When open battle failed, Artamonov reached backward for an older kind of war.
Russia had employed mounted raiders for centuries across frontiers too broad for conventional armies to seal completely. Cossacks were particularly well suited to such work. They could move quickly, travel with little baggage, sustain themselves for a time upon what they carried or seized, disappear through forests and broken countryside and strike where no enemy division was waiting for them. Their purpose was not necessarily to conquer territory. They existed to make an enemy's rear unsafe: to cut telegraph lines, tear up railways, burn depots, destroy bridges, seize horses and supplies, attack isolated detachments and compel a stronger army to waste men guarding places that ought to have been secure.
After Samsonov's death, Artamonov seized upon that tradition with the desperation of a commander who no longer possessed a conventional answer to the Black Legion. Beginning on 29 July, he broke much of the surviving cavalry into small raiding formations and sent them west. They would not ride north again into the German machines that had destroyed them in East Prussia. Instead they would spread along the frontier, cross wherever the German defences seemed weakest and create enough chaos inside the Reich that Oskar would be forced to turn some part of his army around.
The Cossacks therefore entered Germany not as one great cavalry formation but as dozens of scattered bands. Some contained scarcely half a dozen men, others twenty or thirty, and occasionally an officer gathered fifty or a hundred riders when he believed he had discovered a particularly vulnerable approach. They moved along woodland paths, forgotten farm tracks, marsh roads and shallow river crossings, spreading themselves across such a wide area that the Germans could never know where the next intrusion would come.
Some learned immediately that the Germans had anticipated exactly this kind of threat. The principal roads into Germany no longer ended at sleepy customs houses where a handful of policemen checked passports and collected duties. Barbed wire channelled traffic toward prepared firing positions. Timber-and-earth strongpoints overlooked bridges and road junctions, machine guns covered the obvious approaches, and border policemen carried rifles as readily as revolvers. Telephone lines connected one post with the next, while automobiles and motorcycles allowed patrols to move between threatened sections with a speed no mounted courier could match.
Several Cossack groups attempted to force those crossings by courage and momentum. They died doing it. Machine guns opened before the riders had come anywhere near sabre range, cutting horses from beneath men and turning narrow roads into heaps of animals, equipment and bodies. Survivors who scattered into drainage ditches or nearby woods found disciplined rifle fire following them from loopholes and prepared positions. Other raiders attacked apparently weak police patrols only to watch the Germans withdraw in motorcars, telephone ahead and return shortly afterward with enough armed men to make continuing the fight suicidal.
Yet no frontier stretching across forests, rivers, farmland and marshes could be sealed completely. Between the fortified crossings lay long kilometres watched only by occasional patrols or distant observation posts. There were forest tracks hidden beneath pine branches, drainage paths invisible from the principal roads, small bridges serving isolated farms, shallow streams and forgotten lanes that existed more clearly in the memories of local hunters than upon any military map. The Cossacks searched until they found these weaknesses, and once through them they scattered deeper into German territory.
At first most behaved much as mounted raiders had always behaved. Telegraph lines were cut. Railway equipment was damaged. Small bridges were burned where they could be reached without serious resistance. Horses and wagons were taken from farms, storehouses broken into for food and military supplies destroyed wherever there was time. A patrol might gallop into a village, cut its telephone line, seize fresh animals and disappear before the nearest police station had even understood what had happened.
Then discipline began to decay.
There were too few officers to supervise every scattered party, too much alcohol waiting inside farms and inns, and too many men carrying the humiliation of East Prussia inside them. Some were frightened and desperate. Some were furious at an enemy they scarcely understood. Others had always been thieves, bullies or brutes and had merely required circumstances in which the law ceased to matter. Once the raids moved away from identifiable military objectives and into isolated civilian country, the distinction between requisition, plunder and simple robbery began disappearing with alarming speed.
Farmhouses were entered at gunpoint. Men who resisted were beaten, shot or cut down. Livestock was driven away, cupboards and cellars emptied, and jewellery, watches and money vanished into pockets and saddlebags. Some buildings were burned after being looted simply because drunken riders found satisfaction in watching German property disappear beneath flames. Families were threatened or beaten while men searched their homes, and fathers or older sons who attempted to intervene sometimes died in their own yards.
