Oskar looked the young man up and down.
Short.
Handsome.
Lean rather than large, but well built in the honest way of a working man. His shoulders and forearms carried the shape of labor, not military drill. His clothes were poor and patched, but his stance was not. And in his hand he held only a sling.
Only that.
No rifle.
No bayonet.
No sword.
Oskar noticed something else at once: the young man's dark eyes kept flicking past him, toward the women standing behind. He was measuring angles. Distances. Space. He was afraid of missing. Afraid of striking some innocent woman, some child, someone who had no place in this duel.
So.
A man with morals, then.
A man with some still-living sense of right and wrong.
A decent man, perhaps.
Oskar saw all of it.
He saw the trembling too.
Not weakness.
Force.
The force of what the boy had chosen to stand against.
The pressure of the watching crowd had begun to settle fully upon him now. Hundreds of thousands of eyes. Their fear. Their grief. Their hope. Their desperate need for him to somehow do the impossible and strike down the giant before them. Oskar could imagine well enough what that felt like. It was no small burden. It was enough to make a strong man shake.
And yet the boy did not run.
That, more than anything, pleased him.
So Oskar gave him what he wanted.
He turned his back.
Calmly.
Deliberately.
And began to walk through the line cut between the two halves of humanity.
To his right stood the women, the late sun falling behind them in warm, failing gold. To his left stood the men, darkened by shadow, with the Vistula at their backs and the city's weight pressing behind them. Before him stretched only open stone.
Behind him, the young man with the sling trembled.
Not from cowardice.
From strain.
From the sheer enormity of what he had chosen.
But still he moved. He placed himself before the women, giving them space, turning to face Oskar's broad retreating back. Five meters. Perhaps a little more. Not far. Not nearly far enough to feel safe.
Oskar stopped.
Then, tilting his face lightly upward as if considering the heavens rather than the man behind him, he asked in a near-casual tone, without turning:
"So who are you? I would know the name of my opponent before death finds either one of us."
Behind him came the answer, clenched through teeth tight with hate.
"I am Aaron."
A pause.
"The son of an entrepreneur. A carpenter."
His voice roughened further.
"The son of a murdered mother who burned to death in a synagogue in the lands of East Prussia. I am a man who once lived well through the labor and success of my family—and now I am your opponent."
A sharper breath followed.
"That is who I am. Are you satisfied, Prince of Iron?"
Oskar kept his eyes on the sky.
He remembered the times of which the boy spoke of.
The burning.
The smoke.
The fear.
The years when everything had been uglier, more unstable, more open in its hatred and stupidity.
And now one fragment of that darkness had manifested itself here, behind him, in the shape of this young man with a sling and a dead mother in his voice.
Still, a faint smirk touched Oskar's lips.
"Yes," he said. "You may consider me satisfied."
Then, more softly:
"Now take your vengeance… and try to strike me down."
Aaron moved at once.
A stone dropped into the sling's cradle.
The cords spun into motion.
His voice, hoarse and broken with disbelief and rage, burst out behind him.
"You dare—!"
Then, correcting himself, louder now, steadier:
"You dare turn your back on me!?"
The sling spun faster.
And faster.
Air whipped around it with a sharp rising hiss.
Oskar did not move.
He closed his eyes.
And simply stood there.
Then Aaron released.
The stone flew.
Not like a boy throwing a rock.
Like a shot.
A blur shrieking through the air toward Oskar's head.
And Oskar—
did not turn.
He merely tilted his head slightly, as if some sixth sense had whispered into the nerves of his neck.
The stone tore past him.
It missed by less than the width of a hand.
A gasp rippled through the square as the missile vanished beyond the male crowd and flew out over the distant water before dropping into the Vistula with a faint, mocking plop.
Then Oskar slowly turned his head.
Just enough to look back at Aaron over his shoulder.
"Good shot," he said.
A faint smile touched his lips.
"But it will not be enough."
Aaron did not answer.
