again, breath quick, eyes burning with savage excitement.
"Yes…" he murmured.
"Yes, this is it."
His grin widened slowly as he watched the battlefield.
"Go on, you fools…"
His voice dropped to a hungry murmur.
"Bring him to me."