By late August 1914, weeks of relentless rain had swallowed the Eastern Front.
The rain no longer came as a passing summer storm. Day after day the clouds returned, pouring over much of Eastern Europe until the flat countryside could absorb no more. Fields became sheets of brown water and sucking mud. Farm tracks vanished beneath churned earth, drainage ditches overflowed and even good roads began breaking apart beneath thousands of boots, wagon wheels and heavy machines. Horses strained until they trembled, artillery teams abandoned guns that could no longer be dragged forward, and armoured vehicles capable of frightening entire Russian formations sometimes found themselves defeated by an ordinary field.
Whenever the rain weakened, fog followed.
It gathered above rivers and soaked meadows, filled the spaces between forests and farmhouses and reduced the world to silhouettes moving through grey. It was weather better endured beneath a roof, beside a stove and beneath blankets, listening to rain strike the windows—not weather in which sensible men attempted to move armies hundreds of kilometres.
Yet the Black Legion had continued moving, although slowly.
In the centre, François's I Corps and Mackensen's XX Corps kept steady pressure upon the retreating armies of both the Northwestern and Southwestern Fronts, driving them eastward until the fighting reached the Bug River—the broad waterway running through the lands that, in Oskar's former life, would one day help define the frontier between Poland and Belarus. The advance had slowed dramatically beneath the rain and mud, but it had not stopped.
Oskar helped ensure that personally.
Whenever the weather became too foul for ordinary movement, he and Shadowmane went ahead of the army alone, much as they had at Modlin and Warsaw. Oskar left the great black armour behind and returned to his lighter stealth gear: dark field clothes, protective vest, short sword and the blood-red cloth wrapped around his head so that only his eyes remained visible. Shadowmane went unarmoured beside him.
Together they moved through flooded fields, forests, shallow rivers, rain and fog, searching for gaps in the retreating Russian lines. When they found one, they worked almost instinctively as a pair. Shadowmane would circle wide through the darkness, letting the Russians catch glimpses of some enormous black shape moving between the trees—an occasional snort, the scrape of a hoof, a silhouette appearing and vanishing again like some beast from an old nightmare.
When men turned to watch him, Oskar struck from behind.
His strength made flesh seem scarcely more resistant than the mud and water through which he had just passed. Hands punched through chests and tore out hearts with sickening ease; his already battered short sword hacked and sliced through anyone who managed to react. Once the sentries were gone, he moved on to the men sleeping behind them, while Shadowmane dealt with patrols and stragglers outside—crushing bodies beneath his hooves, breaking men in his jaws or kicking them hard enough to send them tumbling through trees and across fields.
They were not merely killing Russians. They were spreading terror.
Civilians forced by the war to share farmhouses, barns and villages with soldiers sometimes woke to muffled struggles and dark shapes moving impossibly fast through their homes. Others slept through everything and awoke only to the aftermath: shattered furniture, ruined rooms and the mangled remains of men who had believed themselves safe.
Those civilians carried the story onward.
Rumours spread from village to village of the giant with the blood-red face and the enormous black stallion wandering through the fog. Refugees began moving east before the Black Legion even arrived, and with every retelling Oskar and Shadowmane became less like a prince and his horse than two creatures of war following the Russian retreat.
Behind them came the Legion, carrying the same order as before.
No prisoners.
Farther north, Seeckt's XVII Corps and Rommel's 1st Armoured Division had driven through Lithuania and deep into the Latvian lands, forcing what remained of the Russian First Army steadily back toward Riga. By late August the German spearheads stood roughly eighty kilometres south of the city and the immense Western Dvina, the broad river cutting through Riga before emptying into the Gulf of Riga and forming the greatest natural barrier still protecting the Baltic capital.
There, at last, the Russians had managed to construct something resembling another defensive front.
The remnants of First Army had been reinforced with reservists, labourers and locally raised militia. Men who only weeks earlier had been farmers, railway workers or shopkeepers now appeared in civilian coats with rifles over their shoulders and white armbands marking formations for which proper uniforms did not exist. Anything capable of firing had been gathered: modern rifles where available, older weapons where they were not, surviving machine guns, grenades and whatever artillery had escaped destruction during the retreat.
Three rough defensive belts had also begun taking shape across the southern approaches to Riga.
