After the incident at the Vistula River, Oskar had returned to the Royal Castle of Warsaw shortly before midday. Several hours had passed since then, and while the Black Legion worked throughout the conquered city, the great entrance hall of the castle had become the setting for the strange ritual by which Prince Oskar disappeared beneath iron.
By the time the last pieces were being fitted, the afternoon was already leaning toward evening.
Beneath the brilliance of the great crystal chandelier, German women in dark maid dresses and white aprons moved around Oskar and Shadowmane among reinforced stools, tools and small lifting frames. Many of them were women the Eternal Guard had recovered from Russian captivity. Some had already left Warsaw in search of surviving relatives or whatever remained of their homes, but many had nowhere meaningful to return to. Farms had burned, families had scattered, and familiar lives had vanished almost overnight. For the moment, they had chosen to remain within the Royal Castle, close to the Eternal Guard and to the prince who had come into Warsaw to find them.
Their gratitude had become service, and in more than a few of them service had begun to resemble devotion.
Oskar's battered Skull Knight armour was already almost complete around him. The black plates no longer possessed the pristine finish they had carried when he first rode east. Rifle bullets had left shallow dents and bright scars across the reinforced steel; shrapnel had gouged other sections, and fine cracks ran through plates that had absorbed impacts capable of killing ordinary men beneath them. Yet nothing essential had failed. The damage merely gave the armour a different character now. It no longer looked like something built for ceremony or intimidation, it looked tested.
His blood-red cape bore the same history. Its edges were torn and frayed, holes punctured the heavy cloth where bullets had passed through it, and scorched patches interrupted the deep crimson. The damage hung upon him almost like decorations earned in battle, each tear another quiet proof that men had already attempted to kill the figure wearing it and had failed.
Shadowmane stood nearby beneath equally battered barding, enormous and patient while the last buckles were checked around his chest and flanks. His black armour carried dents and repaired scars of its own, making horse and rider seem still more closely related than before: two creatures of flesh gradually disappearing inside the same dark, skeletal shell.
Near Oskar's shoulder, one young maid still stood upon a reinforced stool, a comb in one hand and a small pair of scissors in the other.
She was the youngest of the three sisters he had found imprisoned within the castle, and despite everything she had endured, she applied herself to her task with almost comical seriousness. Standing as tall as she could, she made one final inspection of his pale hair, trimming a stubborn strand near his temple before carefully combing the rest into place. Her concentration was so fierce that Oskar watched her for a moment with faint amusement.
When at last she lowered the scissors, apparently satisfied, he gave her a small, bitter smile.
"Good job, little barber."
The girl blinked, and then colour rushed into her cheeks. She straightened at once upon the stool as though she had just been decorated for bravery rather than praised for cutting hair, doing her utmost to recover a properly dignified expression.
"Thank you, Your Highness."
Her two elder sisters stood nearby and exchanged restrained smiles, clearly enjoying her embarrassment. Oskar, however, only reached up and rested one immense black gauntlet gently upon the crown of her head. The contrast was almost absurd; his hand seemed large enough to cover half her skull.
"Keep it up."
She somehow managed to stand even straighter beneath his touch.
"Yes, Your Highness."
He gave her a light pat before withdrawing his hand and turning away.
A short distance away stood their cousin, dressed in the same simple black-and-white maid's uniform and holding Oskar's skull-faced helm carefully beneath the generous curve of her bosom, its fullness still evident beneath the white apron. She was a striking young woman, fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with soft blonde hair arranged neatly beneath a white maid's headpiece. A pair of delicate round spectacles rested upon her nose, lending her an almost scholarly gentleness, yet the way she looked at Oskar made it clear that whatever softness she possessed had already passed through terror and emerged changed.
The memory still lived far too vividly within her. She remembered the locked room and the laughter of the two large, bearded men as they held her down while she struggled uselessly between them. She remembered their hands roaming over her bare body, grabbing and squeezing her breasts as roughly as they pleased, while one of them tangled a fist in her hair and struck her backside again and again, taking pleasure in every cry he forced from her. They called her things in a language she could not understand, but their meaning needed no translation.
