By the evening of the seventh of September, Oskar returned to Warsaw.
The city did not greet him like a conquered capital should have.
There were no cheering crowds, no banners of grateful citizens, no lines of local men staring with forced obedience from behind police cordons. The men were gone. All of them. Old men, young men, boys old enough to be counted, boys barely old enough to understand why their mothers wept when the order came. They had been pushed east, out of German-held territory and into Russia's open throat.
What remained was a city of women and girls.
They moved through the streets like the surviving half of a people. Some carried baskets. Some pushed barrows. Some led thin horses or dragged handcarts piled with firewood, laundry, potatoes, scavenged boards, anything useful. In the parks, the flowerbeds had been torn up and replaced by vegetable plots. Women knelt in the dirt beneath the watch of German police, planting cabbages and onions where children had once played. Others worked in courtyards, repairing and washing clothes, trading eggs, mending boots for German soldiers in exchange for bread, salt, kerosene, soap.
The signs had changed.
Polish lettering remained in places, scratched into stone or carved into old walls, but above shops, police stations, rail depots, military offices, and supply yards, German boards now hung clean and official. Black letters on pale wood. Order imposed by typography.
Warsaw had not been destroyed.
That was something.
But neither was it whole.
The streets carried the strange tension of occupation: the smell of fresh bread from reopened bakeries, the thud of German boots, the laughter of young soldiers on rest leave, the weary silence of women who had decided survival was more urgent than pride. Here and there, in cafés and restaurants still functioning under new licenses, German soldiers sat with local women pressed close to them, laughing softly, sharing plates, pouring wine, buying sweets, speaking in broken phrases. Some women looked calculating. Some looked grateful. Some looked simply tired. Some clung to the men beside them as if warmth itself had become currency.
No one forced them.
That was the thing Oskar would have said if challenged.
The women could trade item's, services or just refuse to do so. They could also always just leave the city if they wished, they could go to Russia, or go tend to some farm. They could also stay and repair homes, serve in households. Accept German pay or reject it. The occupation administration did not demand their bodies, their loyalty, or their affection.
It only demanded absolute obedience, and it controlled everything else.
And in a world where everything else had been taken, choice became a word with thorns.
Oskar watched the city from inside the car as the convoy moved toward the Royal Palace.
He wore no helmet yet. His black armor caught the fading light through the windows, dark plates gleaming like wet stone. Captain Carter sat opposite him, silent and alert. Two men of the Third Company rode in the next vehicle. More followed behind. Shadowmane had been unloaded from the train and taken under guard toward the military stables, displeased, restless, but obedient.
Warsaw passed around them.
Women looked up as the convoy rolled by.
Some bowed their heads. Some stared with hatred. Some with fear. Some with the strange, dangerous fascination people gave to power when power had already decided their lives for them.
Oskar gave them nothing in return.
No smile, no wave, no performance.
He had no energy for theater tonight.
At the Royal Palace, the German guards snapped to attention before the car had fully stopped. The courtyard was busy with soldiers, clerks, orderlies, police officers, mechanics, couriers, and horses being led between wagons. The eastern campaign was waking again, and the palace had become less a residence than a nerve center. Lights burned in half the windows. Telegraph cables ran like black veins along walls and through corridors. Maps and orders moved faster than servants.
The car door opened, and Oskar then stepped out to the courtyard that seemed to contract around him.
Even men who had seen him before looked again. They always did. Two hundred and nine centimeters of armored authority, broad as a statue, moving with the calm heaviness of something designed not merely to survive violence, but to deliver it.
He entered the palace without ceremony.
Warm air met him at once—along with German voices, soft footsteps, and the quiet order of a place that no longer belonged to those who had built it. And there, waiting just inside the entrance, stood the Polish mother and daughter Zofia and Maria.
They were dressed as maids—properly, modestly… and yet not.