In scattered places the violence became far worse. Women were violated, some dragged from houses into barns or other outbuildings while relatives were held away at rifle point. Some were abducted and carried east with the raiders, and there were reports that younger girls had also fallen victim. Children fled into woods and fields or hid beneath furniture while armed strangers ransacked their homes. Not every Cossack participated in such acts; some officers tried to preserve discipline, some riders wanted nothing more than supplies and a road back toward Russia, and a few even intervened against comrades whose behaviour disgusted them. But scattered armed groups deep inside hostile territory were difficult to control under the best circumstances, and Artamonov had done little to restrain them. In the drunken hours after taking command he had spoken loosely of plunder and women, treating the expedition partly as war and partly as compensation for what had been suffered in East Prussia. Coming from a general, even drunken words could become permission in the minds of men already looking for it.
Smoke began rising from farms across the German interior. Refugees appeared upon the roads. Telephone exchanges farther west received increasingly frantic reports of horsemen appearing in villages where no Russian formation was supposed to exist.
Yet the deeper the surviving raiders penetrated, the stranger Germany became.
Before the war, the Cossacks had heard endless stories about this new modern Germany. And now the rumours seemed less absurd with every kilometre. Dirt roads became gravel and then smooth black paving. Automobiles, motorcycles, delivery trucks and passenger buses moved between towns in numbers that made horses shy at the noise. Telephone and power lines followed the roads, electric lights shone from stations and small shops, and advertisements displayed products many of the Russians had never seen before.
More unsettling than the wealth was the sense that everything was connected. A raiding party could leave one village believing itself unseen, only to find the next settlement already warned by telephone. Motor vehicles carried messages faster than horses, while railways, paved roads and communications lines bound the countryside together like parts of a single machine.
A few of the more determined bands nevertheless continued west for days, avoiding fortified roads and sustaining themselves on whatever they could seize. Gradually the farms and scattered settlements gave way to heavier traffic, larger buildings and factory chimneys rising beyond the horizon.
Then, one afternoon, the Cossacks saw Posen.
They did not enter immediately.
For nearly half an hour a band of several dozen riders remained among the trees and fields beyond the outskirts, staring at the city through binoculars and with their naked eyes. To men who had spent the previous days moving through farms and little villages, Posen seemed almost magical. Electric trams crossed broad paved streets beneath webs of overhead wire. Motor buses stopped beside crowded pavements and swallowed passengers before moving on again. Automobiles flowed around horse-drawn traffic rather than being rare curiosities among it. Great department stores and banks stood behind walls of polished glass, while cafés, restaurants, barbers, beauty establishments and fashionable shops crowded streets decorated with electric signs and enormous painted advertisements.
The Russians had heard stories about Oskar's Germany long before the war. They had heard about its machines, medicines, automobiles and impossible factories, about Waterworld and Pumpworld, about women wearing cosmetics openly and bathing in clothing that respectable Russian society would scarcely have tolerated in private. Much of it had sounded like exaggerated newspaper nonsense. Looking down upon Posen, some of those stories suddenly appeared almost modest. The city seemed impossibly clean and ordered, as though the Cossacks had ridden out of the blood and mud of their own century and discovered another age waiting beyond the trees.
Eventually curiosity overcame caution, and the riders emerged from the countryside and entered the city.
At first the people simply made way for them. Pedestrians stopped beneath awnings and beside tram lines, watching with wide, frightened eyes as these rough, weather-beaten horsemen from the east rode slowly through streets that seemed to fascinate them almost as much as they terrified everyone else. For several minutes the Cossacks scarcely behaved like raiders at all. They stared upward at tall buildings, electric signs and the web of wires stretched above the roads. A motor bus passed close enough to make several horses shy violently, and one rider burst out laughing when he saw dozens of civilians sitting comfortably behind its windows as though travelling inside some enormous moving room. Another dismounted beside a polished automobile and ran his hand over the bodywork before climbing behind the controls, only to discover that nothing inside it resembled a horse, wagon or machine he understood. Farther down the street, another Cossack climbed into an unattended delivery truck, pulled several levers at random and somehow made the vehicle lurch forward into a lamp-post.