But she remembered the helplessness most of all, and the sound of their laughter as she struggled beneath them. She remembered their hands forcing her legs apart, and the terrible certainty that no matter how desperately she fought, she could not stop what was happening. All she could do was cry as the larger of the two moved between her legs, licking his lips while she turned her face away, certain that no one was coming to save her.
Then, suddenly, the door had burst open. After that, everything blurred.
One moment they had been holding her down; the next, the Crown Prince was there, kneeling beside the bed and looking at her with such unexpected care that for an instant she had scarcely understood what she was seeing. Then, impossibly, he had offered her a sandwich, which she had accepted almost without thinking.
Afterward he extended one enormous hand to her, and she took it. But when he tried to help her stand, her legs simply refused to obey. The moment he realized it, he said nothing. He merely bent down, gathered her into his arms, and carried her away to safety as though she were something precious.
She remembered the astonishing gentleness with which those immensely powerful arms had held her. The warmth of him. And beneath her ear, even through his vest, she could hear the slow, steady beating of his heart.
And she remembered something else as well. As he had carried her naked through the corridors, she had noticed a faint flush creeping across the great prince's face. One enormous hand supported her carefully against his chest, his fingers pressing lightly into the soft flesh at the side of her breast, and for all his immense size, strength, and terrible reputation, there was something almost endearing in the embarrassment he seemed unable to hide. Despite everything that had happened, she had smiled, finding the fearsome Crown Prince, in that strange little moment, quite adorable.
For her, the monstrous legends surrounding the Iron Prince could therefore never mean quite what they meant to his enemies. They had seen the monster; she had been carried in his arms and heard the gentle heart beating beneath.
When Oskar approached her now, she lowered her head at once, a faint warmth rising into her cheeks, though her eyes continued to linger upon him through the delicate lenses of her spectacles with an expression that mingled gratitude, admiration, and something perilously close to reverence. Without a word, she offered him the helmet, and Oskar took it from her hands.
For one final instant, his face remained uncovered beneath the chandelier: pale hair, hard features, and those cold blue eyes, severe but still unmistakably human. Then she stepped aside, and Oskar raised the black skull to his head. The helm settled into place, its clasps locking beneath his jaw with a succession of hollow metallic clicks.
In that instant, Oskar vanished behind black steel, and the Iron Prince returned. Only the icy brightness of his eyes remained visible within the hollow sockets of the skull. He then turned toward the enormous sword resting nearby, took it up with practiced ease and swept it once through the air, the force of the movement stirring skirts, aprons and loose papers before he brought the great blade under perfect control. A moment later he turned it behind himself and slid it into the diagonal scabbard across his back. The battered blood-red cape settled over it, concealing most of the monstrous weapon and leaving only the upper portion and vertebra-like pommel visible above his shoulder.
A final adjustment secured the grenade launcher along his left forearm, and Oskar lifted his head toward Shadowmane. The stallion met his gaze at once. Oskar gave a single nod, and Shadowmane answered with a deep snort before stepping forward to fall naturally into place beside him.
No groom reached for his reins. None was needed. Horse and rider moved together with the easy understanding of partners who already knew where they were going.
The Eternal Guards lining the entrance hall straightened as they approached, while the rescued women set aside their stools and tools to watch the two immense black figures advance beneath the chandelier. Some bowed their heads and pressed clenched fists to their hearts; others simply stood and stared as their prince passed among them—their chosen leader, and to more than a few, their saviour.
Ahead, the enormous eastern doors of the Royal Castle began to open, and beyond them evening had already begun its slow descent upon Warsaw.
For hours the Black Legion had been emptying the city toward the Vistula, drawing people from houses and courtyards, workshops, cellars, attics and ruined streets until the surviving population seemed to pour eastward from every quarter. By the time Oskar emerged from the castle and mounted Shadowmane, more than four hundred thousand people had been gathered beneath the fading light. They filled the parks, streets and riverfront beyond the castle fences, spilled onto the bridges across the Vistula, and stood hemmed in by soldiers, armoured vehicles and the occupied city around them.