The uniforms clung more than they concealed. Dark fabric drawn tight across curves shaped by youth and labor, white aprons pulled snug at the waist, collars neat but just low enough to betray the line of skin beneath. Practical clothing, one could say.
But not innocent.
Both women curtsied the moment they saw him.
"Welcome home, Master."
Zofia's voice trembled just slightly.
She did not look up at first. She tried not to. But it was impossible not to feel him—the sheer presence of him. The height. The weight of him. The way his gaze settled, unhurried, unapologetic, as if he had every right to take in what stood before him, and he did.
Zofia's breath caught.
Maria, beside her, said nothing at all. Her eyes had lifted without permission, wide and fixed on him, as if she could not look away even if she wanted to.
Oskar stepped closer.
He did not speak immediately. He simply looked, and that was worse.
Zofia felt it—his attention, slow and deliberate, passing over her, taking note without restraint. It made her chest tighten, made her fingers curl slightly into her apron as she tried to remain composed.
She failed the moment his hand found her waist.
It was not gentle. Not rough either. Just certain.
He pulled her in, close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the thin layers between them, and before she could think—before she could remember how to be proper—his mouth was on hers.
The kiss was not hesitant or polite.
It was deep, claiming, overwhelming—stealing breath and thought in the same motion. Tasting the sweetness of her lips to calculate her loyalty, or so Oskar told himself.
Zofia tried, for a fraction of a second, to remain the composed servant she was meant to be.
Then she broke.
Her hands came up, grasping at him, fingers pressing against his face, his armor, anything she could reach as she kissed him back with a hunger that betrayed how long she had been waiting. A soft sound escaped her—half breath, half something more—and she clung as if letting go meant losing him again.
"Oskar…" she breathed against his lips.
He let her go just as suddenly.
She staggered half a step, flushed, breath uneven, hair slightly out of place—no longer the controlled figure she had tried to present.
And then his attention shifted, to Maria, young but grown.
She froze.
She had been watching the entire time, unable to look away, her cheeks burning, her chest rising too fast. When his eyes met hers, she tried to speak—tried to say something, anything—but nothing came out.
Oskar held her gaze for a moment.
Then, without a word, he placed his helmet into her hands.
It was heavy. Far heavier than she expected. She took it instinctively, arms dipping slightly under the weight.
And before she could recover, his hand was at her chin tilting her face up.
And then he kissed her.
Maria's mind went completely blank.
It was her first real kiss—she knew that much—and it was nothing like she had imagined. It was overwhelming, disorienting, too much and not enough all at once. She didn't know what to do, how to respond, where to place her hands—so she did nothing at all, standing there frozen as the world seemed to tilt around her.
When he pulled back, she was left staring at him, breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat, unable to process what had just happened.
Zofia stood beside her, very still now, watching it all, but not stopping it.
Not understanding what she was feeling about it either.
Oskar took the helmet back as if nothing of consequence had occurred, he didn't explain anything, he just smirked as he said, "It's good to see you both."
And then came the sound of footsteps.
Patricia appeared at the top of the stairs, her presence immediate and unmistakable, her children at her side. Elise followed just behind, her own children close to her, both women dressed far more richly now—no longer servants, but something closer to nobility.
They saw him.
And restraint vanished.
"Oskar!"
Both women hurried down the stairs, their children trailing after them in a bright, curious little cluster. Patricia shrieked out his name, bold as ever, and reached him without restraint first.
Elise came after her, smaller and more hesitant, but no less eager. She hovered for a heartbeat, eyes lifted to him, waiting for permission she already knew he would make her ask for.
Oskar looked down at her.
"Well?" he said teasingly.
Her cheeks reddened. "Please."
Only then did he bend and kiss her too.
Patricia leaned close afterward, her voice low and private, promising him that she had prepared something for him later. Elise stayed near his side, quieter but glowing, while the children gathered around his legs, looking up at him with the solemn curiosity of little ones who sensed importance before they understood it.
