Oskar fell through the clouds.
For a few seconds there was no city, no river, no army beneath him. Only cold wind screaming around black armor, the violent pull of the parachute straps, and the broken moon flashing in and out through torn layers of cloud.
Then Riga appeared below.
The city lay almost completely dark, spread along the Western Dvina like a dead thing pretending to sleep. Roofs, streets, church towers, warehouses, rail yards, and blackened districts showed only in fragments whenever the moon escaped the clouds. The river cut through it all, broad and black, glinting in places like a blade under cloth.
Beside the river stood Riga Castle.
From above, it had the shape of an old square fist: pale walls around a dark inner court, round towers at the corners, its mass pressed close to the water as if it had been built to grip the river itself. Near it, the stone bridge stretched across the Dvina, low and pale, its arches half-lost in mist.
The bridge was the throat.
The castle was the hand around it.
Most of the castle was dark.
But one tower had light.
A single window burned in the south western circular tower, warm and small against the cold stone, like an eye left open in a sleeping face.
Oskar angled toward it.
The parachute dragged hard above him, fighting his weight, his armor, his sword, his launcher, and the impossible mass of the body beneath all of it. He did not drift gently like the others. He descended fast, too fast for any sane man, the black canopy straining above him while the tower rose toward him.
He fixed the burning window in the hollow gaze of his skull-faced helm.
There.
Below, inside that same tower, Colonel Arvid Mikhailovich Kallionen stood at the window and looked out over the river.
The candlelit room behind him was round, shaped by the tower's old bones. A circular iron chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, its candles burning low and yellow. Their light fell across a heavy wooden table covered in maps: Riga, the river, the bridge, the southern trenches, the harbor batteries, the rail approaches, the road to Bauska, and the defensive belts drawn in red and black pencil.
A group of officers stood around the table, seven in all, not counting Kallionen, with two armed guards posted beyond the door.
They had been awake too long, but their uniforms remained proper. Guard officers did not allow themselves to look like frightened peasants. Their collars were straight. Their belts were polished. Their boots were clean despite the damp cold that crept even through castle stone.
Kallionen stood apart from them, framed by the window.
He was a large man, over one hundred and ninety centimeters tall, bald-headed and broad through the shoulders, with a hard, thick body that had not softened in command. One eye was pale and steady. The other twitched beneath three old claw scars that ran from brow to cheek.
Men said a bear had done it.
He never corrected them.
Among the Finnish-blooded guardsmen, some called him Karhunarpi.
The Bear-Scar.
He looked down at the bridge and then opened the pocket watch in his palm.
Less than an hour until sunrise.
He closed it with a click and smirked.
"The Germans have waited too long."
Behind him, Captain Salov looked up from the map. "The First Army headquarters reports no major movement from the south. City Hall remains confident. The outer perimeter is manned. The coastal defenses are prepared. The ports are covered."
Lieutenant Vornanen, whose Finnish accent thickened when he was tired, tapped the bridge marked near the castle. "The Guard detachments hold the castle, the bridge, and the river approaches. The rest are spread through the port, rail district, and government quarter. If the Germans mean to come through here, they must come through us."
Another officer, Staff Lieutenant Orlov, pointed farther south.
"And Bauska remains secure. The Tenth Army headquarters is there, with formations enough to threaten any German advance that commits too deeply toward Riga. Between our forces here and theirs on the flank, the enemy risks being caught if they press foolishly."
Salov nodded. "We have over three hundred thousand men in the wider region, by the latest estimate."
"More if the militia formations are counted," Vornanen said.
Kallionen gave a low huff of amusement.
"There," he said. "You see? We have nothing to worry about. Riga is not Warsaw. It is not some open road for the Black Legion to drive across. This city has been turned into a fortress. Trenches to the south. Guns on the roads. Guard troops in the heart. The river before us. The Tenth Army watching the flank."
He turned from the window and looked over the men at the table.
"To break us here, they need an army. A whole army. Tanks, artillery, engineers, bridges, pontoons, corps upon corps, and time."