He was already moving.
Another stone.
Another spin.
This time faster.
More desperate.
His arms worked with real skill now, the cords singing as he built speed. For a heartbeat it seemed he aimed high again—but at the last instant he shifted low, trying for Oskar's knee, for the weaker point, the side joint, somewhere the armor might be less dense.
A clever adjustment.
A practical one.
But Oskar merely lifted his leg the smallest fraction.
The stone skipped past him, struck the cobbles near his feet, and ricocheted wildly backward into the crowd. It slammed into a man standing behind Oskar and hit him straight in the gut with a sick, dull impact, knocking the air from his lungs and folding him to the ground clutching his stomach.
Women cried out.
Men shouted in shock.
Oskar's expression shifted slightly into annoyance.
Already, he had seen enough.
"…Let us put an end to this," he said.
His hand moved to the sword hilt rising from beneath the red fall of his cape.
Then he drew it.
The blade came free with a low, grinding sound that seemed to scrape not only steel but the nerves of everyone watching. It rose into the light like something taken from another age.
Long.
Broad.
Monstrous.
Not a dueling blade.
Not even properly a soldier's sword.
It was a weapon made for cleaving bodies apart, for cutting through men the way a butcher split carcasses. Something too large to look civilized.
The crowd recoiled as one.
Even Aaron faltered.
For the first time, fear showed openly on the young man's handsome face.
Oskar lifted the sword.
Balanced it in one hand.
As if weighing nothing.
"Brave Aaron, the defiant," he said. "You throw stones well."
A pause.
"However, your small pebbles will not be enough here."
His blue eyes fixed on him.
"Now let me show you what a true throw of power looks like."
And then, instead of taking a swordsman's stance, Oskar reversed his grip, drew the massive blade back like a spear, and hurled it forward.
The entire sword went shrieking through the air.
Driven by such force that the air itself seemed to bend around it.
The ground seemed to recoil beneath the violence of the throw.
Aaron saw only a blur.
Then the sword struck.
The cobblestones exploded.
Stone burst outward in a violent spray. Dust and fragments shot up in all directions. The impact shook the ground beneath their feet and sent a vast cloud surging outward, swallowing the clearing in grey chaos.
People screamed.
Men threw up their arms.
Stone shards whistled through the front ranks.
For one heartbeat no one could see anything.
There was only dust.
Noise.
Panic.
Then—
from within the cloud—
a shape emerged.
Not broken.
Not pinned.
Moving.
Oskar smiled at once.
Aaron rolled out of the dust, sliding hard across the edge of the blast zone, his body twisting with desperate instinct, barely escaping the strike. He came up into a low kneel, coughing through grit, sling already in motion again, this time with a larger stone set firm in its cradle.
A gasp escaped the crowd.
The world seemed to slow and hold its breath.
Eyes widened.
He could fight.
He could survive.
He could—
The sling snapped.
At close range.
The stone flew straight for Oskar's head.
Too fast.
Too near.
Too clean.
A perfect throw.
A killing throw.
And yet—
Oskar's right hand moved faster than the eye could follow.
The stone stopped.
Caught.
Simply caught in his open palm.
The sound of it ending there—
of that speed, that force, that hope, just stopping, broke something in the air.
Aaron froze in his kneeling stance, eyes wide, breath gone.
Oskar looked at the stone in his hand.
Then at him.
Then he pulled back and threw it.
The motion was effortless.
The impact was not.
The stone struck Aaron's right knee with crushing force.
Bone burst.
The leg came apart at the point of impact in a hideous spray, flesh splitting, fragments of shattered bone flying where no human limb was ever meant to break. Aaron collapsed at once, his whole body folding beneath him as though the strength had been cut out of him with one stroke. A raw cry tore out of him before he could stop it, high and broken and impossible to mistake for anything but agony. The sling fell from his hand. Both hands flew instead to what remained of his leg, clutching, grasping, as if pain and will alone might force it back into shape.