Oskar lowered himself and rested a hand on each small head in turn. He did not fully remember every age, every habit, every little private detail as he should have, and that knowledge touched him with a faint sting of guilt. But they were healthy. Bright-eyed. Warm. Safe. Living in comfort beneath the roof he had placed over them.
That, at least, was something.
He smiled, laughed softly, and drew the women close for one brief moment, holding all four of them as if the world outside the palace had no claim on him.
Then he saw Franz Ferdinand.
The Archduke of Austria-Hungary stood at the far end of the hall beside a marble column, motionless, his staff lingering behind him with the careful stiffness of men pretending not to see too much. Ferdinand had not witnessed the kisses clearly, but he had seen the closeness. He had seen the way the women looked at Oskar. Most of all, he had seen the children.
Their pale hair.
Their eyes.
Their faces.
The resemblance was not something a reasonable man could politely ignore.
For a long moment Ferdinand said nothing.
Oskar met his gaze and smiled without apology.
Ferdinand's eyebrows rose slightly, as if saying, "Really? Just how many women and children are there?"
Oskar's answering look was calm and said it all, "Not now, my friend."
He released the women gently and told them, "Later. I will return when the work is done."
Then he turned to Ferdinand.
"Come. The living must make their plans before the dead begin making them for us."
Ferdinand frowned at that, but followed.
As they climbed the stairs toward the meeting room, the warmth of the lower hall faded behind them. Oskar's voice softened.
"How is Sophie?"
"Alive," Ferdinand said. "Recovering. Still weak, though she insists otherwise."
"That sounds like her."
"It does." Ferdinand glanced at him. "And you? You were shot as well, Oskar. Yet here you are walking as if bullets are only weather. What is your secret?"
Oskar smiled faintly, eyes forward.
"Well my friend, let us just say that, a man of vision can fall many times, but you can never see him in a grounded state. The vision will always pick him up."
Ferdinand studied him. "That is not an answer."
"No," Oskar said. "It is not."
"Then give me one."
Oskar turned his head just enough to look at him.
"Dont worry my friend, all will be revealed to you in time. If not in this life, then in the next."
Ferdinand slowed half a step, confusion crossing his face.
"The next?"
"You believe in heaven, do you not?"
"Of course."
"Then you already believe the road does not end where the body falls."
Ferdinand had no ready reply to that.
Oskar's smile remained gentle, almost distant.
"Some doors open only after a man has stopped trying to force them."
He said nothing more.
Ferdinand looked at him as if unsure whether he had just heard a confession, a prophecy, or a jest dressed in scripture.
Oskar did not explain himself. He simply led him onward.
There would be time for explanations later, and time for his women and children as well, and all the soft complications of his private life. For now, the east was moving again, and Warsaw had become less a palace than the brain of an army.
He led Franz Ferdinand through the corridors toward the strategic meeting room, the Archduke walking at his side with the strange, living weight of history about him. This was the man who should have died in Sarajevo. The man whose death should have opened the gates of hell. Yet here he was instead—alive, troubled, and still walking beside Oskar as friend and ally.
The thought amused Oskar in a bitter sort of way.
The good old bastard had survived history, now he would have to help shape it.
In the meeting room, the commanders had already gathered around the great round table. Maps covered the walls and lay spread beneath brass weights: the Eastern Front from the Baltic to the Carpathians, the Russian railways, the river lines, the roads, the depots, the known reserves, and in the north, circled in hard black pencil, Riga.
Around the table the old men stood in silent thought, Generals such as Hindenburg and Ludendorff watching the map with sharp, hungry eyes. While representing the navy was Prince Heinrich of Prussia, Oskar's uncle, commander of the Baltic Fleet.
Oskar's uncle had long looked upon him as the most interesting candidate the Hohenzollern bloodline had produced in generations, and now he was here to help his brother's son change the course of the war.
Beside Ferdinand stood several Austro-Hungarian generals, stiff with pride and unease. General Paul von Rennenkampf was there as well, the Russian defector standing slightly apart, aware that his usefulness had brought him into a room where entire nations were being rearranged.