The terrain helped them. The country was broad and flat, covered in farmland divided by woodland, streams, drainage channels and occasional villages. Trenches followed tree lines and patches of slightly higher ground. Timber strengthened positions where it could be found. Crude anti-armour ditches crossed the most obvious approaches, although the rain had transformed many of them into ponds of black water and mud.
The Russians dug because retreat could not continue forever.
Riga lay behind them, and beyond Riga lay the remaining Baltic provinces and, eventually, the approaches toward Saint Petersburg itself.
The Black Legion nevertheless refused to storm those positions simply because they existed.
Oskar had forbidden major attacks until the weather improved.
His method of war depended upon coordination—armour, infantry, artillery, communications and, above all, aircraft working together. The skies had been one of his greatest advantages since the campaign began, and he had no intention of throwing that advantage away by ordering men forward blindly beneath clouds so low and rain so heavy that aircraft could neither properly observe nor support them.
If the weather denied him half his system, he would wait.
So the front settled into a different sort of war. Artillery continued firing through the mist. Mortars struck trenches and woodland positions. Marksmen watched the Russian lines through telescopic sights, waiting patiently for an officer, observer or careless soldier to expose himself. Patrols crawled through wet fields at night, and individual company commanders occasionally seized a farmhouse, copse or section of trench whenever local conditions offered an obvious opportunity.
Where the ground briefly hardened, armour might move forward behind artillery preparation, smash a Russian strongpoint and allow infantry to occupy it.
But there would be no grand charge through the mud.
Russian artillery became particularly cautious. Most of the batteries that had begun the campaign were already gone—destroyed, abandoned or left behind when horse teams could no longer drag them through the retreat. Those that remained were hidden beneath trees, behind farms or within carefully concealed positions and ordered to fire only when necessary.
Even then every shot carried danger.
A muzzle flash seen through the rain, an observer catching the direction of smoke, or a wireless report from a German forward post could be enough. Coordinates travelled quickly through the Black Legion's radio network, and minutes later shells would begin falling upon the suspected position until gun, crew and surrounding earth became indistinguishable.
Rather than waste men forcing the issue, Oskar had eventually returned to the system that had served him in East Prussia.
The Legion settled into checkerboard strongpoints around villages, roads, bridges, woodland and firm patches of ground. Wire, mines, machine guns, mortars and artillery covered the spaces between them. The Russians could probe those gaps if they wished, but any force moving too deeply between the strongpoints risked discovering that the apparent opening had merely carried it into overlapping fields of fire.
For the moment, that was enough.
So, while he waited for the rains to end, Oskar returned to the Royal Castle of Warsaw and turned his attention to a problem victory had not solved.
His soldiers were exhausted.
The Black Legion had been campaigning almost continuously since July, and by the standards of 1914 there was nothing particularly unusual about that. A healthy soldier went to war expecting to remain with his army until the campaign ended, until a wound sent him home, or until death settled the matter permanently. Units might be pulled behind the line for a few days, but sending perfectly healthy fighting men all the way home merely because they were tired bordered upon absurdity.
Oskar ordered it anyway.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff were instructed to begin the Black Legion's first systematic home rotation.
No formation was to lose more than roughly a tenth of its effective strength at once. Men would be selected in scheduled groups, replacements moved forward before anyone departed, and the checkerboard defensive system would remain fully manned throughout. One group would return before another left. Artillery, communications and reserves were never to fall beneath the strength required to repel a possible Russian attack.
Even so, it was a remarkable gamble.
The Black Legion remained heavily outnumbered by the Russian armies, and deliberately sending thousands of healthy soldiers away from the front while the war was still raging offended nearly every traditional instinct of command.
Oskar simply judged the moment worth the risk.
The Russians were in no condition to launch another great offensive. Their formations were battered, their artillery depleted, their communications damaged, and the same rains that immobilised German armour were drowning Russian roads just as thoroughly. For the foreseeable future, neither side was going anywhere quickly.
So Oskar chose to spend the weather rather than merely endure it. And he refused to call a few nights in a muddy village behind the front "rest."