But there was nothing to be done.
The sight of it made him scream harder.
Women fainted where they stood.
Men stared in horror, faces gone pale and hollow.
The square, for one horrible moment, seemed to empty of all sound but Aaron's voice.
No hope now.
Only reality.
Oskar stepped forward.
Slowly.
Measured.
Each iron-shod step rang against the cobbles with dreadful calm, as though he were not approaching a broken young man, but merely completing a task already decided.
He stopped over him.
Looked down.
For a moment his face gave nothing away.
Then he said, simply:
"You fought well."
And then his huge armored right leg began to rise.
Its shadow fell over Aaron like the shadow of a gate coming down, and for one long suspended heartbeat the entire world seemed to stop breathing.
Aaron lay there on the stones beneath him, half-curled around the ruin of his leg, dust and blood streaked across his handsome face, his body already reduced from challenger to wounded animal. His chest heaved. His teeth showed. His fingers dug uselessly into his own torn flesh.
Then—
a shape burst forward from Oskar's left. From the women's side.
A young woman.
She broke through the line of fear as if she had forgotten it existed and threw herself over Aaron without hesitation, dropping to her knees so hard that the impact jarred through her whole body. She covered him with herself as though her softness, her thinness, her sheer human fragility might somehow be enough to shield him from iron and judgment.
"No! Please—please, have mercy!"
Her voice cracked almost at once.
"He's only my foolish little brother, Your Highness! He meant no true offense—he never thinks, he only acts! Please—please forgive him!"
Oskar's eyes dropped to her.
And stayed there for half a breath.
She was pleasing to the eye in the wrong kind of way for such a place.
Not grand. Not adorned. Not radiant with wealth.
But young. Very young. Green in the face still with that last fragile softness of innocence. Her dress was plain, good but modest, the sort of thing a respectable family would keep clean and mended. Her features were gentle, almost heartbreakingly so—wide eyes, fine nose, trembling mouth, the sort of face made to smile in lamplight, to look up from bread dough or candlework, not to throw itself over blood and broken bone in front of a Iron prince.
Jewish.
He saw that too in an instant—not only in her appearance and dress, but in the deeper thing beneath them: in the old fear written into her movements, the instinctive urgency of a family that had already known too much smoke, too much running, too much hatred given legal shape.
Around her, through the shifting crowd, Oskar saw others of the family gather and falter.
Older men—one perhaps her father, another perhaps a husband or uncle—had half-stepped forward, then stopped as though the sight of Oskar towering there had nailed their boots to the stones. On the other side them stood women in panic: one with both hands over her mouth, another white-faced and swaying, another already collapsed into the arms of those around her. They wanted to rush in.
They did not dare.
Even now.
Even with Aaron screaming.
Even with the sister over him.
Even with blood pooling wider on the cobbles.
Fear held them all just short of action.
Oskar looked down at the girl and his voice came cold and immediate.
"Out of my way, woman."
She shook her head at once, clutching Aaron harder.
"Please—please, no—!"
She pressed herself lower across her brother's body, one hand half-lifted as though she could ward off the descending weight of him.
And Oskar hesitated.
Only slightly.
Only inwardly.
But he did.
Because she was a woman.
And that mattered to him far more than it should have.
He did not want to hurt women.
Did not want to crush one beneath his boot, not in front of all these eyes, not in front of the women to the side of him who had already seen too much.
Still, for one terrible second, it seemed he might do it anyway.
That he might bring his leg down through both of them and let the square learn, once and for all, that pleading changed nothing.
But then, he felt something which made him glance to his left. And from there something came and struck his side.
So small, soft and desperate.
Small hands wrapped around his arm, not attacking, not clawing, but clinging with the reckless force of someone trying to halt a falling tree by holding onto it.
"No! Please, please, don't do it, Oskar—don't! You're not a bad man, I know you aren't—please, don't do it!"
He turned his gaze sharply and froze.
Maria was there.