No one had been told why they were there.
Rumours moved uneasily through the crowd—deportation, punishment, reprisals, execution. Families clung together. Priests murmured prayers among frightened civilians. Mothers hushed children who sensed the fear around them without understanding its cause. All Warsaw could do was wait and wonder what its conqueror intended.
Then those nearest the castle saw him coming.
The Iron Prince descended beneath the long shadow of the Royal Castle upon Shadowmane, horse and rider moving together like some enormous creature of black steel. Against the dying light his battered armour swallowed almost every trace of colour except the blood-red cape hanging behind him. The skull helm made him appear less like a prince than some ancient figure of death riding down from the heights above the city.
At first only those closest noticed. Then whispers began spreading outward.
Faces turned. Conversations ended halfway through sentences. Children raised hands to point until mothers caught their wrists and pulled them close. Even people too distant to see Oskar themselves understood from the changing expressions around them that something was approaching.
Then the great iron gates opened before him, and suddenly nothing remained between the Iron Prince and the people of Warsaw.
Shadowmane did not slow.
Those immediately ahead of him began backing away almost at once. One woman retreated, then the man beside her, then those behind them as pressure carried the instinct farther into the crowd. Nobody ordered them aside. No officer stepped forward to clear Oskar's path.
None was needed.
The multitude opened before him of its own accord.
It was not the measured yielding made before royalty. It was the instinctive withdrawal of flesh from something it feared to touch. A broad passage appeared through what moments earlier had been an unbroken mass of humanity, and into it the Iron Prince rode without speaking while the people drew away before Shadowmane like water before a dark prow.
Many had already heard the stories.
Some had glimpsed Oskar during the fighting from windows and doorways. Others had listened from cellars while the battle passed overhead. Russian survivors hidden among the civilians had seen more than most and carried their accounts into the frightened city. They knew the names men had given him and the stories told of soldiers who had attempted to stand in his path.
Until now, those stories had remained rumours.
Rumour was easier to dismiss when it did not possess a skull for a face and ride directly toward you beneath the setting sun.
There were men among the crowd who hated him. Some concealed pistols beneath their coats; others had hidden shortened rifles among bundles and clothing. Fathers stood there whose sons had died fighting his soldiers. Widows watched him pass whose husbands would never return. Russian survivors looked upon him and wished with all their hearts that someone would kill him.
Yet no hand reached for a weapon.
Hatred was easy enough when whispered among friends. It became something very different when the object of that hatred passed within a few paces upon an enormous armoured stallion and turned those pale eyes toward you.
The skull helm moved slowly from side to side as Oskar rode, and through its hollow sockets his cold gaze travelled across Warsaw. He saw fear and resentment, grief and humiliation, unfinished prayers trembling upon lips and anger concealed behind lowered eyes. He saw men who wanted him dead and women who wanted nothing more than to leave with their children alive.
Wherever his gaze settled, eyes dropped.
Some bowed their heads without realizing they had done so. Others shrank backward even when there was scarcely room behind them. It was not loyalty that moved them, nor respect. It was something older than either—the primitive instinct by which living flesh recognized danger and tried to make itself smaller before it.
Oskar continued deeper into the crowd until he had reached somewhere near its centre.
There Shadowmane stopped.
Almost immediately those nearest withdrew farther. The movement spread outward until a wide circle of empty ground formed naturally around horse and rider. Men pulled wives away by the arm. Mothers gathered children against themselves. The front ranks pressed backward into those behind them simply to place another few feet between themselves and the black figure at their centre.
No German had commanded it.
Fear had.
There Oskar remained, one rider surrounded by hundreds of thousands, and the emptiness around him somehow made him appear larger rather than smaller. He looked slowly across the immense sea of faces as though weighing the conquered city before him. There were too many people for any man to count, yet those upon whom his gaze lingered felt the terrible impression that he saw them individually—their fear, their hatred, their grief, and above all the frailty that kept that hatred silent.
No one stepped forward.
No weapon appeared.