The conquered towns were hardly suitable for recuperation anyway. German police, military authorities and specialist security formations were still combing Warsaw and the occupied territories, enforcing Oskar's expulsion orders and searching for males who had remained behind. Women were permitted to stay; males found defying the order were driven east under threat of death. Arrests, searches and armed patrols remained commonplace.
Oskar was not going to remove exhausted soldiers from one miserable environment simply to billet them inside another. To him, rest meant home.
At first, many of the selected men did not understand what was happening.
Names were read from company rolls. Packs were assembled, rifles cleaned and equipment gathered and bewildered legionaries marched away from their positions toward railway stations without much explanation beyond the assurance that they were not under punishment.
Some assumed they were being transferred. Others expected a new offensive somewhere farther west.
Then the trains crossed into Germany.
A soldier from Königsberg suddenly recognized the countryside outside the carriage window. Another realized the train was approaching the town where his parents lived. Men began asking increasingly confused questions of officers who merely smiled and told them to wait.
By the time they stepped from the trains, crowds were waiting.
Wherever enough returning legionaries came from the same district, Oskar had ordered a small ceremony. The soldiers formed outside the railway station and marched through familiar streets toward the town square, still carrying packs and rifles, boots striking together while civilians crowded pavements and windows to watch them pass.
They looked different from the men who had marched east only weeks earlier.
Their uniforms, so new when they had left, were worn now. Faces were leaner. Some carried bandages or fresh scars. Others had acquired that peculiar hardness around the eyes which no parade-ground instructor could teach. But they were alive, and more importantly, they looked victorious.
In the square, officers spoke briefly of East Prussia and Warsaw, of sacrifice, courage and duty. Local officials offered thanks, while clergy gave blessings where appropriate.
Then came the order none of the soldiers had expected.
Their captain stepped forward and looked over the formation.
"You will return here at the appointed hour once your seven days are up. I expect to see every one of you then." He paused, letting his gaze move across the stunned faces before him. "Until then, you will rest."
Another pause.
"And that is an order."
Silence followed.
For several seconds nobody moved. The men simply stared at him, certain they must have misunderstood. Their families beyond the formation seemed equally bewildered. Healthy soldiers did not simply come home in the middle of a war and get ordered to spend a week with their wives and children.
Then one man finally broke formation.
A laugh escaped somewhere behind him. Another soldier swore in disbelief. Then another stepped away, and suddenly the hesitation vanished.
The ranks dissolved beneath a wave of astonished relief.
Mothers rushed forward to seize grown sons around the neck. Wives threw themselves against uniforms still smelling of damp wool, smoke and oil. Children vanished into their fathers' arms and were lifted laughing from the ground, while brothers, sisters and friends pushed through the crowd to reach men they had feared might not return until the war was over.
Even the captain eventually smiled, stepped down from his place before the formation and walked off toward his own waiting family.
Across East Prussia and the German towns from which the Legion had drawn much of its strength, the scene repeated itself.
And with the soldiers came stories.
They spoke of the great things first: Soldau, Warsaw, the Panzers breaking from concealment, aircraft filling the sky, comrades who had died bravely and Oskar appearing wherever the fighting seemed worst. Victories grew larger with every telling, sacrifices became heroic, and the strange, memorable moments of war were repeated around family tables and crowded taverns.
The rest was usually left behind.
The mud, the fear, the long miserable hours, and the uglier things men had seen or done somehow disappeared from almost every account. Loved ones noticed. A wife could hear where her husband's story suddenly jumped ahead; a mother could recognize the silence between two sentences and understand that something had been deliberately omitted.
But enough was told.
The Eastern Front ceased to be arrows upon newspaper maps and became something living, carried home in the voices and uniforms of the men who had actually fought there.
The propaganda value was immense.
Young men watching the returning columns march through their towns saw something the newspapers could never quite convey. They saw soldiers welcomed in the streets with flowers, embraces and cheers, surrounded by children, greeted warmly by women and treated everywhere as men who had done something worthy of admiration.
They noticed the attention a uniform attracted. They heard the stories repeated in taverns and around family tables. They knew the pay was good, the equipment excellent, and that service in the Black Legion carried a certain standing of its own. There was comradeship, pride and the promise of becoming part of something larger than the ordinary routines of civilian life. And, astonishingly, there was now proof that a healthy soldier might even be allowed to return home for a time before the war was finished.