His scarred eye twitched.
"If they come, they bleed."
The words settled well in the room.
They needed to hear them.
Kallionen needed to say them.
Orlov exhaled, almost smiling now. "Perhaps they have stopped because they understand that."
"Perhaps," Vornanen said, though his eyes stayed on the map, "or perhaps they are preparing something."
Kallionen's smirk thinned and the room fell quiet. And it was then, that they finally heard the sound outside.
At first it was only a pressure in the walls, a low vibration passing through old stone.
The candles trembled. One of the officers lifted his head.
Then everyone realized what it was.
Engines.
Distant, but growing.
Kallionen turned slowly back toward the window.
The sound deepened, rolling over the city in layers. It was not the thin buzz of scouting aircraft. Not the sharp snarl of fighters. This was heavier. Broader. A deep mechanical growl spreading through the clouds above Riga.
"Air raid?" Orlov asked.
Kallionen's brow furrowed.
"At this hour?"
He crossed to the window and seized the latch. The frame resisted him for a moment, swollen from damp, then scraped open under his hand.
Cold air rushed in and the engine noise became clearer at once.
He leaned out.
The dark city lay beneath him. The bridge stretched pale over the river. Mist moved between the arches.
Above, the clouds shifted. Moonlight caught the aircraft.
And he could see them clearly, ten silhouettes moving high over Riga, black against the broken silver edges of cloud.
Large ones, bombers by the look of them. Out of instinct Kallionen expected to hear the sound of bombs dropping.
But nothing happened, there was no shriek, no blast or an eruption from the streets.
Instead, he noticed smaller black shapes dropping from the aircraft and through the clouds.
One, then another, then more.
Salov stepped closer behind him. "Are those, bombs?"
"No," Kallionen said.
His mouth had gone dry.
One of the small shapes opened beneath the moon. It was a parachute, but none of them could recognise it.
Vornanen merely whispered something in Finnish. "Perkele… mitä helvettiä?"
Then Kallionen saw the larger shape, it was falling faster than the rest, not drifting gently but falling like an incoming projectile.
A dark mass dropped straight toward the tower, growing larger with terrifying speed. Moonlight flashed across black metal. Something red snapped behind it. For a single impossible instant, Kallionen saw a pale skull-face staring back at him through the night.
His body understood before his mind did.
"Get down!"
He threw himself backward away from the window, just as the dark figure hit the tower like a cannonball made of steel, muscle, and wrath.
Glass burst into glittering dust. The arched frame blew apart. Stone cracked around the impact and vomited mortar, brick, splinters, and lime across the room. The sound was not a crash. It was a detonation.
Three officers died in the first second.
One vanished beneath Oskar's armored body and the broken stone, crushed so completely that blood burst from his mouth, nose, and ears at once. Another struck the wall headfirst and left a red fan across the plaster before dropping bonelessly to the floor. The third disappeared under the shattered window frame, screaming only until the weight settled and his chest caved in.
The map table lurched sideways, candles scattered, papers flew. Dust filled the chamber so thickly that the room vanished.
For a heartbeat, there was only choking white powder, ringing ears, and the sound of old masonry still falling in pieces.
Then something moved inside the dust.
The black armor rose.
Oskar stood in the middle of the command room like a black knight out of some northern nightmare, skull helm lowered, broad shoulders powdered white by broken stone. He was not merely tall in that moment, he was mass, darkness, weight given human shape. One armored boot rested on the chest of the man beneath him. As Oskar shifted, the officer's ribs cracked inward like dry branches under winter snow. His mouth opened in a final red gasp, and his head fell sideways.
Kallionen pushed himself up from the floor.
Blood ran down his scalp. His ribs burned. His scarred eye twitched so violently that the world blurred on one side. Through the dust and candle smoke, he saw the black figure turn toward him.
For one second, Kallionen forgot rank, maps, armies, and dawn.
He saw only a beast in his command room, a black-armored German bear.