No challenge was spoken.
The silence deepened until Warsaw seemed able to hear itself breathing.
Behind Oskar rose the Royal Castle, and beyond its towers the sun descended toward the western horizon in dying gold and red. Before him flowed the Vistula, while beyond the river the eastern districts and the lands farther still were already sinking into evening. The last light caught only the edges of his black armour and the torn folds of his cape, leaving most of horse and rider swallowed in shadow.
Thus he sat between the two.
The dying west behind him.
The darkening east before him.
No herald had arranged the image. No propagandist had designed it. Yet its meaning seemed almost too obvious to ignore. Behind the Iron Prince lay the west and the last light of day; before him lay the east, Russia, and the coming night. His shadow stretched ahead across the ground, passed through the empty circle and disappeared among the feet of those gathered there as though the darkness beyond the Vistula had reached backward to meet him.
For several moments Oskar remained completely motionless.
Then, without saying a word, he slowly raised both arms.
The gesture alone disturbed those nearest him. People edged backward again as the immense black gauntlets rose beneath the fading light. His arms opened outward to either side, and behind him the battered red cape hung like some torn and bloody standard.
Against the western sunset, he seemed less like a man than an image torn from some terrible scripture: a skull-faced rider upon a black horse, standing between the last light of day and the coming darkness while an entire conquered city waited before him.
He remained that way for several long seconds.
The uncertainty became almost unbearable.
Then his voice came from within the skull.
"Move."
The word struck the gathering like thunder.
Those closest recoiled as though the sound itself possessed weight. For one confused heartbeat they merely stared at him. Then they understood the direction indicated by his outstretched arms.
Left.
Right.
The people immediately before him began scrambling aside. Those behind were forced to follow, and within moments the movement spread outward through the crowd like a wave. Men stumbled over one another. Mothers dragged children after them. Younger hands caught the elderly before they disappeared beneath the shifting mass. German soldiers standing around the outer streets scarcely needed to intervene.
The people themselves carried the command onward.
The human sea divided.
What had been one enormous body became two, the separation spreading outward from Oskar until a broad empty way stretched through the multitude in either direction. Hundreds of thousands now stood upon opposing sides of the space he had created, while at its centre remained the black horse and the black rider, surrounded by that same circle of bare ground which nobody dared enter.
For an instant even Oskar seemed struck by what he had accomplished.
Beneath the skull helm, unseen by everyone around him, the faintest crooked smile touched his mouth. Not amusement. Not pleasure. Something closer to disbelief.
What he intended to do next was extreme enough that some part of him still recoiled from it.
Perhaps it was monstrous.
Yet power possessed the peculiar ability to make absurd things possible, and once possibility was backed by sufficient force, it could become law.
Oskar drew breath to speak.
Then a familiar voice broke through the silence behind him.
"Oskar!"
His head stopped.
"Oskar, what are you doing?"
Irritation passed across his hidden features before he even turned. He knew that voice, and when he looked toward the disturbance he found precisely what he had feared.
Zofia and Maria were pushing their way through the divided crowd.
He had told them to remain by the river—to rest, sleep if they could, and wait until he returned for them. Instead they had apparently crossed half of occupied Warsaw to find him at the one moment when he most wished they had obeyed.
Zofia emerged first, looking almost absurdly small amid the surrounding crowd. Oskar's white undershirt hung from her petite frame like a hastily improvised dress, falling loosely over her bare legs while its oversized shoulders and collar sat awkwardly upon her. Her brown hair remained loose and disordered from the river, and whenever the broad neckline slipped aside it revealed faint marks still lingering along her throat and collarbone.
Maria followed close beside her in the same simple clothes she had worn when he first met her, though they had been torn and disordered since then. One hand clung tightly to her mother's while the other kept the damaged neckline gathered modestly against herself, and she stared toward the skull-faced rider with wide, uncertain eyes.
Both women stopped when they saw him properly.
They knew the man beneath the armour. They knew his warmth, his awkward kindness, and the extraordinary gentleness that seemed so strangely at odds with his size and strength. What confronted them now was the other Oskar—the creature armies had learned to fear—and neither seemed able to reconcile the two.
