"Well then," Oskar said. "Let us see what you are capable of."
Aaron's hand tightened around the sling, though for the briefest instant he nearly stepped backward. Standing only a few paces from the Iron Prince made the difference between them impossible to ignore. Oskar towered above him in battered black armour, while Aaron, not yet eighteen, had willingly placed himself before something that looked scarcely human at such close range. Oskar saw the fear in him immediately, the small involuntary hesitation that betrayed it, and smiled.
Then, to Aaron's astonishment, Oskar lifted one finger. "But…" he said, letting the word hang between them. Instead of preparing to fight, he turned away and began walking slowly along the broad corridor that divided the two immense seas of humanity. His iron-shod boots rang against the cobblestones as he went, his pace unhurried, almost leisurely. "Before we begin, I think it only proper that we introduce ourselves. Or rather, that you introduce yourself, boy. Let all here know the name upon which God is about to pass judgment."
A faint smile remained on Oskar's face as he glanced back over one shoulder and saw that Aaron had already begun moving as well. The boy circled carefully toward Oskar's right, edging nearer the mass of women while maintaining several metres between them. Only then did Oskar notice that the sling had already been loaded and that Aaron's eyes were not fixed solely upon him. They flicked toward the crowd, measuring the open ground, the distance between bodies, the likely path of a missed stone.
The reason became obvious at once. Aaron was positioning himself so that, if his shot went wide, it would not fly into the women beyond his opponent. Even now, facing almost certain death beneath the eyes of hundreds of thousands, he possessed enough presence of mind to consider who else might be harmed by his weapon. That realization brought something more genuine into Oskar's smile. There was discipline in that, and decency too. The boy might have been small beside him, but size could deceive; Oskar's own children had taught him that often enough.
Aaron watched him warily, fury hardening his young face.
"My name is Aaron," he said. "Son of a father you ruined. Son of a mother murdered because of what you made possible."
His fingers tightened around the sling.
"And now I stand before you for vengeance."
He raised his chin and fixed Oskar with a burning stare.
"So face me, Iron Prince. And as you said—let us see whom God favours here."
Oskar grinned at the challenge, and something about the expression unsettled those near enough to see it. Yet rather than turn and face Aaron properly, he looked westward toward the evening sun sinking beyond Warsaw and slowly clasped his hands behind his back. Aaron remained somewhere behind his right shoulder, only a few paces away, close enough that Oskar could hear the faint movement of the sling in his hand, but the prince made no attempt to bring him fully into view.
"No," Oskar said after a moment. "I think not. You have not yet earned my attention, boy."
For an instant there was silence behind him. Then Oskar glanced lazily across his shoulder and saw Aaron's expression change. The nervousness that had been visible only moments earlier—the hesitation, the uncertainty, the natural fear of a boy not yet eighteen standing before something so much larger than himself—was suddenly consumed by humiliation and fury. His jaw clenched, his dark eyes hardened, and the hand gripping the sling stopped trembling.
"You dare mock me!"
The words brought a deeper smile to Oskar's face. Good. Let him be angry. Let rage drive out the fear and force whatever strength existed inside him to the surface. If there was truly something extraordinary about this boy, some hidden quality that had allowed him to step forward when thousands of grown men would not, then perhaps anger would draw it out.
Oskar turned his gaze back toward the western sky. The dying sun burned low before him, spreading red and gold through the evening while the whole conquered city seemed to hold its breath around the two of them. He knew perfectly well that he still had time to turn. He could watch Aaron's hands, study the swing of the sling, read the release and follow the stone from the instant it left the leather cradle. Instead he remained exactly where he was, his back exposed and his hands resting peacefully behind him.
There was something almost reckless in the decision, something that reached beyond mere arrogance. Oskar had spoken of God, Providence and judgment before hundreds of thousands of people, and now some strange part of him wanted to discover whether he truly believed his own words. If he had indeed been chosen for something greater, if whatever force had shaped him and carried him through battles that should have killed ordinary men still favoured him, then perhaps he did not need to see the danger coming. Perhaps he could simply allow the stone to come and discover whether instinct, Providence or something buried deeper within himself would tell him when to move.
Behind him, Aaron began to spin the sling.
The cords whispered through the air at first, then hissed faster and faster as the boy gathered speed. Oskar listened without turning. He could hear the changing rhythm, the tightening sweep of leather and cord, and somewhere beneath those sounds he could almost imagine Aaron's breathing becoming harder as anger drove the fear from him.
Then the sling cracked like a pistol.
The stone came screaming toward the back of Oskar's head with such speed that most of those watching scarcely saw it at all. Oskar remained motionless for one impossible fraction of a second, his eyes still upon the evening sky, until something inside him seemed to tighten of its own accord. His head snapped sideways with startling quickness, and the stone tore past his temple by scarcely the width of a hand.
A great gasp moved through the square.
The missile continued high beyond him, crossing the open corridor before disappearing into the vast mass of men gathered upon the eastern side. Almost immediately there came a startled cry from somewhere among them, followed by angry voices as whoever had been struck disappeared among his companions.
Oskar winced faintly at the sound.
"Ooh."