Oskar took his place.
No one announced him.
The room simply became his.
The pieces were set. Blocks and pins marked the armies: black for the Black Legion, white for Austria-Hungary, yellow for Russia. The numbers were reviewed quickly, without drama, because every man there already understood the scale. Oskar's Black Legion held the northern blade with one hundred and eighty thousand men. Austria-Hungary held the greater portion of the southern front with four armies, nearly seven hundred thousand strong. Against them stood the Russian mass: nine armies in the field, with elements of the Sixth drawn down from the defense of Petrograd, and perhaps well over two million men once militia, labor formations, and rear units were counted.
Russia had the numbers.
Russia always had numbers.
That was why Riga mattered.
Oskar moved one black marker north and set it against the city.
"Our wider strategy is simple," he said. "Austria-Hungary's eventual road is Kiev and Ukraine. Ours is the Baltic, then Minsk. Those are not today's objectives. They are what this operation makes possible."
He tapped Riga.
"This is the door."
Every eye moved to the city.
"The Russians have reinforced it with remnants of the First Army and elements of the Tenth. They believe that if they hold Riga, they can anchor the northern line and force us to pay for every step eastward. So we will not pay. We will break it quickly, and when we break it, they will have to react. They will pull men north to stop the wound from opening wider. Every division they send toward Riga is one they cannot send against Austria-Hungary. Every reserve they commit to the Baltic weakens the road to Minsk and weakens the road to Kiev."
He looked briefly toward Ferdinand.
"That is the purpose. Not merely to take a city, but to make Russia move where we want her to move."
No one interrupted.
Oskar did not bury them in details. No plan survived first contact with the enemy, and he had no patience for commanders who mistook map-arrows for reality. He gave them the shape of the fight: simple enough to remember, violent enough to matter.
"Prince Heinrich's fleet will move under darkness. First targets: Daugavgrīva, Bolderāja, Mangaļsala, the harbor batteries, searchlights, and any guns that can threaten the landing lanes. Riga itself is not to be smashed. It is a port, a rail hub, a bridgehead, and a city we will need after the battle. We take it. We do not grind it flat."
Heinrich inclined his head. "The fleet will be in position before dawn."
"Good."
Oskar turned to Seeckt.
"XVII Corps attacks from the south. Rommel opens the way with the First Armored Division: one hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred and sixty armored trucks, infantry close behind. There will be a five minute long artillery barrage at the start, and no more. We will be violent, concentrated, and brief. The purpose is not to turn the enemies positions into mud. The purpose is to stun the first line long enough for armor to reach it."
Rommel's eyes sharpened.
"Speed, then."
"Speed and control," Oskar replied. "If your tanks outrun the infantry and die in the streets, you will have achieved nothing but an expensive funeral."
Rommel nodded once.
Then Oskar touched the northern edge of the city.
"Ten thousand marines land north of Riga before first light. They do not charge blindly into the city. They secure the northern approaches, block reinforcement routes, and close the noose. The Russians must feel pressure from the sea, from the south, and from the rear. East remains their only apparent escape."
"Apparent," Ludendorff said.
Oskar nodded.
"At dawn, the air force closes it. Two hundred aircraft. Ten H-1 bombers. Eighty F-2 fighters. The older F-1s in support. Bombers strike rail lines, stations, moving trains, artillery parks, and dense road columns. Fighters sweep the roads. Anything moving east in mass is treated as hostile military movement."
Then his hand moved to the city center, to Riga Castle and the adjoining bridgehead district—the hinge of the crossing.
"This is the hinge," he said.
The room tightened.
"I will drop with Third Company before the attack begins. Two hundred men. We seize Riga Castle, the bridge approaches, demolition points, signal stations, and whatever command posts we find. Once the bridge is contested and the castle secured, we fire the flare. That is the signal for the fleet, artillery, armor, marines, and aircraft to move as one."