The laughter that followed loosened something inside the group. They had entered a wealthy German city, ridden openly through its streets, frightened its people, and for the moment nobody had stopped them.
That realization changed everything.
One rider tore a German flag from the front of a building and dragged it beneath his horse. Another began smashing the windows of a parked automobile with the butt of his rifle, apparently offended by the machine simply because he could not understand it. Then revolvers appeared, and shots cracked upward between the buildings.
People screamed and scattered.
Within moments curiosity had become possession. Cossacks galloped along the streets firing into the air and laughing as pedestrians fled into doorways, restaurants emptied through kitchens and rear exits, and shopkeepers hurriedly locked whatever doors could still be secured. A bus driver saw several mounted Russians turning toward him and accelerated instead of stopping, the heavy vehicle gathering surprising speed as it disappeared around a corner. One Cossack fired angrily after it and nearly rode directly into an automobile crossing the intersection, wrenching his horse aside at the last instant while the driver vanished down another street.
Elsewhere, rifle stocks shattered the windows of a jeweller. Watches, necklaces, rings and bracelets disappeared into sacks almost before the broken glass had finished falling. A bank proved still more tempting. Armed men forced their way through the entrance, drove customers and clerks against the walls and demanded whatever currency and valuables could be reached without wasting time on doors or vaults they did not understand.
Whatever military purpose remained in the raid began disappearing almost immediately. Destroying a telegraph office might damage Germany; a jewellery shop glittered. Burning a railway bridge could slow an army; a bank contained wealth that could be carried home in a saddlebag. Perfume, fine clothing, silver, watches and money accumulated wherever the riders passed. Rings were pulled from trembling fingers and necklaces torn from the throats of women who had been too frightened or too slow to escape. One Cossack emerged from a fashionable clothing shop wearing an expensive fur garment over his muddy uniform, laughing at how warm and luxurious it felt. He had no idea it had been made for a woman and cared even less. Several of his companions saw him, decided they wanted the same and disappeared inside to find furs of their own.
The city itself only deepened the impression that they had ridden into some decadent fantasy. Years of improved nutrition, medicine, sanitation and Oskar's relentless promotion of physical culture were visible in the people moving through its streets. German men in civilian clothing were often conspicuously healthy, with broad shoulders, straight posture and the easy movement of people accustomed to regular exercise. Clerks, mechanics, shopkeepers and factory workers looked considerably harder than their occupations suggested, and universal military service meant that many of those apparently ordinary civilians had already spent years learning to march, shoot and obey commands beneath military discipline.
The women drew even more attention. German fashion had become far freer than anything familiar to men raised in conservative Russian villages. Dresses followed the body rather than burying it beneath layers of heavy cloth, waists were closely fitted, fine stockings revealed the shape of the legs, and summer clothing exposed more neck, arms and skin than many of the Cossacks considered respectable.
Cosmetics were everywhere. Women wore lipstick openly, treated their skin with creams and powders, styled glossy hair with products advertised by AngelWorks and carried themselves with the polished appearance the Russians had previously associated mainly with actresses, courtesans and photographs in magazines.
Yet gunfire stripped away the glamour instantly. These women still screamed, froze, fled and dragged children behind them like anyone else confronted by armed men. Some stumbled in fashionable shoes as they ran. Others abandoned handbags and parcels in the street simply to move faster.
Even then, the Cossacks noticed something unusual about them. Oskar's culture of swimming, gymnastics, walking and Pumpworld training had produced women who were not merely decorative. Strong legs carried some astonishingly quickly through the streets, while fitted clothes made the fashionable combination of narrow waists, healthy curves and athletic posture impossible to miss. Fair skin, blond or light-brown hair and blue or grey eyes were common enough to reinforce every romantic story the Russians had heard about German women before the war, and modern cosmetics only heightened the effect.