She was there at his side, pressed against the black mass of his armor, both arms clinging to him with all the strength her slighter body possessed. Her face was tilted up toward him, pale with fear, eyes wet and shining, lips trembling, yet she had still come.
And behind her—
"No! Maria, don't—don't!" Zofia cried, stumbling forward from the women's side, stopping only when fear caught her halfway between courage and collapse. "It's dangerous!"
Instantly at the sight of them, uncertainty crossed Oskar's face.
He looked down at Maria clinging to him.
Then at the young Jewish woman shielding her brother.
Then at Zofia, breathless and frightened, standing a few paces away with one hand half-raised and the other clutching at her own dress.
Then beyond them all—
to the crowd.
And what he saw there struck him harder than he had expected.
The men had leaned forward.
Not all.
But enough.
Enough that the shape of the square had changed.
Enough that grief, humiliation, and the sight of one broken Jewish youth still defended by his sister—and now by two Polish women as well—had done what Oskar's threats and taunts alone had not. Something had shifted in the men before him. The front of the mass was no longer merely fearful. It was gathering. Tightening. Watching. Measuring the distance between terror and action.
And that mattered.
Because symbols mattered.
A Jew had stepped forward first.
Now two Polish women—small, soft, frightened, the very sort of creatures whom war and men and empire were always supposed to trample first—had stepped forward too.
And the men had seen it.
They had seen that courage did not always come wearing boots or carrying rifles.
They had seen a wounded boy stand.
They had seen his sister shield him.
They had seen a Polish girl cling to the very monster all of them feared and beg him to stop.
And suddenly the men were beginning to feel ashamed of their stillness.
Ashamed enough to move.
Oskar saw older men set their jaws.
He saw younger men shift their weight.
Hands tightened.
Shoulders came forward.
Not a charge.
Not yet.
But the beginning of one.
A possibility.
A current beginning to form through the crowd.
And their women watched it all with widening eyes—some crying or sobbing, some praying, some clutching children so hard they hurt them without knowing it, some staring at Aaron's blood on the stones and seeing in it the first drop of what might soon become a flood.
If he pressed now—
if he brought his foot down through Aaron, through the sister shielding him, through this single fragile point where fear had not yet fully turned into fury—
then the square might break.
Not into obedience.
Into him.
Into slaughter.
And that slaughter would not end with one boy and one woman crushed into the stones.
It would widen.
Spread.
Multiply beneath his hands.
Men would rush him in rage, in grief, in hopelessness—and he would answer them.
With the force of Shadowmane and the monstrous strength in his own body.
He saw it in a single terrible flash: himself moving through them like a black machine of death, cutting, crushing, tearing, breaking. Men thrown aside like straw. Bodies split open beneath sword and gauntlet. Shadowmane trampling screaming figures into blood-slick stone. The front ranks collapsing, the rear ranks surging blindly forward, and all of it feeding the next blow, and the next, and the next.
Until the whole clearing was red.
Until the square was no longer a gathering of people, but a field of meat and ruin with him standing at its center.
And at the heart of that vision was just a butcher.
A beast in black iron, giving himself over to the easiest answer his body knew.
The thought struck him like a blade between the ribs.
And it sickened him.
Because he knew, with a certainty more terrible than doubt, that he could do it.
He and Shadowmane together could tear through the whole mass of them.
And he did not want to see that done.
Did not want to become that thing.
His raised leg lowered.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
He drew it back and set it upon the stones.
Maria still clung to him.
Still stared up at him as though she herself could scarcely believe she had succeeded.
Oskar looked down at her, one pale brow shifting slightly.
"Maria."
His voice was low now.
Dangerously low.
"You dare defy me?"
She trembled.
But did not let go.
"You dare try to stop me?"
Her lips parted, but no words came.
Only breath.
He let the silence stretch, just long enough for the square to feel it.
Then his gaze moved to Zofia.