Yet neither looked away, and somehow that troubled him more than fear would have.
The sight of them brought an uncomfortable weight of shame with it. Beside the river, Zofia's affection had broken through his better judgment, and in the confusion that followed he had allowed Maria to become entangled in something she should never have been drawn into. Whatever their reasons, both women had been frightened, grieving and desperate for something solid to cling to, and Oskar knew that in him they had found precisely that. Now they were attached to him, and whether he liked admitting it or not, some answering attachment had already taken root within himself.
But affection was not authority.
He would not allow their soft words or pleas to govern him, nor could whatever tenderness existed between them alter what he believed had to be done here.
For the sake of people such as the German women waiting within the Royal Castle, Oskar told himself, he had to act now. If he meant to build a future in which what had been done to them could not simply happen again, then sentiment could not always be allowed to determine what was necessary. There were burdens a ruler might despise and still believe himself bound to carry.
Zofia took another uncertain step toward him.
"Oskar—"
One gauntleted hand rose.
"Silence."
The word crashed across the open ground. Zofia stopped at once. Even those who had not been speaking seemed to recoil from the force of it, and when the echo died, the silence that followed felt deeper than before.
Oskar turned the skull fully toward her.
"Watch your tongue, woman, and do not mistake my kindness for weakness."
His voice was quieter now, but the cold authority within it carried effortlessly across the space between them.
"I told you to remain where I left you. You chose not to obey me. Do not interrupt me again."
Zofia's lips parted, but whatever answer had risen there died unspoken. Her hand found Maria's and tightened around it.
"Do you understand?"
For a moment she merely stared at him. Then she lowered her head.
"Yes."
There was no terror in the answer, only chastened uncertainty. That somehow made the sight harder for Oskar to endure. She knew enough of him already to understand that the harshness in his voice did not mean he intended to hurt her, but she also understood that the man standing before Warsaw was not the same gentle fool who had sat beneath the willows trying to make a grieving woman smile.
Maria moved closer to her mother, and together they retreated several steps into the waiting crowd. Zofia's borrowed white shirt remained conspicuous among the grey and battered clothing surrounding her, a quiet reminder that whatever mask Oskar wore before Warsaw, she had already encountered the man beneath it.
For a moment the pale eyes within the skull lingered upon them. Then Oskar turned away.
Whatever tenderness had belonged to the riverbank would have to remain there. Here there were no willows, no quiet water, no frightened woman sheltered against his chest. Here stood the Iron Prince, and hundreds of thousands of conquered people waited to discover what he intended to do with them.
He faced the divided multitude once more.
"Now hear me, good people of Warsaw," he called, his voice carrying between the two great walls of humanity. "Poles, Jews, Russians—the whole lot of you."
The faint murmuring diminished beneath the skull's gaze.
"I want to play a game."
Confusion passed through the gathering.
"And this game is called house."
For several moments the people simply stared at him.
Oskar made a small gesture toward the Royal Castle behind him.
"I now proclaim that palace to be my house," he said. His arm moved slowly outward, taking in the city around them. "And this—all that I have conquered—is now my land."
The skull turned from one human sea to the other.
"And all of you are my guests."
The word hung strangely in the evening air.
"And as good guests, you will do as I say…"
He paused.
"…or you will die."
A great breath seemed to pass through Warsaw. Gasps broke from the crowd; men clenched their jaws while women drew children closer. Others merely stared at the black rider in disbelief.
No one answered.
Something in the simplicity of his words made it painfully clear that he was not asking for their agreement.
Behind him, Zofia stood with Maria's hand clasped tightly in her own, staring at the armoured figure with mounting disbelief. Everything coming from beneath that skull seemed impossibly at odds with the gentle giant they had known beside the river. Only hours earlier he had seemed almost like the storybook prince they might once have dreamed of; now that same man sat upon a monstrous black stallion and calmly threatened an entire city with death.
It was the contradiction, more than the armour itself, that frightened them.