For young men who had spent weeks following distant victories through newspapers and recruiting posters, seeing those soldiers return made everything suddenly more tangible. These were not anonymous figures in photographs. They were men from the same streets and villages, returning harder, more confident and unmistakably changed by what they had endured.
Recruiting offices noticed the result almost immediately.
The rotation had been designed to preserve soldiers. It also began producing more of them where they were needed.
For Oskar, that was merely another reason to continue it.
Warsaw, meanwhile, required a different sort of experiment.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff retained military authority over the occupied territories, supported by François, Mackensen, Seeckt, Rommel and the other commanders responsible for the front. Oskar wanted them learning not merely how to win battles but how to hold enormous territories afterward. Rommel in particular was young, brilliant and still inexperienced enough that Oskar considered responsibility itself part of his education.
Civil affairs were becoming stranger.
The expulsion of the male population had left the conquered districts overwhelmingly female, and Oskar increasingly saw little sense in governing every aspect of civilian life exclusively through male officers.
So he gave Patricia Horn a chance.
Of all the women surrounding him, Patricia was the obvious choice. She had been born a British princess, educated accordingly, travelled widely and possessed considerably more intelligence than her taste for mischief often suggested. She understood aristocracy, administration, money, presentation and the small social mechanisms through which people could be persuaded to cooperate without soldiers standing behind them.
Oskar therefore placed her within the emerging civilian administration, particularly over matters involving women, employment, household registration, relief and the restoration of ordinary economic life.
Helena became her principal secretary, an arrangement that happened to offer advantages beyond efficiency.
Patricia could keep an eye on her.
Helena was educated, diligent and had already proved capable of reducing complex reports into something genuinely useful. Unfortunately, she had also become another woman carrying Oskar's child, which in Patricia's estimation made keeping the beautiful blonde scholar directly beneath her supervision an act of prudent administration.
Helena understood perfectly well what Patricia was doing. Yet neither woman discussed it openly, although their smiles became exceptionally polite.
Elise received a different kingdom.
As a former maid who had long since learned how to manage servants, children, guests and Patricia herself, she was placed over the Royal Castle household. Kitchens, linen, rooms, schedules, servants and domestic discipline increasingly answered to her.
That also placed Maria and Zofia beneath her.
Neither Polish woman possessed anything approaching Patricia's or Helena's education. Both were still being taught to read and write properly, as well as to handle the unfamiliar expectations of life inside the castle. For the moment their usefulness remained practical: cooking, sewing, cleaning, serving meals and learning whatever Elise decided they ought to learn next.
Elise took to the responsibility with suspicious enthusiasm, and before long Oskar began to notice that an informal hierarchy had formed between her and Patricia almost entirely on its own. Patricia kept a close eye on Helena, while Elise did much the same with Maria and Zofia. Between them, they seemed determined to keep everyone else in the castle under equally careful observation.
The arrangement had less to do with administration than with a problem Oskar himself had created—or, more precisely, with access to him.
The rescued women and maids had not remained oblivious for long. They knew Helena had entered the prince's office as a secretary and somehow emerged considerably closer to him than before. They saw Zofia and Maria moving freely around him, while Patricia and Elise treated the Crown Prince with a familiarity no ordinary servant would ever have dared imitate, their children clambering over him as though he were simply another piece of furniture.
Naturally, women talked.
And before long, Oskar began noticing small changes throughout the castle. A maid who normally set down his coffee and left suddenly discovered several reasons to linger beside his desk. Another brushed his fingers while handing him a document and blushed far more than the contact seemed to justify. Women appeared with suspicious frequency in corridors he happened to use, doors opened just as he approached them, and smiles lingered a little too long whenever his attention turned their way.
Oskar was not completely oblivious. Eventually even he understood what was happening.
He had acquired a reputation. And it was becoming a dangerous one.
To a lonely young woman in occupied Warsaw, gaining the affection of the Crown Prince could mean security, wealth, protection and an entirely different life. Worse, enough women had already succeeded that the possibility no longer seemed ridiculous.
Patricia and Elise reacted like territorial cats.
The Horn sisters began appearing around Oskar with remarkable regularity. If a particularly ambitious maid lingered too long, Patricia somehow materialized nearby. If someone found an excuse to enter Oskar's bedroom, Elise generally found an excuse to remove her from it.