To men who had spent the previous days surrounded by exhausted soldiers, mud, blood and dead horses, whole streets seemed populated by women who looked almost unreal.
Some riders merely stared. Others grinned and exchanged crude remarks.
A few laughed that Oskar had somehow built Sodom, given it electric lights, automobiles and motor buses, and called it Germany.
Then several riders noticed the sign for a Waterworld complex.
They had heard of those as well.
The building was enormous by the standards of the public bathing facilities they knew, its entrance decorated with painted swimmers and advertisements for lessons, health treatments, and family memberships. The Cossacks rode straight toward it, left their horses outside under the watch of several companions, and pushed through the main doors with rifles in their hands.
The reception hall contained a cafeteria, ticket counters, and a scattering of families who understood what was happening only when the first revolver was fired into the ceiling.
Staff immediately pulled down the heavy folding shutters behind the service counters and disappeared into the protected rooms beyond. The customers were driven against the walls and searched for watches, jewellery, purses and anything else worth taking.
One particularly eager rider, curious to see how the women of the city compared with those the Cossacks had already tasted in the countryside, seized a woman in a white dress and tore the front of it down, exposing her breasts. He laughed approvingly at what he saw, groped her roughly while she flinched and endured it, then remarked to his companions that she might be worth returning to later. Her two friends could do nothing but watch in horror.
Yet the Cossacks soon became more interested in what lay beyond the reception hall than in the valuables they had collected or the handful of clothed women before them. Wanting to see what else the enormous bathing complex contained, they headed straight for the women's changing rooms.
Panic raced ahead of them.
Half-dressed women fled between lockers and showers while others were caught before they fully understood what was happening. Children crawled beneath benches or hid wherever they could. Women who resisted were struck or beaten, others were driven against the tiled walls at gunpoint, and within minutes the violence had spilled into the swimming halls beyond.
Screams echoed beneath the vast glass roof as families scattered and the first gunshots cracked through the building. Men and women were forced onto the wet tiles while the raiders moved among them, separating people, taking stock of the frightened captives.
Meanwhile three young Cossacks eventually reached one of the women's steam rooms, where the atmosphere remained almost absurdly peaceful. Steam hung beneath the ceiling and softened every sound. A mother sat with her two teenage daughters while a young blonde woman nearby talked quietly with them, all four having heard little more than distant, muffled disturbances through the thick walls. Then the door opened and three armed strangers stepped inside.
The mother looked up first. She was a striking woman in her thirties, with thick dark-brown hair damp from the steam and large brown eyes set in a warm, feminine face. Motherhood had softened and deepened her figure, leaving her full through the chest and hips, but years of swimming and regular physical training had also given her strength that was not immediately obvious. There was muscle beneath the softness, particularly through her thighs, back and arms, though the Cossacks noticed none of it. They saw only four naked women trapped in a room with a single exit.
One of them seized the daughters and forced them toward the far wall while another caught the blonde when she tried to move. The largest Cossack chose their mother. She could have fought him immediately, but instead she let him believe he had already won. When he forced her down onto the wet tiles, she went with him rather than wasting strength resisting. She let fear show in her face, allowed herself to appear frightened and compliant, and even stopped looking toward her daughters as he handled her roughly. The man relaxed, mistaking restraint for helplessness.
That was the mistake she had been waiting for.
When he leaned farther over her and committed his weight, her legs locked around his hips and both hands seized his coat. She pulled sharply while driving upward with her legs and twisting beneath him, using his own momentum against him. The enormous Cossack went over her and struck the glass partition separating the women's steam room from the men's hard enough to shake the entire wall before collapsing stunned onto the tiles.
For a moment everyone simply stared. Then German hands appeared beneath the partition. Men on the other side grabbed the fallen Russian by his coat and boots and dragged him through the gap beneath the glass. Shouting erupted immediately, followed by a scream and the heavy sounds of a short, furious struggle.