Then he saw the dead around him, his officers, his men. The sons of guard families, forest families, Petersburg families, Finnish and Russian alike, crushed and broken beneath stone and steel.
Rage came before thought.
Kallionen roared and charged.
"Get out of my command room, you bastard!"
He slammed into Oskar with everything he had.
It was like striking a solid pine trunk rooted deep in frozen ground.
Oskar moved only half a step, one armored heel grinding through broken masonry near the ruined window. That was all. Kallionen's shoulder burst with pain. Breath exploded from his lungs. For a sick instant he felt as if he had thrown himself against the oldest tree in the forest and the tree had merely noticed him.
A black gauntlet caught the back of his uniform.
Then the remaining officers roared and threw themselves in.
They had no rifles in their hands. Their weapons lay on hooks, belts, chairs, too far away to matter. So they used what they had: bodies, fists, knives, rage. Four men crashed into the Iron Prince from the side, grabbing armor, arm, cape, straps, anything they could seize before he reached the great sword on his back.
For one instant, their combined weight drove him off balance.
Oskar twisted near the broken wall, the night open behind him.
Captain Salov drew a knife and lunged upward, aiming for the gap beneath the skull helm, where face and throat had to be somewhere behind the black iron.
"For the Tsar!" he shouted.
The blade never reached flesh.
Oskar's hand snapped out and caught him by the front of his uniform. Salov had just enough time to understand that he had been taken before Oskar hurled him upward.
The captain struck the vaulted ceiling with a wet crack.
His body bounced off the stone, spun once, and crashed into the circular iron chandelier. The chain screamed as his weight tore it loose. Iron, candle wax, flame, and flesh came down together. The chandelier smashed onto the map table and broke it in half. Candles rolled across the maps. Fire licked at paper, caught the edge of Riga's southern defenses, and began to eat.
Then Oskar found his footing fully.
He seized Kallionen and threw him.
The colonel flew across the room like a ragdoll, crashed through a shelf of field manuals and dispatch folders, and hit the floor beneath a rain of splintered wood and paper. Pain flashed through his ribs so sharply that for a moment he could not breathe.
Through dust and smoke, he heard Vornanen swear, "Voi saatana—"
Then the curse broke into a scream.
Oskar had turned on the two men still clinging to his body.
He dragged them with him as if they weighed nothing. One he smashed face-first into the broken stone edge of the window. Teeth burst across the sill. His skull split open against the masonry, and his body dropped twitching into the dust.
The other tried to let go.
Too late.
Oskar caught him by the back of the neck, drove one gauntleted hand down his spine, and pulled.
There was a tearing crack.
The officer's back opened in a red line. Bone came loose with meat still clinging to it. His scream became a strangled animal sound, high and wet and unbelieving, as Oskar ripped him apart by sheer force. The body collapsed forward, legs kicking once before going still.
Oskar flung the ruined spine aside.
It struck the burning map table and slid through the flames like some butchered offering thrown onto a pyre.
The last officer still standing fumbled for his sidearm.
He was farther back than the others, half-hidden in the dust and candle smoke, his hand shaking so badly he could barely pull the pistol free. His eyes were wide. His mouth opened and closed without sound.
He looked at the burning table.
At the bodies.
At Oskar.
Then his nerve broke.
He turned and ran.
Oskar reached him in one step.
The officer had barely twisted toward the door before Oskar's gauntlet punched through his back and burst out through his chest.
Ribs snapped outward. The man convulsed, boots scraping uselessly against the floor. His mouth opened in a silent scream as Oskar lifted him half off the ground, then tore his hand free with the officer's heart clenched in his fist, red and steaming in the candlelit dust.
At that exact moment, the door burst open.
Two guards rushed in with rifles raised.
They saw the room.
They saw the burning maps.
They saw the bodies torn apart.
They saw the Iron Prince of Germany standing in the middle of it all, skull-faced and black-armored, holding a heart in one bloody gauntlet.
For half a second, no one moved.
Then one guard screamed, "Fire!"
Oskar threw the heart into his face.