Behind him, Aaron did much the same. For an instant the boy's anger vanished beneath obvious dismay as he stared toward the place where his stone had disappeared. He had taken such care to position himself away from the women, only to send his first shot into the men instead. Guilt flickered across his face, followed quickly by alarm when he realised that his mistake had also cost him precious time.
Aaron's hand flew toward the pouch at his side.
Oskar glanced back across his shoulder, but this time he did not taunt him. He was still thinking about the first shot. It had been fast—very fast—and the boy clearly knew how to use the weapon, yet Oskar found himself strangely unsatisfied. He had expected something more, some sense of danger unlike anything ordinary, some violent certainty that the youth standing behind him possessed a gift equal to his courage.
Instead there had only been a stone.
Aaron had already loaded another. Fearful that Oskar might finally turn and take the initiative from him, he began spinning almost immediately, driving the sling around with less ceremony than before. This time his attention dropped toward Oskar's legs. If the prince's head was too difficult a target, then perhaps the joints of that immense armour would prove more vulnerable.
Oskar watched him now from the corner of his eye.
Aaron released.
The second stone came low and hard toward his foot. Oskar simply raised his leg by a fraction and let it pass beneath his boot. The missile struck the cobblestones with a sharp crack, bounced violently upward and shot into the nearby ranks, where it struck another unfortunate man with a dull impact that produced a fresh cry of pain and a small eruption of curses.
Oskar frowned.
For a moment he looked toward the crowd, then back toward Aaron. The boy stood breathing hard with the sling still clenched in his hand, frustration and embarrassment written plainly across his young face.
And Oskar understood.
There was no miracle here. No hidden equal sent to meet him beneath the eyes of Warsaw. No second creature shaped by Providence into something beyond ordinary humanity. Aaron was simply what he appeared to be: a courageous boy with a sharp mind, a good arm and enough conviction to stand where thousands of others had been too frightened to stand.
There was honour in that. Oskar could respect it. But it would not be enough.
A quiet breath escaped him as whatever curiosity had kept the duel playful finally left his face.
"So be it," he murmured.
Then, at last, he turned fully toward Aaron.
"Enough of these games. Let us finish this."
His hand reached behind his shoulder and closed around the hilt rising beneath the torn red cape. With one powerful movement he drew the sword free. Steel came from the scabbard with a long grinding hiss, and the immense blade rose into the evening light, broad and monstrous enough that the people nearest the clearing recoiled almost instinctively.
It was not a weapon that looked designed for graceful fencing or elegant duels. It scarcely resembled an ordinary soldier's sword at all. Its proportions suggested something made to cleave bodies apart with brute force, a blade that looked less suited to dividing one man from another than to splitting cattle upon a butcher's block.
Even Aaron faltered when he saw it.
Oskar balanced the enormous weapon casually in one hand and fixed the boy with his pale blue eyes. "Brave Aaron the Defiant," he said, "you throw stones well. Unfortunately, your little pebbles will not be enough here."
Then his grip shifted around the hilt.
"Now let me show you what a true throw of power looks like."
Instead of raising the blade into any recognizable swordsman's guard, Oskar reversed it. Aaron's eyes widened as the prince drew the enormous weapon back over one shoulder like a spear.
Then he hurled it.
The sword shrieked through the air with such force that the space around it seemed to recoil. Aaron saw scarcely more than a black and silver blur before the weapon struck the place where he had been standing.
The cobblestones exploded beneath it. Broken stone and dust erupted in every direction as the impact tore into the ground, sending fragments whistling toward the front ranks. People screamed and raised their arms against the spray while a dense grey cloud swallowed the centre of the clearing.
For one heartbeat Aaron vanished completely. Then something moved inside the dust.
Oskar's smile returned as Aaron came rolling from the cloud, skidding across the stones before twisting himself upright onto one knee. He coughed grit from his lungs, but before the dust had even settled around him, his sling was already moving again with a larger stone seated in its cradle.
A gasp passed through the multitude. Hope seemed to awaken almost visibly among the watching men. Aaron had survived. More than that, he was still fighting. For one delirious instant it became possible to imagine that perhaps the impossible might not be impossible after all.
The sling snapped.
At such close range there was barely time to see the stone leave it. One instant it circled Aaron's head; the next it was screaming straight toward Oskar's face with enough force to crush the skull of an ordinary man. The throw was clean, perfectly placed and released from so near that avoidance should have been impossible.
Oskar did not avoid it. His right hand flashed upward, and the stone struck his open palm with a vicious crack before stopping dead.
He had simply caught it.
The effect upon the square was immediate. Whatever hope had risen around Aaron seemed to collapse in that same instant. He remained frozen upon one knee, staring at the stone in Oskar's hand as though his mind could not quite reconcile what his eyes had just witnessed.
Oskar lowered his arm and regarded the rough grey stone resting in his palm. Then his gaze returned to Aaron. He said nothing. There was no warning, no change in expression, no dramatic gathering of strength. He simply drew his arm back and threw.
The movement looked almost casual, but the result was appalling.
The stone struck Aaron squarely through the right knee with a heavy, wet crack. It did not stop in the joint. Bone, flesh and cloth seemed to burst apart around it as the missile tore through, carrying fragments of shattered kneecap and splintered bone with it before smashing into the cobblestones beneath him hard enough to burst apart against the street.