Ferdinand stared at him, "Wait, what? You are personally jumping into Riga?"
"Yes."
"With two hundred men?"
"With Third Company."
"In black armor?"
"Yes."
Ferdinand exhaled through his nose. "That sounds like an extremely risky plan."
"It is the plan," Oskar said. "If all the bridges are blown, the battle becomes slower, bloodier, and more destructive. Engineers will fix the bridge's eventually, but the day will be lost, and perhaps parts of the city with it. So the bridge before Riga Castle must be contested before the Russians understand the battle has begun."
Ludendorff folded his arms. "And if Third Company is surrounded?"
"Then the first armoured division and XVII Corps had better move quickly."
Rommel and Lieutenant General Hans von Seeckt smiled confidently.
Oskar's gaze cut to them.
"I mean that literally."
The smile vanished. "Yes, Your Highness."
Oskar looked around the table.
"This battle is designed to be decided in a day. We shock them, blind them, split their command, seize the crossing, strike from the sea, strike from the south, strike from the north, and cut their retreat from the air. If done correctly, Riga falls before the Russians can decide whether they are defending a city or escaping a trap. If done poorly, we get street fighting, burning bridges, smashed rail yards, dead civilians, and another month of repairs before we can move east."
That needed no further explanation.
Then Oskar turned to Rennenkampf.
"And you, General."
The Russian defector straightened. "Your Highness?"
"Once Riga is taken, you will establish your headquarters there."
Rennenkampf went still.
Oskar placed another marker over the Baltic region.
"Germany will not govern every Baltic village with German blood. Germany has neither the men, the time nor the means to rule each people directly while fighting Russia, Britain, and France. So we will create a local solution: a Baltic state under German protection. A subject state, yes. A puppet, if one wishes to be ugly and honest about it. But one with its own men, its own local administration, and its own stake in survival."
Rennenkampf swallowed.
"You wish me to govern it."
"I wish you to begin it," Oskar said. "You will speak to the Baltic peoples. You will tell them the choice plainly. They may remain Russian subjects and share Russia's defeat, or they may take up arms under German protection and earn a future as German subjects rather than Russian ones."
The room was silent.
"I will provide rifles, uniforms, helmets, food, pay, instructors, and officers where necessary. You will begin gathering local men as soon as the city is secure. Those willing to fight with us will be armed. Those unwilling to choose will be judged by usefulness and danger."
Rennenkampf's forehead glistened faintly.
"And if they refuse?"
Oskar's expression did not change.
"Then they will not remain in our rear as a threat."
Everyone understood.
"This is arithmetic, General. Germany cannot waste men watching every road, station, bridge, and village while the Russian army still exists. Either the Baltic peoples help us secure their lands, or we secure those lands without them."
Rennenkampf nodded slowly.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Good."
Then Oskar looked to Ferdinand.
"Well then, my friend. You know my way of doing things. You have seen Warsaw. You have seen the eastern territories. You have seen the order it creates, and the fear it leaves behind."
Ferdinand's face tightened.
"I have."
"Germany will push. Germany will take territory. Germany will break Russia's northern line. Can Austria-Hungary follow when the Russians begin shifting reserves? Can you take what must be taken? Can you govern what you take?"
The Austro-Hungarian generals stiffened.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff exchanged a glance that was not kind. They did not fully trust Austria-Hungary. Galicia had held, yes, but at monstrous cost. The Austro-Hungarian armies had suffered horribly—tens of thousands dead, far more wounded, maimed, broken, missing. Germany's victories had saved them from worse, and everyone in the room knew it.
Ferdinand accepted the silence with dignity.
"We held Galicia," he said.
"You did," Oskar replied. "Against the greater weight of Russia. That matters."
Some of the Austro-Hungarians looked surprised.
Oskar meant it.