Zofia stood a few paces away, one hand half-raised, as though she still did not know whether to drag her daughter back or throw herself beside her. Her face was full of confusion, fear, shame, and something deeper and more dangerous than all of them: hope.
She looked at him not fully as an enemy.
Not fully as a ruler.
But as the only fixed thing left in a world that had dissolved around her.
"Please, Oskar," she said, her voice unsteady. "Have mercy. She—she is young. If you must punish someone, punish me, I—"
Oskar exhaled in exhaustion.
He looked once more at Aaron writhing on the ground, at the sister over him, at the men beginning to gather themselves in the front ranks, at the women to the side of him shrinking and shaking and waiting to see whether this moment meant death or reprieve.
Then he closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them again, the decision was made.
He reached down—not for Zofia, but for Maria—and pulled her firmly against his side. Not cruelly. Not gently either. But with the unmistakable authority of possession and protection at once.
And the softness of her struck him at once.
The pleasing scent, the smallness of her.
The heat of her through her clothes.
The trembling, living fragility of her clinging there against iron and plate and violence.
It calmed him.
Grounded him.
Her softness steadied something in him that had been rising too close to the edge.
And beneath even that, something colder in him took note:
this was useful.
Proof.
Proof that the Polish women could be bent. Could still be made to attach themselves to German strength. Could still be taught trust. Could still, in time, be made into something useful to Germany.
He looked down at Maria and placed one large, unexpectedly gentle hand upon her head, his fingers settling into the softness of her brown hair.
"You are quite brave, Maria," he said, and there was something almost real in the quiet approval of his voice. "Consider me impressed."
Maria gasped softly.
For one brief moment, the words and the look in his eyes struck through all her fear and confusion and proved to her that the Oskar she had seen at the river had not been some fever dream born of grief and terror. He was still there. Buried beneath the armor. Beneath the cruelty. Beneath the role of the Iron Prince. Not wholly merciless. Not wholly made of iron. A man still trapped inside the thing he had chosen to become.
But the softness lasted only a heartbeat.
Then his gaze lifted from her, and when he spoke again his voice had turned rougher, harder, meant not for one girl but for the entire square.
"Be gone, the whole lot of you men."
The square held still.
"The duel is over," he said. "The decision is made. The time for talk is over."
His blue eyes swept across the male crowd.
"If the women so wish, they may go and fetch carts, supplies, clothing, food, water, horses—whatever the long road east may require—and bring those things to the men who must leave before sundown."
Then his voice hardened fully back into command.
"And you women—make your decision. Stay or go. I do not care."
The words rolled over them like iron.
"It is your choice."
"Your salvation or your damnation."
"You decide."
"But hear me well—"
His hand cut sharply through the air toward the line already marked into the stones, the line that divided the men from the women.
"Not one man will cross this line again."
His tone made the command feel carved into the earth itself.
"The men go east."
"Only east."
"No man returns deeper into the city."
"No man steps west of this line."
His gaze swept over them one final time.
"That is my last command."
"Now obey it."
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then the square came apart—not into panic, but into human desperation.
Murmurs first.
Then cries.
Then voices rising all across the clearing as men and women turned toward one another in disbelief, fear, outrage, and grief.
Some called for fathers, brothers, sons.
Some shouted to stay.
Some shouted to go.
Some simply clutched each other and wept.
And Oskar watched as understanding spread through the men before him. His gaze passed over them once more, and they shrank from it. One by one, then in twos and threes, and finally in longer trembling streams, they began to back away eastward—toward the bridges, toward the crossings, toward the roads beyond.
The women cried out after them.
Some ran at once to catch husbands, fathers, and sons before they disappeared into the press.
Others stood frozen, unable to choose.
The men waved them back, some shouting for them to stay, to survive, to remain where there might still be shelter. Others begged them to come. Others said nothing at all, unable to force words past what was breaking inside them.
And in that vast human confusion, families began to divide.
Not by ideology.
By terror.
By hunger.
By instinct.
By love.