Aaron's leg almost came away with it.
For an instant the lower limb whipped sideways at an impossible angle, connected to the thigh only by mangled flesh and whatever ruined tendons and muscle had survived the impact. The knee itself had effectively ceased to exist. Jagged white fragments protruded through torn cloth and skin, while smaller pieces of bone scattered across the stones among droplets of blood and grit.
A single enormous gasp passed through the crowd.
Then Aaron screamed. He collapsed sideways so violently that his shoulder struck the street. Both hands flew instinctively toward his leg, but the sight that met him only seemed to make the pain more real. Blood poured freely from the destroyed joint, running over his fingers and spreading beneath him through the cracks between the cobbles. A splintered end of bone stood pale and obscene amid the torn flesh, while the lower leg lay crooked and almost detached beside him.
Aaron screamed again, louder this time, the sound raw and completely beyond dignity. He tried to clutch the remains of the knee together, as though sheer desperation might force the ruined pieces back into place, but the slightest movement caused the lower leg to shift independently beneath him. Another convulsion tore through his body and left him sobbing for breath between cries.
The sight struck the gathering harder than any speech Oskar had given. Women recoiled with shrieks, several turning away before they could see more. One fainted outright and disappeared into the arms of those behind her; another followed moments later. Men who had watched Aaron rise from the dust with something dangerously close to hope now stared with hollow faces at the wreckage of his leg, some instinctively stepping backward as though distance alone might protect them from suffering the same fate.
Behind Oskar, Maria made a strangled sound and covered her mouth. Zofia flinched so violently that she nearly turned away altogether, one hand rising to her lips as her face drained of colour.
Oskar did not react.
He neither grimaced nor looked aside. He gave no sign that the blood, the exposed bone or Aaron's screaming disturbed him in the slightest. The boy had challenged him, and the challenge had reached its conclusion.
So Oskar began walking.
His iron-shod boots struck the cobblestones with slow, deliberate weight as he crossed the remaining distance. Aaron heard him coming and tried desperately to drag himself away, pushing with his good heel while one blood-slick hand clawed at the street. The movement tugged at what remained of the ruined knee, and the nearly severed lower leg shifted behind him.
Aaron screamed and collapsed again. Still Oskar came. There was no haste in him, nor satisfaction, nor visible anger. He approached the broken boy with the terrible calm of someone finishing a task whose ending had been decided long before the final blow.
At last he stopped over him.
Aaron stared upward through tears and pain, his face grey beneath dust and sweat. His chest heaved uncontrollably, one hand still clamped uselessly around the shredded remains of his knee while blood continued to pool beneath him.
Oskar looked down without expression.
"You fought well," he said. "But now it is time to die."
Then his right leg began to rise.
The enormous armoured boot lifted above Aaron until its shadow swallowed him. Beneath it the boy lay half-curled around the ruin of his leg, blood streaking the stones around him, his fingers trembling against exposed bone and torn flesh while he stared upward at the descending certainty of his death.
For one long heartbeat, hundreds of thousands of people seemed to forget how to breathe.
Then someone screamed.
"No!"
A figure burst from Oskar's left, breaking from the women's side of the crowd and running directly into the clearing. The young woman threw herself over Aaron without hesitation, dropping onto her knees so violently that the impact jarred through her body before she folded herself across him, covering his head and chest as though the fragile shield of her own flesh might somehow be enough to stop what hung above them.
"Please!" she cried. "Please, have mercy! He is only my foolish little brother, Your Highness! He means no true offence! He never thinks, he only acts! Please, forgive him!"
Oskar looked down at her. There was something almost warrior-like in the way she had come forward, not because she lacked fear, for she was trembling visibly, but because fear had failed to stop her. He glanced from her to Aaron beneath her and saw enough resemblance to understand at once that she was undoubtedly his sister.
Yet the raised boot remained where it was.
"Out of my way, woman."
She shook her head violently and pressed herself more tightly over Aaron. "Please. Please, no!"
One of her hands rose instinctively between them, a useless little barrier against all that iron and weight.
Oskar hesitated.
The hesitation was slight, barely visible to anyone watching, but it was real. He did not want to hurt her. Whatever else he had become, deliberately harming women had never sat easily with him, and the sight of one placing herself beneath his boot gave even the Iron Prince pause.
For one terrible moment Oskar's muscles tightened. The duel was over. Aaron had challenged him before all Warsaw, had lost, and by the brutal logic Oskar himself had invoked, the ending seemed obvious. His opponent should die. Mercy now might look like weakness, and weakness before hundreds of thousands could undo everything he had spent the evening establishing.
Then something seized his arm.
It was so slight against the enormous weight of his armour that he scarcely felt it at first.
"Oskar!"
He turned sharply and found Maria pressed against him, both arms wrapped around his forearm with all the strength her small body possessed. She clung to him as though stubbornness alone might restrain that immense limb, her face lifted desperately toward his.
"Please," she begged, tears shining in her eyes. "Please, don't do it, Oskar. No more fighting."
Oskar stared down at her.