"I am not asking whether Austria-Hungary can fight. You have proved that. I am asking whether Austria-Hungary can fight, advance, and govern at once, because as you know, the lands ahead of us are not only vast, but also populated by tens of millions."
Ferdinand looked down at the map for a long moment.
Then he raised his eyes.
"Your plan is sound," he said quietly. "Riga may draw Russian strength north and open space elsewhere. I understand that. My generals are eager to move, perhaps too eager. Serbia still bleeds us. Belgrade has not fallen as quickly as we hoped, and the Serbs fight with a stubbornness out of all proportion to their size. But yes, if Riga weakens the Russian line, we can press."
He paused.
"But I must ask something else."
Oskar waited.
Ferdinand's face hardened—not with anger, but with conscience.
"Must it always be done this way? Your methods work. I do not deny that. But I have seen the fear they leave behind. Families broken. Men driven east. Women surviving beneath another flag. These are not only Russians we face. The Tsar's army is full of Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians—men born into an empire they did not choose. Is there no way that we could do this, perhaps in a more merciful manner?"
Oskar's mouth curved faintly, not mockery, but something sadder.
"Tell me, Ferdinand," he said. "Have you ever heard of such a thing, as a merciful war?"
No one answered.
The words settled over the room like ash.
Every man there knew the truth. Strip away the flags, prayers, speeches, and painted maps, and war was only this: men in clean rooms deciding where other men would be fed into fire.
And they were those men now.
The architects.
The killers at a distance.
Ferdinand looked away first.
Oskar did not press him.
As the discussions continued in that private room in Warsaw, the war outside did not wait for signatures, maps, or final words.
Preparations were already underway.
At the front, armor was assembling in the darkness. Artillery batteries were being drawn into place, gun by gun, shell by shell, ready to vomit fire across the Russian lines. Down at the ports and river landings, ships were being loaded with men, ammunition, fuel, rations, and all the thousand hard necessities of war. Supply columns crept through the night. Orders moved. Engines turned. Entire formations shifted like great iron limbs preparing to strike.
And across the line, the Russians knew only that something was coming.
Fog and rain had kept much of the front blind. The constant pressure of Black Legion artillery, the distant growl of engines, the sudden terror of aerial bombardment—these had become part of life now, part of the new and unnatural rhythm of the war. They did not know what exactly was about to fall upon them. They only knew that whatever came, they would have to stand, fight, and die where they stood, because in their hearts they no longer believed retreat would save them.
So it was that on the 9th of September, Oskar handed Shadowmane over to Rommel.
"Keep him close," he told him. "I'll need him later."
Then he laid a hand against the great black stallion's neck and gave the beast something almost like an apology. He did not think dropping a horse by parachute into Riga was either practical or kind, no matter what Shadowmane himself might have thought of the matter. The horse huffed hot breath through his nostrils and stamped once, as if offended by the very idea of being left behind.
Oskar only gave a faint smile, then turned away.
The bomber waiting for him carried no bombs that morning.
It carried men.
Ten aircraft stood in the darkness of the early hours, their engines growling low, their bellies filled with the soldiers of the Third Company of the Eternal Guard. Oskar boarded with them, and soon enough the machines began to roll, one after another, into the night.
Elsewhere, close to the front, Black Legion soldiers checked and polished their rifles, tightened straps, adjusted kit, and prepared themselves for the coming battle. Some bowed their heads in prayer. Some forced down a hot meal. Some joked more loudly than necessary. Others said nothing at all.
Sniper teams had already moved out ahead of the line, slipping forward under cover of darkness to eliminate any exposed Russian positions before the bombardment began, just in case the artillery failed to kill all that needed killing.
Farther away, ships moved into their assigned positions. Naval guns were loaded. Artillery crews stood ready beside stacked shells. Camouflaged armored vehicles were uncovered one by one, their shapes emerging from tarpaulins and brush like steel beasts waking from sleep.
Everything was in motion.
Everything was converging.
And though the sun had not yet risen, the battle for Riga was already beginning.