That single act shattered whatever control the remaining Cossacks had possessed. The second man attacked the mother before she could properly rise, while the third struggled with the blonde and her daughters. The steam room dissolved into chaos: bodies slipped across the wet tiles, women screamed, hair was pulled, fists and knees struck wherever they could, and the mother was thrown against the wall and nearly strangled before using the tiles themselves for leverage and driving her attacker backward into the opposite side of the room.
The blonde, meanwhile, saw one of the rifles lying unattended and managed to reach it. Her first shot deafened everyone in the chamber and dropped one of the Russians. When the other turned toward her, she rushed him and drove the bayonet into his belly. That gave the mother the opening she needed. She came off the floor with a knife in her hand and threw herself upon him before he could recover.
By then the German men beyond the partition had killed the Cossack dragged among them and taken his weapons. One after another they crawled beneath the glass and entered the women's side, naked men carrying Russian rifles into a room where moments earlier the Cossacks had believed themselves completely in control. The balance had reversed in less than a minute. The Russians had entered expecting helpless victims and instead had armed them.
The Germans burst from the steam rooms into the women's changing area, where several more Cossacks were occupied with prisoners and had almost no warning before gunfire erupted. Some were shot before they could reach their rifles, while others were overwhelmed at close range by men and women attacking with captured weapons, knives, stools and whatever else lay close at hand. From there the resistance spilled naturally into the swimming halls.
What followed was less an organized battle than a rapidly spreading uprising inside the building. Naked swimmers and half-dressed families fought beside veterans carrying captured Russian rifles. Wounded people were dragged behind pillars, benches were overturned into barricades, and isolated Cossacks found themselves attacked from several directions at once. Their bolt-action rifles became increasingly awkward at such short distances, where a man might fire once and begin working the bolt only to discover two or three civilians already rushing him.
The mother remained near the center of it. She had begun the reversal in the steam room, but by then others no longer needed her example. Men who had hesitated began fighting. Women seized dropped weapons. Veterans gave orders. Every act of resistance encouraged another until the Russians inside Waterworld were no longer raiders moving among terrified civilians but isolated men trying to escape a building that had turned violently against them.
One wounded Cossack eventually managed to fight his way through the changing rooms and reach the reception hall. Bleeding badly, he staggered through the main doors and into the street, and for a moment it seemed he might escape.
Then the mother came after him.
Still naked and still carrying the knife, her dark hair hanging wet around her face, she sprinted through the reception hall and out onto the pavement. Her daughters called after her, but she did not stop. She caught the wounded Russian from behind, tackled him to the ground and stabbed him until he stopped fighting.
By the time her daughters reached her with towels, the rage seemed to leave her almost at once. They pulled her away from the body and wrapped her in whatever they had managed to find, and only then did she appear to understand that she was standing naked in the street.
The entire struggle inside Waterworld had lasted only minutes. People had been killed, others wounded or assaulted, and the building was left strewn with broken glass, abandoned clothing, blood and bodies. Families who had arrived that morning expecting nothing more dangerous than swimming lessons and an afternoon at the baths now stood bewildered among the wreckage.
But something larger had begun there. One woman had recognized that the Cossacks' apparent power depended upon everyone else believing themselves helpless. She had waited, chosen her moment and acted. The men beyond the glass had followed. Then the blonde and the daughters. Then the changing rooms, the swimming hall and finally everyone else who understood that the Russians could be resisted.
By the end, the Cossacks still inside Waterworld were either dead or desperately looking for a way out.
Across Posen, the same realization was beginning to spread.
On isolated farms, a handful of mounted men could terrorize an entire household. Even a brave farmer with a hunting rifle remained one man once his ammunition ran low or his house was surrounded.
A city was different.
There were too many people, too many telephones, too many veterans and too many machines.
At first the resistance appeared almost accidental. A shopkeeper shot a Cossack who tried to drag away his daughter. A former infantry corporal organized neighbours and fired from an apartment window. Factory workers, hunters and tradesmen emerged with rifles, tools and memories of military service.
Then resistance became contagious.
People realized the Russians could die.
A mounted Cossack looked far less terrifying once he had been knocked from his horse. An isolated rider surrounded by twenty furious civilians was still only one man against twenty. Each act of resistance encouraged another, until shots began coming from houses, workshops, gardens and upper windows throughout the affected districts.