She was trembling almost as badly as Aaron's sister, yet she too had crossed into the clearing. Behind her, Zofia clutched the front of her shirt and cried out in alarm.
"Maria! No—don't!"
She stumbled several steps from the women's ranks before fear finally overcame courage and stopped her short.
"It's dangerous!"
Something in Oskar gave way.
He would have preferred anger. Anger was simple. Anger could be mastered, redirected, crushed beneath discipline. What struck him instead was the sight of the women before him: Aaron's sister stretched protectively across her ruined brother, Maria clinging to his arm with tears upon her face, and Zofia standing beyond them too frightened to come closer yet too frightened for her daughter to retreat. Their pleading found some narrow crack in the hardness he had wrapped around himself and forced its way through.
Only then did Oskar look beyond them.
The men had changed. The foremost ranks had leaned forward. Not all of them, but enough that the shape of the great human mass had subtly altered. Faces which had lowered before him were raised again. Shoulders had squared. Hands tightened at men's sides. Aaron had stepped forward when thousands would not; his sister had thrown herself beneath Oskar's boot; now Maria, a frightened young Polish woman, had seized the Iron Prince himself and told him to stop.
Fear still held the crowd, but it no longer held them alone. Something harder had begun growing beside it.
Oskar saw it moving from face to face and understood almost immediately where the moment was heading. Aaron's blood, spreading darkly between the cobblestones, could very easily become only the first stain. If Oskar brought his foot down now—if he crushed the wounded boy beneath the sister shielding him—then terror might finally cease to restrain these people and turn instead into fury.
The men might rush him. Not because they imagined they could win, but because grief, humiliation and sheer desperation might make dying preferable to standing still another moment.
And Oskar knew what would happen then.
For the briefest instant his imagination supplied the answer with horrible clarity: Shadowmane beneath him, black armour crashing into the crowd, men hurled aside or trampled beneath iron-shod hooves, his sword rising and falling while the Black Legion joined the slaughter without hesitation. He could almost feel the terrible exhilaration of it, the ease with which his strength could reduce resistance to blood and broken bodies.
That realization revolted him precisely because some part of him knew how easily he could surrender to it.
Maria tightened her arms around him.
"Please."
The single word broke the vision.
Oskar looked down at her again and understood, suddenly and completely, that he had taken this far enough. He would not become a butcher merely because he possessed the strength to do so.
His raised leg came down. The armoured boot struck the cobblestones beside Aaron with a heavy metallic thud.
A breath seemed to pass through the entire square.
Maria remained wrapped around Oskar's arm, staring upward as though she could scarcely believe she had succeeded. Oskar regarded her for a moment, one pale eyebrow lifting.
"Maria."
His voice had gone very low, though there was now the faintest trace of playfulness beneath it.
"You dare defy me?"
She trembled but did not let go. Her lips parted, though no answer came beyond a frightened breath.
Oskar exhaled wearily. Somewhere between her plea and the sight of the crowd, the decision had already been made. He reached across with his free arm, gathered Maria against his side and drew her into the shelter of his armour. One enormous hand settled gently upon the crown of her head, his fingers disappearing into her brown hair.
"You are quite brave, Maria," he murmured. "Consider me impressed."
Maria drew in a soft breath and pressed herself closer to him.
For one brief moment the fear eased from her face. Whatever terrible thing the Iron Prince had become before Warsaw, the man she had known beside the river had not vanished completely. Somewhere beneath the battered armour and the authority and blood, her fairytale prince still remained.
Yet the softness lasted only a moment. Then Oskar raised his eyes toward the square.
"Be gone, the whole lot of you men."
The words carried across the clearing, and the gathering fell still.
"The duel is finished. The decision has been made, and the time for talk is over."
Still holding Maria against his side, Oskar let his gaze travel across the vast ranks of men before him.
"If the women wish it, they may fetch carts, provisions, clothing, food, water, horses—whatever this journey east requires—and bring them here before sundown."
His attention shifted toward the women.
"And you will make your choice. Stay or go. I do not care which. Your salvation or your damnation is yours to decide."
Then his voice hardened.
"But hear me well. Not one man crosses this line again. The men go east, and only east. No man returns deeper into Warsaw. No man steps west of this divide."
His eyes swept across them one final time.
"That is my last command," Oskar said. "Now obey it."
For several seconds nobody moved, until Aaron's sister cried out for help, and several members of his family cautiously entered the clearing. They approached with wary glances toward Oskar, plainly uncertain whether his mercy extended far enough to permit them near the boy he had just defeated, but Oskar made no move to stop them. Coats and shirts were stripped away, cloth torn into bandages and pulled tightly around the ruined leg while others pressed against the wound and called desperately for a cart.
That was enough to break the paralysis.
Women began crossing the empty divide toward the men. The men themselves remained where Oskar had ordered them, none daring to step westward again, but wives, mothers, daughters and sisters rushed east to find them. Soon the corridor was filled with embraces and shouted names. Some women came dragging or carrying the bodies of men who had been shot among them earlier, struggling beneath the dead weight while others hurried to help. A few who had no one left simply stood amid the movement with blank, exhausted faces, seemingly uncertain whether there remained anywhere for them to go. Others gathered their dead and began carrying them away toward churches, homes and cemeteries.