The six Horn children proved useful weapons as well, for Oskar adored them.
A child deposited upon his lap could occupy him for an hour. Reports were sometimes read with a small son leaning against his chest or a daughter solemnly offering useless strategic advice from beside his papers. Oskar would listen to their childish judgments with greater patience than he showed many generals.
Patricia discovered that this was an extremely effective way of keeping Oskar's attention away from wandering maids.
At the same time, the Royal Castle of Warsaw began acquiring the unmistakable character of Horn territory.
Oskar had already assigned a substantial detachment of the Black Guard—his own private security force—to protect the castle and the administrative buildings surrounding it. From that force, Patricia was given her own permanent bodyguard detail, responsible for accompanying her during official duties and securing the rooms in which she worked. She accepted the arrangement with considerably more enthusiasm than Oskar had expected, while Elise proved only too happy to encourage her.
And soon enough, Patricia had begun putting her own stamp upon them. New shoulder insignia appeared bearing the crowned unicorn of the Horn family, while small touches of deep blue and gold found their way onto uniforms and equipment. The unicorn itself—the same white beast beneath a golden crown that Patricia had adopted as the emblem of her family—seemed to appear everywhere once she realized nobody intended to stop her.
The castle followed.
Deep-blue Horn banners, embroidered with the crowned white unicorn and elaborate gold ornamentation, began appearing beside the Imperial and Black Legion standards. They hung from balconies, decorated administrative chambers and marked the quarters occupied by Patricia, Elise and their children until parts of the old Polish royal residence looked increasingly less like temporary German headquarters and more like the seat of the newly invented House of Horn.
Oskar first noticed the extent of it while crossing one of the castle corridors.
He slowed beneath an enormous blue banner, looked up at the crowned unicorn, then looked at Patricia.
She was standing several paces away with Elise, wearing an expression of such perfect innocence that Oskar immediately became certain both women were responsible.
He considered objecting, but decided against it. He did not particularly mind. Patricia adored the Horn identity she and Elise had created for themselves, and if decorating half the castle with unicorns kept her happy—and gave her something to command besides him—Oskar was quite willing to surrender the walls.
There were battles a man simply did not need to fight, and, truthfully, he enjoyed much of the chaos.
His six children filled the enormous castle with life. Oskar loved having them climb onto his chair while he worked, loved listening to their earnest and often ridiculous opinions on maps, armies and government, and loved returning from meetings to find one curled asleep against Shadowmane in the stables while another had slipped into his office in search of sweets.
He cared for the women as well, which was precisely the problem. All five were now carrying his children, and each had begun competing—subtly in some cases, quite openly in others—for whatever portion of his attention she could claim.
Meals had become minor political events, baths somehow attracted audiences, and even the bedroom had acquired the atmosphere of contested territory. Patricia believed seniority entitled her to a certain precedence, while Elise supported that principle whenever it happened to suit her. Helena possessed enough education and wit to hold her own in any argument, Zofia had almost no fear whatsoever of irritating him, and Maria had developed the dangerous confidence of a young woman utterly convinced that her prince secretly found everything she did adorable.
Oskar had commanded armies with less complicated chains of authority.
Eventually, he arrived at the obvious strategic conclusion: he needed to retreat—not permanently, merely far enough for everyone to calm down.
The east no longer required his constant presence. Hindenburg and Ludendorff could manage the military situation. Patricia and Helena could test themselves in civilian administration. Elise could govern the castle household. The Black Guard, German police and SEK could handle security. Maria and Zofia could continue their education.
If it worked, Oskar gained experienced administrators. If it failed, at least he would not be standing in the middle of it.
There were larger reasons to leave as well.
He wanted to see his family in Germany. And beyond the rain-soaked Eastern Front, the war had continued moving. France remained in crisis. Britain remained at war. Most importantly, the struggle at sea was entering a phase Oskar had spent years preparing for. German submarines, commerce raiders and the technologies he had forced upon the Imperial Navy were now being tested against the greatest maritime empire on earth.
That interested him considerably more than determining which woman in the Royal Castle was currently angry with which other woman.