Shadowmane struck one iron-shod hoof against the ground, and the heavy report carried through the silence.
"Now, do not fear," Oskar continued. "The game is, in fact, quite simple."
One gauntleted arm extended toward the great line the multitude had already made for him.
"As my first command, I want to see only men before me, upon the eastern side of this line you have so kindly made."
Then he indicated the ground behind him.
"And the women—behind me."
His voice remained perfectly level.
"I do not care about age. I do not care about your condition. If you have children and nobody to give them to, then give them to strangers."
A pause.
"I do not care."
Those words seemed to disturb the crowd more than anything before them.
"All of you will move, if you are not already where you need to be."
The skull surveyed them.
"You have thirty minutes."
Disbelief rippled openly through Warsaw now.
"And after that…"
Oskar tilted his head slightly.
"…if you are found still standing on the wrong side of the place I have assigned you, then you will die."
The last words struck like a blow.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Four hundred thousand people simply stood beneath the fading light, frozen between disbelief and fear. Some looked ready to protest; others turned helplessly toward husbands, wives, mothers and children, as though someone among them might explain what they had just heard.
But the thirty minutes had already begun.
Then Zofia stepped forward.
"Why, Oskar?"
Her voice was small against the multitude, but in the silence it carried farther than she intended.
"Why are you doing this? I don't understand."
She took another step before Maria tightened her grip upon her hand.
"Please," Zofia said. "You're frightening them."
The pale eyes within the skull turned toward her. For a moment she thought he might answer, but he did not. Oskar merely regarded her and then looked away again.
At first the silence seemed crueler than any rebuke. Then someone within the crowd understood what his refusal actually meant.
The clock was already running.
Whether Zofia pleaded or Warsaw protested made no difference. Thirty minutes had been given, and thirty minutes were passing.
The first person to move was a boy.
He came through the front ranks with none of the frightened uncertainty gripping everyone else and walked directly across the empty ground. Zofia recognized him almost immediately.
"Tomasz!"
Her voice cracked across the silence.
"Where are you going? Tomasz, come back!"
He did not stop. He crossed the line without hesitation, then finally turned to face them.
"You chose your side, Mother," he said, his voice frighteningly calm. "And I have chosen mine."
Then his eyes settled properly upon the two women, and whatever anger had been in him hardened into open disgust.
His mother stood behind the German Crown Prince dishevelled and wearing an enormous white shirt that unmistakably belonged to him. Maria's dress was torn at a neckline that had been intact earlier that day, leaving far more of her bosom exposed than before. There were marks upon their throats and chests, their hair was in disorder, and their hands kept drifting almost unconsciously toward their bellies. Worse still was the way they looked at Oskar and remained behind him, as though whatever had happened beside the river after Tomasz left had bound them to the prince.
To Tomasz, there was only one explanation. The German had claimed them both, his sister included, and they had yielded to him. In that instant he saw neither frightened women nor family, but weak-willed traitors who had surrendered themselves to the enemy and forgotten their father with astonishing ease.
Zofia understood the accusation in her son's face immediately. Maria did too. Shame coloured Zofia while Maria seemed more embarrassed, but before either could find anything to say, movement stirred elsewhere among the waiting people.
A man stepped east, a woman west, and the paralysis broke.
Soon the open ground between the two halves of the gathering filled with movement as Warsaw sorted itself according to Oskar's command. Men crossed before him toward the east while women and girls moved behind him toward the west, families separating amid tears and hurried embraces. Infants were passed into the arms of relatives and, where none could be found quickly enough, frightened strangers. The old and infirm were supported through the press by whoever could help them. Most of the women obeyed readily, many of them weeping as they went, while among the men there was more hesitation and stubbornness. Some lingered beside wives and daughters until the last possible moment; others simply refused. Near the park, an elderly couple remained seated together upon a bench, the old man apparently having decided that after a lifetime beside his wife no German prince would order him away from her.