Among the men the same sorting had already begun. Those with nobody nearby to farewell simply turned east and joined the first streams moving toward the bridges, while others remained beside the boundary waiting for families to find them. Before long women were disappearing back into Warsaw and returning with blankets, bread, water, clothing, carts and whatever else could be gathered before nightfall.
What struck Oskar most, however, were the farewells.
With his hearing he caught fragments everywhere. Husbands telling wives to remain. Fathers pressing keys into daughters' hands and ordering them to guard the house until they returned. Sons promising mothers that this would not last. Again and again the same conviction surfaced beneath different words: keep the home ready; keep the key; wait for me.
Some separations were crueller still. Mothers handed infant sons across the divide to fathers or male relatives who would carry them east, then remained behind with daughters clutched against their skirts. Women kissed those children again and again before surrendering them, entrusting them to whatever female relatives had chosen exile alongside the men. Other wives refused separation entirely and prepared to go east themselves, but many did not.
Oskar watched all of it with growing understanding.
The men were leaving angry, but not hopeless. Most did not believe this was forever. They imagined months, perhaps years, and then a return. Some would undoubtedly find Russian uniforms and Russian rifles before that day came, exactly as Oskar expected. Let them. Better armed men before his advancing armies than hidden resistance behind them. If they wished to fight him again, he preferred them where he could see them.
The women presented a different problem, but here too Oskar saw something useful taking shape. Hope restrained them. Hope that husbands would return, that homes could be preserved, that this strange occupation might prove temporary if only they endured it. That hope might prevent many from throwing themselves immediately into resistance, and time would give German rule an opportunity to become ordinary—to replace terror with routine, dependence and, among some at least, eventual loyalty. Oskar had no illusion that every woman would accept him, but he did not need every one.
Nearby, Aaron's family finally found a small cart. They lifted him onto it as carefully as they could, his face grey from pain while his sister remained beside him, one hand gripping his shoulder. Aaron himself looked back at Oskar once as the cart began moving east. There was no gratitude in his expression, only exhausted hatred and the unmistakable promise that, if fate permitted it, this would not be the last time they faced one another.
His sister looked back as well.
Her expression was different.
For a moment her eyes met Oskar's, filled with fear, grief and something deeply reluctant. Then her lips moved, as if saying thank you, so quietly that almost nobody else could have heard it.
Oskar's brow twitched.
He watched them disappear into the crowd, faintly astonished that gratitude could survive beside so much hatred simply because he had chosen not to kill her brother.
Then he felt a small hand tighten around his own.
Maria was still tucked against his side beneath one arm, her body warm against the battered black plates while both her hands now held one of his enormous gauntlets. She had watched everything in stunned silence, occasionally looking from the departing families to Oskar as though she too were still trying to understand what sort of man stood beside her.
Zofia remained only a few steps away, but her attention had long since left Oskar. Her eyes searched desperately through the streams of men moving east, darting from one dark head to another in the impossible hope of finding the one face that mattered. Whenever the crowd pressed too close she instinctively drifted back toward Oskar, as though his immense presence had become the only solid ground left to her amid the human tide, yet every part of her remained fixed upon the men disappearing toward the bridges.
Then she saw him.
A familiar head of dark-blond hair moved between the shoulders ahead.
"Tomasz!"
The name tore from her before she seemed aware of shouting it. She stumbled forward, one hand clutching Oskar's oversized white shirt she wore, while the other reached uselessly toward her son.
"Tomasz! Wait! Tomasz!"
The boy heard her and looked back.
It was only a glance, scarcely more than a heartbeat across the moving ranks of men, yet it struck Zofia with such force that she recoiled. She knew that look. Piotr had worn it before insults became shouting and shouting became blows, that same cold fury which promised violence before a hand was ever raised. To see it now upon the face of her own son frightened her more deeply than she was prepared for. Some old instinct, learned through years of fear, answered before thought could intervene.
Her voice broke.
"Tomasz…"
But he was already turning away. The crowd closed around him, swallowing him among the men moving east, and in the same instant the strength seemed to leave Zofia's body. Her knees buckled beneath her.
Oskar caught her before she struck the cobblestones.
One enormous arm swept around her waist and lifted her bodily from the ground, drawing her against the black mass of his armour so quickly that instinct took over. Zofia's arms locked around his neck, and her legs followed, wrapping around his waist as though she were clinging to the only solid thing left in the world. Oskar adjusted his hold without effort, supporting her securely beneath the hips with one arm while she pressed her tear-wet face against the side of his neck and stared over his shoulder toward the place where Tomasz had vanished.
"My boy…" she sobbed. "My boy…"
Oskar said nothing. There was nothing useful he could have said. He simply held her while her body shook against him, letting her cling as tightly as she needed.
Then, with his free hand, Oskar reached down toward Maria, and she took it immediately, closing both of her smaller hands around his gauntlet as though unwilling to let him go.
At that same moment, a familiar metallic clatter rose through the crowd. Oskar lifted his head and saw Shadowmane approaching at an unhurried walk, the great stallion's black armour catching the last light as he moved through the gathering. People began drawing aside long before he reached them, and within moments a broad path opened almost by instinct before horse and master.