By whatever future each still believed could be survived.
This time the crowd did not hesitate.
Everything broke into frantic motion.
Women ran.
Some toward homes and courtyards and alleys to fetch bread, water, blankets, sacks, clothing, horse tack, handcarts, whatever could still be seized before the sun went down.
Some men, already carrying enough, simply turned and began to leave.
Others waited at the line, calling out names, staring toward the women's side with desperate intensity.
And still others stood in knots of family, making the worst choices of their lives in hurried, broken words.
Not all the women went.
Some stayed from fear.
Some because they had no one left.
Some because the roads east looked like death.
Some because even in grief they could see that remaining under German order, however harsh, might still offer more safety than following the men into exposure, hunger, and exile.
And so the square became a place of unraveling.
A place of torn loyalties and hurried provisions and shouted goodbyes.
A place where a city broke itself into two futures before the sun had set.
Aaron's family, meanwhile, had already reached him.
Jewish men bent over him at once, hands moving quickly, binding cloth, lifting him with the hard efficiency of people long accustomed to saving what could be saved. His sister would not stop crying, but she helped all the same. Soon they had Aaron pale and half-delirious on a wagon and were already dragging him eastward through the opening crowd.
Oskar watched them go only briefly.
Then he looked down.
Maria was still beside him.
Still close.
He reached out and cupped her cheek.
At his touch she flushed hard and, without meaning to, leaned into his palm.
Her breath caught.
"Now what about you?" he asked. "Will you go?"
Maria shook her head almost at once.
"No," she whispered.
Then, stronger:
"No. I think… I think I'll stay."
Zofia stared at her daughter in disbelief.
"Maria—what are you saying?"
She stood close to Oskar now, close enough to feel the heat of his armor and the terrible solidity of his presence. Confusion warred openly in her face with fear, resentment, dependency, and the simple truth she hated most: everything beyond him looked uncertain and dangerous, while everything near him felt fixed, ordered, and real.
She looked past the square, past the movement, past the wagons and people and shouted names.
There—
a glimpse of dark hair in the distance.
"Tomasz!" she cried, stepping forward at once. "Tomasz! Wait—wait!"
For one heartbeat she looked ready to run after him.
But then Maria turned toward her, frightened and uncertain.
"Mother?"
Zofia stopped.
And Oskar spoke.
"The boy has made his decision."
His voice was calm again.
"Now make yours."
He let the words settle.
"As she has made hers."
His hand moved to Maria's head and rested there lightly, almost absently, in a gesture that looked to the crowd like favor.
Then he said:
"Well. I believe we are finished here."
Maria blinked up at him.
He looked down at her and the faintest shadow of a smile touched his face.
"Come. Let us return to the palace."
Maria's eyes widened.
"The palace?" she asked. "Me?"
"Yes, of course," Oskar said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. "Did you not say you would stay?"
He tilted his head slightly.
"I can always use a few more helping hands around me."
Maria looked toward the palace.
Its great facade rose beyond them in stone and light and impossible scale.
Then she looked back at him.
At his face.
At the armor.
At the red cape.
At the prince who had just broken a city and yet was now speaking to her as though inviting her into some higher place in the world.
To a girl of her station, it did not feel like conscription.
It felt like elevation.
A terrifying, glittering elevation.
"Yes," she said at last, almost breathlessly. "Alright."
Oskar patted her head once, as though sealing the matter.
Then he crossed back to his sword, gripped the hilt, and tore it free from the shattered stone. Dust and broken chips fell away from the blade as he swung it back and slid it beneath the red fall of his cape into its sheath.
Behind him, Shadowmane was watching the crowd with visible displeasure, as though the beast itself had expected greater carnage and found this ending unsatisfying.
Oskar glanced at him.
"Alright, boy. We're done here."
Shadowmane snorted once, loudly, like a war engine denied its charge.
Then Oskar turned and began to move toward the palace.
The sea of people parted around him at once.
Maria went with him.