Vehicles became weapons and barricades. A bus driver deliberately struck a mounted Russian rather than stop. Delivery trucks were turned across intersections, motorcars carried warnings ahead of the raiders, and motorcyclists raced toward police stations. Civilians drove unattended horses away, cutting off escape routes before their riders returned.
Women joined wherever circumstances allowed, using knives, bottles, tools and furniture, dragging wounded people to safety and helping overwhelm isolated Russians whenever numbers or surprise gave them the advantage.
The city ceased behaving like prey.
For a few exhilarating minutes, some Cossack bands had believed Posen belonged to them. They had ridden through the streets, robbed shops, broken into buildings and terrorized whoever stood before them.
Then Posen began closing around them.
The police arrived in familiar Prussian-blue uniforms, but with rifles drawn from emergency armouries. They occupied intersections and doorways, exchanged fire with the raiders and used telephones, automobiles and motorcycles to redirect men toward fresh sightings faster than the Cossacks could escape.
Soon the Russians were running.
Some returned to find their horses gone. Others barricaded themselves inside buildings. One group seized hostages inside a bank when police surrounded them. Another forced its way into a school and took teachers and children captive, apparently believing German authorities would not risk attacking while civilians remained inside.
Those decisions brought something else.
For years rumours had circulated concerning a force hidden somewhere beyond Germany's ordinary police establishment. Foreign intelligence reports spoke of heavily armed men selected for exceptional loyalty, trained for hostage rescue, terrorism, armed insurrection and precisely the kind of violence ordinary constables could not reasonably be expected to confront.
The Spezialeinsatzkommando existed.
And Posen finally saw it openly.
Their armoured carriers came through the streets behind police cordons, heavy Prussian-blue machines with reinforced glass and thick steel plating. Roof-mounted machine guns watched windows and intersections while the vehicles pushed directly toward districts where Russian resistance remained concentrated. The men inside wore little that resembled ordinary police clothing beyond insignia and colour. Reinforced helmets enclosed their heads, dark armour protected torso and shoulders, and carbines, automatic weapons, grenades, medical equipment and breaching tools hung from standardized equipment harnesses.
Most belonged to the Church of the New Dawn.
Foreign newspapers might have called them religious fanatics. And there was enough truth behind the insult to make the description uncomfortable.
To the SEK, protecting German civilians was not merely employment. It was duty made sacred. Their faith taught discipline, sacrifice and service beneath the order Oskar believed Germany represented, and the men drawn toward the formation tended to possess an intensity that made ordinary policemen uneasy even when they were grateful to have them nearby.
They arrived without theatrics.
One carrier stopped outside a street where Cossacks had barricaded themselves inside several buildings. The rear doors opened and twelve men came out with the frightening coordination of machinery. The first pair already covered the street while the remainder moved against the walls. One team advanced while another watched windows. Every corner was treated as dangerous. Every doorway was covered before anyone crossed it.
The Cossacks fired first.
The SEK answered.
A Russian behind an overturned wagon exposed himself long enough to fire and was struck almost immediately from two directions. Another tried to escape on horseback through an intersection and discovered an armoured carrier already blocking it. Its roof gun fired a short burst. Horse and rider collapsed together upon the paving stones.
The bank siege ended differently. While ordinary police kept the Russians watching the front entrance, SEK operators entered the adjoining building, climbed to the corresponding floor and breached through the interior wall. By the time the Cossacks understood that Germans were inside, the fight had already moved into the rooms behind them.
The school brought even less patience.
The presence of children did not protect the raiders; it ensured that every available resource was concentrated upon them. Streets were cleared. Marksmen occupied neighbouring buildings. Two carriers blocked the principal exits while another team entered through the rear. The Cossacks had expected hostages to buy freedom.
Instead they bought the attention of men whose entire professional identity revolved around preventing precisely that bargain.
They never left the school alive.