Oskar glanced at the sobbing woman clinging around his neck, then toward Shadowmane.
"Well, old friend," he said, "care to lend me a hand?"
The stallion stopped a short distance away, ears flicking forward as Oskar gestured lightly toward Zofia. For a moment Shadowmane simply stared at him. Then, with almost insulting deliberateness, he stepped sideways and gave a deep snort.
Oskar stared back.
Horse and prince regarded one another in silence, communicating with the peculiar ease of companions who had spent far too long together.
"Oh, very helpful."
Shadowmane shifted another half-step away. The meaning was unmistakable, as if saying, your woman, your problem.
Oskar sighed. "Fine."
The absurd little exchange with Shadowmane briefly cut through the heaviness of the moment, but only briefly. Zofia still clung around his neck, her face buried against him as she wept for the boy disappearing somewhere among the eastern crowd, while Maria remained close at his side with both hands wrapped around his gauntlet.
And in that moment, Oskar wondered whether this ought to be where the three of them parted.
Perhaps that would be the kinder thing. His war had already torn enough from this family. Piotr was dead. Tomasz had gone east with hatred in his heart. Zofia was sobbing against Oskar as though she no longer possessed the strength to stand on her own, and Maria had attached herself to him with a devotion that seemed to have grown far faster than either of them had properly understood. Whatever tenderness had passed between them beside the river, Oskar could no longer pretend that he had entered their lives without consequence. Perhaps he had already done them enough harm.
His gaze lowered to Maria, and she looked up at him immediately.
Oskar managed a tired, somewhat bitter smile. "And what of you, Maria? Do you wish to follow your brother?"
The effect was immediate. Her face went pale.
"No."
The answer came so sharply that Oskar blinked.
"No, my prince. Please." Her grip tightened desperately around his hand, pulling it close against herself as though afraid he might withdraw it. "Please don't send me away. Did I do something wrong? I'll help. I'll work. I'll do anything you ask. Just—please let me stay with you."
"Whoa. Easy."
Oskar's brows rose as her words tumbled over one another.
"I am not sending you anywhere."
Maria stared up at him, still visibly frightened.
"I was asking," he said more gently. "Nothing more. You are free to go if you wish. Both of you are. I am not keeping you prisoner, nor will I force either of you to remain beside me."
Her fingers only tightened.
"But if you truly wish to stay," Oskar continued, "then stay."
The relief that crossed her face was so overwhelming that it unsettled him more than her panic had. All around them Warsaw was coming apart into tears, farewells and columns moving eastward, yet Maria seemed almost unaware of any of it. Her attention remained fixed entirely upon him, as though the rest of the world had become distant and indistinct.
Oskar understood enough to feel guilty.
She had lost almost everything familiar within the space of a day, and in the middle of that chaos he had become the one figure who seemed powerful enough to make anything safe again. Of course she was clinging to him. He had encouraged that dependence whether he had intended to or not.
He squeezed her hand reassuringly.
"You may come with me. I can always find useful work for willing hands, and judging by the state of the two of you, I think food, rest and proper clothing ought to come before any grand decisions about the future."
Maria's expression brightened almost instantly. Oskar saw it and nearly sighed again. To him, the offer meant shelter. To Maria, judging by the sudden light in her eyes, it evidently meant considerably more.
He turned his attention back to Zofia, who had made no attempt to release him.
"Zofia."
She only held him more tightly.
"Zofia, sweet thing."
That earned the faintest movement against his shoulder.
Oskar adjusted his arm around her and spoke more quietly. "I know. I know this hurts. And I am sorry for what this day has brought you."
Her breath hitched.
"But Tomasz has chosen his road. He is a big boy now—you told me so yourself. And whatever else I might think of his temper, he is strong enough to look after himself."
Zofia gave a broken little sound against his neck.
Oskar hesitated before adding, "And forgive me for saying it, but chasing after him in your present condition would likely help none of you. You are exhausted. Maria is scarcely better. Neither of you is equipped for the road east, and Tomasz has already made it painfully clear that he intends to go without you."
That truth hurt, and Oskar felt her flinch at it, but she did not pull away.
"So let him go," he said. "For now."
His hand moved reassuringly across her back.
"Believe that he will survive. Believe that somewhere down that road he will find whatever it is he thinks he needs to find. You cannot choose for him anymore."
Zofia remained silent.
Oskar looked from her to Maria and then toward the Royal Castle rising above the dispersing crowd.
"As for the two of you, you need somewhere safe tonight. That much, at least, I can provide. Come back to the palace with me. Eat. Rest. Find yourselves something decent to wear. After that, tomorrow can be tomorrow's problem."
Maria's eyes widened.
"The palace?"
Oskar glanced at her.
"Yes, the palace."
The words seemed to strike her like the announcement of some impossible miracle. Maria tried to suppress it, but Oskar could practically feel the excitement radiating from her. To him it was a roof, food and somewhere protected from the madness outside. To her it was evidently another chapter in whatever fantastic story she had already begun constructing around him.
That realization produced equal parts affection and unease.
Good Lord. What have I gotten myself into?