Yet through all that movement the small circle around Shadowmane remained untouched. People passed before it and behind it, sometimes within only a few paces, but none willingly entered the empty ground immediately surrounding the black horse and his rider. Zofia and Maria stood near its western edge, close enough to Oskar that the crowd seemed almost to bend around them as well. They watched in astonishment as thousands pressed past while leaving that little island of ground inviolate, as though an invisible wall surrounded the Iron Prince.
Oskar watched the city move.
The sensation was intoxicating. Hundreds of thousands of people were separating themselves because he had spoken. There was no loyalty in it, no affection and no trust—only the absolute conviction that disobedience would bring death. A gesture had become movement; a sentence had divided families. For one dangerous moment Oskar felt almost beyond ordinary humanity, as though he were some shepherd above the flock rather than another man among them. He understood, suddenly and unpleasantly, how easily a ruler surrounded by such obedience might begin to imagine himself touched by God.
And worse, he very nearly smiled—until his gaze drifted toward the distant clocktower and he realized the half hour had already passed. Most had obeyed, but here and there the last stragglers were still forcing their way across. An old woman was being helped through the press. A father hurried east after thrusting an infant into unfamiliar arms. Others still struggled desperately toward the side assigned to them.
Oskar hesitated.
The deadline had come and gone, yet he remained silent for several minutes more, allowing those still trying to obey every possible chance to do so. Among the few who had deliberately remained where they were, a fragile hope began to stir. Perhaps the threat had been nothing more than theatre after all.
At last Oskar raised his eyes once more to the distant clocktower beyond the Vistula. He watched it for a few moments longer, then lowered his gaze to the waiting city.
"Time."
The single word carried across the open ground, and for one suspended heartbeat Warsaw seemed to stop breathing.
Then a rifle cracked.
Someone fell among the women. Another shot followed from a rooftop, then another from somewhere farther along the riverfront. Bodies began dropping here and there throughout the western mass, sudden splashes of blood appearing amid grey coats and frightened faces. Gasps became screams. Women recoiled from the fallen, children began crying, and within moments panic was spreading through the crowd.
Some tried to flee into the surrounding streets, only to find Black Legion soldiers already waiting there with rifles levelled and bayonets fixed. Armoured vehicles blocked the broader roads, their engines growling beneath the rising panic, while German voices barked orders most of the civilians could not properly understand. The words scarcely mattered. Every escape route ended in black uniforms, steel, and weapons pointed back toward them. They had been penned in like cattle, and once that realization took hold, most simply froze.
Then a young man burst from among the women. He was scarcely more than a boy and had apparently remained behind rather than abandon the girl beside him. A scarf had been wrapped around his head and shoulders in a crude attempt to conceal himself, but terror had finally broken whatever resolve had kept him there. He tore the cloth away and forced his way desperately through the crowd, shoving women and girls aside as he fought toward the eastern side.
At almost the same moment, a frightened girl broke from among the men and ran the opposite way, crying out for her mother.
They entered the clearing together and nearly passed one another.
A rifle cracked.
The young man jerked and collapsed. Blood struck the girl across the face and dress, and she fell to her knees with a scream, staring in horror at her stained hands. Voices shouted for her to run, but terror had rooted her to the spot.
No second shot came.
Nobody fired at her.
She remained there in the open, sobbing and unharmed.
And amid the confusion, people began to notice something strange.
Men were falling.
Women were not.
A male figure hidden among the western crowd dropped while the women around him remained untouched. Another man fell nearer the park. Again, the women beside him were left standing. The pattern repeated often enough that disbelief began to mingle with fear, though few could yet make sense of it.
Gradually the shooting thinned. One final rifle cracked somewhere above the streets, and then there were no more targets.
What followed was worse.
The wailing of women rose from every part of the western crowd—mothers crying over sons, wives calling for husbands, daughters clinging to bloodied relatives. Children joined them until the separate cries seemed to merge into one vast sound of grief, filling the parks and streets before drifting outward across the darkening Vistula.
At the centre of it all, Oskar remained utterly still upon Shadowmane. The great stallion tossed his armoured head and gave a low, irritated snort at the shrill cries surrounding him, but Oskar said nothing.
The skull merely watched as Warsaw wailed around him.