He finished the last decree, signed his name beneath it and placed the pen carefully upon the desk. From somewhere beyond the office doors came the unmistakable sound of Patricia arguing with somebody, followed by another voice attempting rather unsuccessfully to argue back. Oskar listened for perhaps three seconds before deciding that the matter no longer required his personal attention.
It was time to go home.
On 24 August, he left Warsaw.
His train carried him west accompanied by the Eternal Guard and a selection of Black Legion soldiers beginning their own rotation home. Oskar could easily have slipped quietly into Berlin and disappeared behind the palace gates, but that would have wasted an opportunity. The returning soldiers were meant to be seen, and so was he.
From Berlin toward Potsdam, the procession became a public spectacle. Returning legionaries marched beneath flags and cheering crowds while motorcycles and armoured vehicles rolled alongside them, the Eternal Guard maintaining its immaculate formation around the prince. At their head rode Oskar upon Shadowmane.
Neither prince nor horse looked untouched by the campaign.
Oskar had deliberately returned in the same black armour he had worn in the east. The plates were scratched, dented and scarred, with cracks and pale marks showing where bullets and fragments had struck. Shadowmane's barding carried much the same punishment, its black surfaces bearing the evidence of weeks spent beneath artillery fire, rifle shots and flying debris. Nothing had been polished sufficiently to disguise what they had endured.
That was part of the message.
Their prince had not directed the war from some distant palace. He had ridden into it beside them.
The crowds understood perfectly well. Children were hoisted onto shoulders for a better look, women searched the passing ranks for husbands, brothers and sons, and men along the streets raised clenched fists against their hearts as the salute of the Black Legion spread outward through the spectators. Oskar answered them in kind, pressing his own armoured fist against his chest as Shadowmane carried him onward.
When the returning troops finally assembled before their dismissal, Oskar kept his speech mercifully brief. He praised what they had accomplished in East Prussia, Poland and beyond, but reminded them that the war was far from finished. Their rest was not a reward for weakness, he told them, but preparation for whatever came next. They had earned time with their families, and he expected them to use it well—to sleep, eat, recover their strength and remember precisely why they had fought so hard to return home alive.
When duty called again, he expected them back.
Thousands of fists struck chests in answer.
Then the formations were dismissed, and military order dissolved almost immediately into celebration. Soldiers disappeared into waiting families, comrades shouted farewells across the square, and children darted between men who only moments earlier had stood motionless in formation. Oskar remained upon Shadowmane for a while simply watching it happen, satisfaction settling quietly across his face.
Only when most of the men had begun dispersing did he turn toward the palace.
Shadowmane carried him through the royal gates with the Eternal Guard following behind, the growl of engines and measured rhythm of boots gradually fading beneath the quieter sounds of the palace grounds. There, at last, some of the weight of the campaign began to loosen from Oskar's shoulders.
His armour was in desperate need of repair. Several plates would have to be replaced entirely, and much of the rest required attention in the laboratories and workshops hidden beneath the palace. Shadowmane's barding was little better, though the stallion himself appeared far less concerned with damaged armour than with the mares waiting somewhere deeper within the royal grounds.
Oskar scarcely had time to consider any of it before he reached the family quarters.
The children found him first.
They descended upon him in a laughing, shouting mass, and whatever dignity the Black Skull Knight had maintained before thousands of cheering Germans disappeared almost instantly beneath grasping little hands and overlapping demands to be lifted. Oskar laughed, bent down and gathered as many of them into his arms as he could manage, while the rest clung to his armour, cape and legs until even a man capable of carrying absurd weights found himself thoroughly occupied.
Beyond them waited the adults of his family, and soon came the embraces, kisses and questions that weeks of separation had stored up. For them the war had arrived through newspapers, telegrams and military reports, every new message carrying with it the unspoken possibility that one day his name might appear among the dead. Seeing him standing before them again—battered armour and all—made the campaign suddenly real in an entirely different way.
Farther back stood Wilhelm and Augusta.
His father was smiling, although Oskar knew Wilhelm well enough to recognize the considerable number of questions concealed behind the expression. The Kaiser plainly had much he intended to discuss once the reunion had run its course.
So did Oskar, but not yet.
For the moment, he allowed himself simply to enjoy being home. The war could wait a little while, although the struggle at sea would demand his attention soon enough.