He had become part of this now. Whatever mistakes had brought them together, he could not simply wash his hands of the consequences and pretend the women would be better for it.
Zofia still had not answered. Yet neither had she loosened her arms. Instead she pressed herself more firmly against him, her face hidden against his neck as though holding on were easier than choosing anything at all.
Oskar exhaled softly.
"I shall take that as a yes."
Maria smiled.
Oskar glanced toward Shadowmane, who remained nearby with the unmistakable air of a creature pleased that somebody else had been left to solve the problem.
Oskar sighed again and started toward the Royal Castle, carrying Zofia securely against him while Maria walked beside him, her hand still firmly held in his.
They had gone only a short distance when the stallion veered toward the enormous sword still embedded in the broken cobblestones. He lowered his armoured head, closed his teeth around the heavy hilt and pulled. Stone cracked loose around the blade before it came free with a scraping groan. Shadowmane raised his head again and followed with Oskar's sword hanging absurdly from his mouth.
Oskar glanced back.
"Now you decide to be useful."
Shadowmane snorted around the hilt, as the crowd opened further before them.
From a distance the sight was impossible to miss. The Iron Prince of Germany, still encased in battered black armour, walked calmly toward the Royal Castle carrying a weeping Polish woman against his body while her daughter clung to his free hand. Beside him came the monstrous black stallion carrying his equally monstrous sword between its teeth.
People stared.
Some whispered ugly things beneath their breath. To them Zofia and Maria had already become collaborators, traitors, women who had attached themselves shamelessly to the conqueror before the blood upon Warsaw's streets had even dried.
Others saw something less simple.
They saw that Zofia was crying into Oskar's neck and that he allowed her to. They saw Maria holding his hand and no German dragging her away. They saw ordinary Polish women physically clinging to the man Warsaw had spent the evening fearing and saw, however incomprehensibly, that he treated them with gentleness.
It did not make Oskar beloved or erase the dead, but it complicated the monster.
Among women still struggling with the decision Oskar had forced upon them, that complication mattered. If those two could remain close to the Iron Prince himself without being beaten, chained or violated, perhaps remaining beneath German occupation did not necessarily mean immediate ruin. Warsaw was still their home. Their rooms, churches, courtyards, kitchens and familiar streets were here. Eastward waited refugee roads already strained by war, uncertain food, uncertain shelter and, eventually, winter.
Cold needed no politics to kill. Neither did hunger, disease or the desperation of displaced people.
Some women who had been preparing to follow their men toward the bridges slowed as Oskar passed. A few stopped. Others looked east and then back toward the city they knew, clutching daughters or infants more tightly while calculations of love and survival warred across their faces.
Oskar noticed.
Hope, he thought, might prove more useful than fear. The women who remained could still hate him. Some undoubtedly would. Some might even work against him. But so long as they believed husbands and sons might one day return, that their houses might still be waiting and that life beneath German rule might become bearable, hope itself could restrain the impulse toward immediate resistance. Time could do what force alone could not: make occupation ordinary, establish dependence and perhaps, among enough of them, eventually create something resembling loyalty.
It was a colder thought than the woman crying against his neck deserved, and Oskar knew it. Still, ruler and man had long since learned to inhabit the same body.
They passed through the iron gates surrounding the Royal Castle. Eternal Guards straightened as Oskar approached, more than one pair of eyes lingering curiously upon the strange procession. None commented. Oskar's personal life had ceased surprising them some time ago.
Shadowmane stopped beside several attendants and lowered his head. The sword dropped from his teeth with a tremendous metallic crash that sent one startled servant jumping backward.
"See to that," Oskar said.
The Eternal Guard saluted.
Oskar continued up toward the eastern entrance with Maria beside him and Zofia still refusing to release his neck.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff were waiting beneath the great eastern doors when Oskar reached the castle.
Both generals looked first at him, then at the young Polish woman holding tightly to his hand, and finally at the woman asleep against his shoulder. Exhaustion had overcome Zofia somewhere during the walk; she remained curled against the black armour with her arms around his neck, dressed in nothing but the enormous white shirt that could plainly belong to nobody but the prince carrying her. Hindenburg's brows drew together slightly. Ludendorff allowed himself one longer glance before apparently deciding that whatever strange story explained the two women was, for the moment, less important than what was happening beyond the gates. Maria, meanwhile, offered the two famous old soldiers a shy little smile and edged fractionally closer to Oskar.
Hindenburg looked past them toward the riverfront, where the great gathering was already dissolving into columns, carts and tearful farewells. "Is this truly wise, Your Highness?" he asked. There was no defiance in his tone, but there was unmistakable concern. "What you have begun here goes considerably farther than occupation. Once the nature of it becomes known, Europe will be shaken—and not merely Europe. Reports may be delayed, contradicted or censored, but eventually the world will understand that you have ordered the removal of the non-German male population from conquered territory. However many individual acts of mercy you perform afterward, that policy will be judged upon its own merits. You should expect resistance abroad and, I fear, considerable unease within the Fatherland itself."
Oskar's expression tightened, though he allowed the criticism. Hindenburg had earned the right to question him, provided questioning never became disobedience. Before Oskar could answer, Ludendorff added his own concern with characteristically practical severity.