Across Posen and the surrounding countryside, the pattern repeated. The raiders remained dangerous, and where they arrived first they could still kill, steal and abduct before anyone responded. Some women disappeared east with groups that escaped the city before the cordons closed. Money, jewellery and other valuables also vanished in saddlebags. The violence inflicted during those first minutes could not simply be undone because German resistance eventually succeeded.
But the Cossacks had discovered the difference between terrorizing an isolated household and terrorizing a city containing tens of thousands of people capable of communicating with one another.
Numbers turned against them, and within hours the raiders who had entered Posen as marauders began trying to escape it as fugitives.
The countryside became little safer. Farmers and hunters had been warned. Police vehicles patrolled the principal roads. Motorcyclists carried descriptions ahead. Aircraft searched open ground. Border stations that had allowed the original gaps to exist were now fully alert and increasingly reinforced, so that Cossacks returning east sometimes discovered machine guns waiting beside crossings through which they had passed almost unopposed days earlier.
Some abandoned loot simply to make their exhausted horses faster. Others left stolen German horses behind once the animals could no longer continue. Captives slowed the bands more than anything else, but some raiders refused to surrender them and drove the women east regardless.
Many Cossacks never reached Russia again.
Those who did returned with stories that became grander with every telling: German banks robbed, cities penetrated, automobiles stolen, streets fought over and unimaginable wealth discovered inside Oskar's strange new Reich. They returned with jewellery, money, watches, horses and a small number of abducted civilians as proof that the raid had happened.
Artamonov could call that success if he wished. However, strategically it had accomplished almost nothing.
The Black Legion did not turn around.
Oskar refused to exchange the destruction of Russia's field armies for the temporary satisfaction of personally hunting raiders through his own countryside. Police, border troops, reservists, local garrisons and the SEK were ordered to deal with the incursions. Some aircraft and small military formations were diverted where necessary, but the great concentration moving south remained focused upon its objective.
That was becoming the most frightening quality of Oskar's war.
He did not chase every insult. He did not allow every atrocity to dictate his next movement. He kept looking beyond them.
The raids enraged him. Reports of murdered civilians, assaulted women and abducted families affected him far more deeply than Artamonov could have guessed. These were precisely the people Oskar had refused to abandon when the Russians first approached East Prussia, ordinary Germans who had never chosen to become soldiers and who believed the army existed so that war would never reach their homes.
Yet Oskar drew from their suffering a conclusion very different from the one Artamonov had intended.
Turning the Black Legion west would punish the raiders.
Destroying Russia's ability to threaten Germany would prevent the next raid.
That distinction mattered to him.
His ambition had ceased to be the winning of individual battles long before the first Russian crossed the frontier. Oskar wanted something larger and considerably more dangerous: a peace so complete that another generation would never again have the means to begin this war. Every government that attacked Germany, every army capable of crossing its borders and every political arrangement that allowed Europe to return endlessly to the same slaughter had become part of the problem he intended to solve.
The Cossack raids therefore did not distract him, they merely hardened his resolve.
While German police hunted Artamonov's raiders through streets and forests, the Black Legion continued destroying what remained of the Russian Second Army. The encircled formations north of Warsaw were broken apart piece by piece. Aircraft watched roads and forests from above. Motorised columns reached crossings ahead of troops travelling on foot. Artillery hammered concentrations attempting to escape, while the strange tracked machines appeared wherever the terrain permitted them to close another road.
By the time the surviving Cossacks were slipping back across the frontier with their loot and captives, the strategic situation around Warsaw had already moved beyond them. Black Legion reconnaissance had reached the Wkra river and the northern approaches to the fort of Modlin. Engineers, artillery officers and airmen were beginning the deliberate work of studying the fortress system guarding the meeting of the Narew and Vistula. Roads were being measured, bridges examined and firing positions selected while bombers searched the forts from above.
Behind those preparations, fuel, ammunition and men continued coming south.
Oskar was not riding back to Germany.
He was approaching Warsaw.
And whatever Artamonov had hoped to accomplish by setting his Cossacks loose upon the Reich, he had succeeded chiefly in giving the Iron Prince one more reason to make certain Russia could never do it again.