It struck wetly across the man's mouth and eyes. Blood splashed over both guards. Their rifles cracked blindly. One round punched into the ceiling. Another snapped through the plaster beside the ruined window.
Oskar grabbed the dead officer by what remained of his chest and hurled the body at them.
The corpse struck both guards and drove them backward through the doorway into the stairwell. Rifles clattered against stone. One man slammed hard against the wall. The other rolled down two steps, gagging through blood and dust.
Kallionen finally found his feet.
The command room was gone.
The maps burned. The chandelier lay twisted across the broken table. Officers lay dead in pieces. The window was no longer a window, but a ragged wound open to the moon. And in the center of it all stood the Iron Prince of Germany, black-armored and skull-faced, blood dripping from one gauntlet.
Kallionen understood then.
Not the reports.
Not the rumors.
Not the frightened stories from broken Russian soldiers babbling about the Iron Prince, the German beast, the armored devil, the black monster who walked like a man and slaughtered whole companies like a machine grinding meat.
He understood why they feared him.
Those men had not been cowards.
They had seen this.
"My God," Kallionen whispered. "He is a monster."
Then training returned.
He ran for the door.
"Alarm!" he bellowed. "Alarm! The castle is breached! The Black Prince is here!"
He stumbled through the doorway and down into the stairwell.
Behind him, the two guards tried to rise, but Oskar came after him, giving the guards barely enough time to even scream.
The Iron Prince crashed into them at a run.
Armor, bodies, rifles, and stone collided in the narrow stairwell. One guard vanished beneath Oskar's shoulder and burst against the wall, spraying blood across the steps. The second screamed as Oskar trampled over him, one armored boot crushing his pelvis, the next driving through his chest.
Kallionen did not stop.
He half-ran, half-fell down the curving stairs, one hand dragging along the cold wall, the other pressed against his ribs.
"Alarm! To arms! To arms!"
Below, a door flew open.
More guards rushed into the circular landing beneath the command room, rifles in hand, faces confused and pale.
"What is happening?"
Kallionen staggered into them.
"The tower!" he shouted. "The tower is breached!"
Then Oskar reached the landing.
He did not slow.
He smashed through the half-broken doorframe, black armor scraping sparks from stone, and drew the great sword from his back in one brutal motion.
The blade came free like a slab of night crashing into the ceiling, just as the guards raised their rifles, but it was too late.
Oskar swung.
The first man came apart from shoulder to hip, his body opening in a red diagonal spray across the wall. The second lost both arms before he could fire, then his head as the return stroke took him across the neck.
The third managed one shot.
The bullet sparked from Oskar's chest plate and vanished into the dark behind him.
Oskar stepped forward and brought the sword down.
The man split beneath it.
Blood struck the stones in a hot sheet.
Kallionen stumbled backward through the next doorway, eyes wide, breath ragged, his voice tearing itself raw as he fled deeper into the castle.
"He is here! The Iron Prince is in the tower!"
Behind him, the screams continued.
Ahead of him, men came running from the northwestern tower and the temporary barracks where a small Guard detachment from the Sixth Army had been quartered. Boots hammered over stone. Doors flew open. Rifles were snatched from racks. Bayonets slid into place with sharp metallic clicks.
Kallionen staggered into the corridor ahead of them, one hand still clamped against his ribs.
"Form line!" he roared. "Form line, damn you! He is coming!"
The guards obeyed.
Eight men rushed into position across the long hallway, forming two tight rows of four. The front rank dropped low. The rear rank stood over them. Rifles came up. Bayonets pointed forward, their steel tips trembling in the candlelight.
Beyond them, through the wide open doorway, dust rolled out of the landing like smoke from a blast furnace. Something inside the room crashed. Stone cracked. A man screamed, and then the scream stopped.
The guards waited.
Their hands shook.
Their breathing came hard.
Behind them, Kallionen forced himself upright, blood running down his face, one eye twitching beneath the old bear scars.
"Steady," he said, voice raw. "Fire only when you have a clear shot."