"I must agree that this is a very large step, Your Highness. Whatever its political justification, the material consequences are considerable. These territories have already been badly damaged. Fields must be planted, railways repaired, workshops reopened, buildings restored. We could have used these men. Removing so much of the labouring population leaves us attempting to rebuild conquered provinces with half the people who lived in them."
Oskar gave them both a faint, almost indulgent smile. "You worry too much." His eyes moved from one general to the other. "Hold the course and things will settle. And as for manpower, I would rather have ten educated, disciplined, healthy Germans whom I can trust, understand and properly direct than ten thousand unwilling labourers whose loyalty is doubtful, whose work must be watched and with whom half our officers can scarcely communicate. Numbers are not everything. I have always preferred quality."
Ludendorff looked thoughtful rather than convinced. Hindenburg remained grave.
Oskar's smile disappeared.
"Now enough."
The change in him was immediate. Even with a sleeping woman in one arm and Maria attached to the other hand, the authority in his voice seemed to fill the entrance beneath the great stone arch.
"See that what I established here is carried through wherever our authority extends. The male population that falls beneath the decree goes east. The land behind them is brought under German administration. Women may remain or accompany them according to the terms I have already given."
His attention settled most heavily upon Hindenburg.
"And when I say my orders, Field Marshal, I mean all of them."
Hindenburg understood before the next words came.
Oskar's blue eyes hardened.
"No prisoners."
A short silence followed.
"I will not have permanent camps swallowing guards, trains, food and medical stores while our army is still advancing. Those enemy prisoners already in our hands are to be resolved. If the officers responsible for them believe release is the better course, then disarm them, give them what clothing and provisions circumstances permit and send them east. If those commanders judge that releasing them merely returns armed enemies to the field, they may execute them."
Hindenburg's jaw tightened.
"The choice of those two outcomes belongs to the commanders who captured them," Oskar continued. "How they reach that judgment is their responsibility. But there will be no system of great prisoner camps following this army eastward. I have been clear about that before, and I will be clear once more: do not soften the order behind me because you dislike it."
"Your Highness—"
"No, Hindenburg." Oskar's voice remained quiet, which only made the warning heavier. "You may question me. I expect intelligent men to question what they do not understand. What you may not do is countermand me. I value your judgment, and I value your loyalty. Do not force me to place one against the other."
For several seconds Hindenburg held his gaze. Whatever objections remained were plainly still there—military law, retaliation, the effect upon enemy surrender, the consequences for German prisoners—but he also knew when the discussion had become an order.
Oskar let the silence settle before continuing. "As for Warsaw, the outside world needs no melodrama. Warsaw has fallen. Civilians are frightened, refugees are moving, families are leaving—as happens in war. The population was given a choice. Some elected to remain beneath German authority; others elected to go east. No columns were dragged from their homes in chains."
Hindenburg glanced toward the city below, where even from the palace entrance they could still hear women crying.
Oskar followed his gaze. "Yes. The choice was severe. War offers severe choices."
There was the sophistry of it, and all three men understood it. The men had indeed departed under their own power, but refusal had carried consequences demonstrated plainly enough upon the cobblestones. Oskar did not pretend otherwise to the generals. He merely intended that the public language surrounding the event be cleaner than the event itself.
"The Fatherland will be told that the evacuation proceeded under military necessity and without large-scale resistance," he said. "Foreign newspapers may learn what they can after the fact. Until then, details are censored. Photographs, casualty figures, the precise terms of the decree—none of it leaves military control without approval. I will not provide our enemies with propaganda while the operation is still unfolding."
Ludendorff gave a small nod. That part, at least, required no philosophical agreement; it was ordinary wartime information control.
Oskar looked between them one final time. "The men have made their choice. We have made ours. The territory they leave behind is now under German law. Hold it, rebuild it and carry out my policy exactly as I have given it."
Hindenburg's expression remained troubled, but at last he brought a clenched fist against his heart. Ludendorff did the same without hesitation.
"Your will shall be carried out, Your Highness," Hindenburg said.
"For God and Fatherland," Ludendorff added.
"Until death," Hindenburg finished.
Oskar inclined his head. "Very well. Carry on."
The two generals stepped aside.
Maria's little smile returned as Oskar passed between them, as though she had somehow shared in his victory merely by standing at his side. She hurried to keep pace without releasing his hand. Zofia never woke; she only shifted faintly against Oskar's shoulder and settled more deeply into his hold as he carried her through the great doors.
Inside, the German maids looked up from their work with openly curious expressions as the Crown Prince entered bearing one exhausted Polish woman while another followed beside him. Oskar ignored the questions written across their faces and continued into the Royal Castle.
Behind him, Warsaw slowly disappeared into evening. The bridges remained crowded with men moving east while women returned toward homes or followed with whatever possessions they could carry. Families continued their farewells beneath the failing light, and elsewhere the dead of the day were already being gathered for burial. Black Legion soldiers watched from streets and rooftops as the great gathering diminished, its cries becoming more distant with every passing minute.
By the time darkness settled fully over the city, Oskar's new law had already begun reshaping it.