Zofia hesitated only a moment more.
She looked east.
Toward the breaking crowd.
Toward the place where she thought she had seen Tomasz.
Then toward her daughter.
Then toward Oskar.
And whatever remained of her resistance gave way.
She ran after them.
Quickly.
Desperately.
As if staying behind now would mean being swallowed by the chaos.
Oskar did not look back.
But when she came near enough, his hand settled against the small of her back and guided her forward with quiet, undeniable certainty.
Then, in a gesture so sudden that she barely had time to gasp, he lifted her as though she weighed nothing and set her high upon one of his armored shoulders. Zofia let out a startled cry and grabbed instinctively at his hair and the edge of his armor, suddenly high above the crowd, able to see the whole square laid out beneath her.
And the crowd saw her too.
They saw the prince smiling—not cruelly, not in triumph, but with a strange warmth they had not expected. They saw Maria walking at his side, Zofia above him by his own choice, not dragged, not beaten, not in chains.
And for some of the women watching, that image struck deeper than all the speeches had.
Not certainty.
Not trust.
But a dangerous little spark of hope.
Some who had already begun moving toward the bridges slowed.
Some stopped.
Some turned back.
The uncertainty of the east suddenly seemed heavier than the sight of the Iron Prince walking openly toward his palace with two Polish women beside him as though he had accepted them into his own sphere.
So more women stayed.
Especially those without means.
Those with daughters.
Those who feared the roads more than they feared the Germans.
Those who looked at the palace and saw, if not safety, then at least walls, order, food, and the possibility of surviving what came next.
And so while behind them the square dissolved into tears, wagons, bundles, shouted farewells, and women running for food and blankets before sundown, Oskar walked toward the palace with Maria at his side, Zofia perched high and clinging above him, and Shadowmane following like the shadow of a black god.
When he passed through the palace gates and reached the great doors, he found Hindenburg and Ludendorff waiting there.
Hindenburg spoke first.
"Is this truly wise, Your Highness?"
Ludendorff followed at once.
"We could have used the men for labor. Repairing this land and working its fields will not be easy with only a reduced population left behind. Production will suffer."
Oskar smiled faintly as he lowered Zofia back to the ground.
"I would rather have ten hard-working Germans of quality," he said, "with tools, education, and discipline, than thousands of unruly, unreliable rabble."
Then he looked at the two women at his side, both flushed now beneath the attention of the generals.
"See to it that my orders are carried through the conquered territories. And tell the Fatherland that the people of this land were evacuated without struggle. They left willingly, of their own choice, and now only the women remain."
It was, of course, a lie.
The only true choice the men had been given was to leave or die.
Many already had died.
But neither general challenged him. They knew what had to be reported, what had to be softened, what had to be made fit for newspapers and speeches and the stomachs of those back home. What had happened here did not violate his law. It only needed to be framed correctly.
And so they saluted and stepped aside.
The doors opened.
Oskar passed through them.
And then, almost at once, he changed.
The hard distance in him loosened the moment he saw Patricia and Elise waiting inside with six of his children. Small pale-haired forms ran toward him at once. He crossed the distance quickly, kneeling only enough to gather them against him, hugging them, kissing their mothers, warmth replacing the iron severity he had worn outside.
Zofia and Maria stopped and stared.
Not merely in surprise.
But in something sharper.
Jealousy.
Because the contrast struck them at once: this same man who had stood in the square like judgment itself now held his family with unguarded warmth, moving among them as though this gentleness had been there all along.
And as Oskar embraced the warmth of family and the comfort of women, elsewhere a great exodus had already begun.
Mostly men.
They left occupied Poland on foot, on wagons, on carts, on horses, carrying what they could, driven east by fear, by law, and by the certainty that there was no place for them here now.
Further still, the war went on.
And before long the Russian armies would find their ranks swelling with Polish men—volunteers now, not merely subjects—men determined not only to take back their land, but to take back the women they had left behind for safety.