Dust was still drifting down from the floorboards, and the air was thick with the distinctive bitter-almond smell of burnt explosive from the M24 grenade, mingled with the stench of charred flesh.
"Move."
Arthur holstered the Webley that had just reaped a life, his tone as casual as if he were instructing a chauffeur to ready the car. He kicked open the side door leading to the first-floor hall, his mud-caked riding boots crunching on the broken oak floorboards with a spine-chilling crack.
Sergeant MacTavish followed close behind, the muzzle of his Thompson submachine gun held slightly high. Though he was a veteran who'd crawled out of piles of dead men, as he stared at the ramrod-straight back ahead of him, an absurd sense of unfamiliarity welled up inside him.
Was this still the vase who'd only ever fussed with his bow tie in the mirror, who'd spill brandy down his trousers at the sound of gunfire?
That blind shot just now, that command style as if he could see through walls — it was as if some ancient god of war had possessed him. Or perhaps this was the blood of the Stirling family flowing true at last? After all, his ancestors had charged the French with the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.
First Floor Hall.
This place must once have been the height of opulence. The shattered crystal chandelier lay sprawled on the floor like the skeleton of some dead beast. The expensive Persian carpet was burned with several large holes. The oil paintings on the walls hung askew, and the face of the lady from the Louis XV era now bore a bullet hole.
But Arthur had no mood to admire the view.
On his retina, grey-white lines were rapidly reconstructing a 3D model of the entire battlefield.
The red silhouette of the StuG III remained in the courtyard. Its commander was frantically kicking the driver's shoulder — the muffled explosion from the basement and the grenade detonation had clearly alarmed them. The stubby 75mm gun tube was slowly rotating towards the hall's main entrance, accompanied by the whine of electric motors and hand-cranked gears.
On the wide staircase leading from the hall to the second floor, the three surviving German infantrymen were in a state of extreme panic.
They had no idea how many men were in the basement; they only knew their comrade had been inexplicably shot from below. Fear drove them to the stupidest tactical choice: bunching up and charging down, trying to suppress everything with firepower.
In his god's-eye view, three red silhouettes were stumbling towards the stairwell. Their tactical movements were sloppy, devoid of discipline.
This was the opportunity.
Arthur stopped behind an overturned Louis XVI-style writing desk. Without turning his head, he half-turned and used a gloved finger to elegantly point to two positions in the hall.
"MacTavish, behind that broken Venus de Milo statue on the left. That's a dead angle."
"Yes, sir!" The Sergeant obeyed instinctively, sliding into the shadow of the statue, resting the muzzle of his Thompson on the marble base.
"Williams, take two men and get under that Bösendorfer grand piano. Solid wood. It'll stop 9mm rounds."
"Understood, sir!"
The soldiers moved into position swiftly. No questions, no hesitation. The cigarette butt and the blind shot in the basement had already cemented Arthur's absolute authority over this small team.
Arthur himself stood behind a thick marble load-bearing column, his body pressed against the cold stone. He closed his eyes. The red dots in his mind were approaching the stairwell landing.
Closer. Closer still.
He could even hear the crunch of German jackboots on broken glass and their heavy breathing.
"Not yet..." Arthur murmured, his voice carrying to every soldier's ears through the air. "Wait for my order. We need to show them just how rude it is to show up uninvited."
Three red figures burst out of the stairwell.
Three fully armed German panzergrenadiers. The lead man carried an MP40, his face a mask of terror and rage, about to spray the empty hall with gunfire.
But in Arthur's RTS vision, their movements were like a movie in slow motion. He clearly saw the lead German's finger beginning to press the trigger, saw the second German reaching for his grenade.
Now.
"Fire."
Arthur uttered the word coldly.
RATATATATAT—! BANG! BANG!
The silent hall instantly filled with the staccato roar of gunfire.
This wasn't a battle. It was an execution.
The Thompson in Sergeant MacTavish's hand spat dazzling flame. The "Chicago Typewriter," that gangster's favorite, showed its terrifying lethality at close range. .45 ACP rounds hosed towards the stairwell.
The lead German didn't even get to pull his trigger before his chest erupted in a mist of blood. He flew backward as if hit by an invisible sledgehammer, crashing into the man behind him.
The Enfields in the hands of Williams and the other two soldiers hidden under the piano also barked. These old bolt-action rifles, in British hands, could achieve astonishing rates of fire.
The tradition of the "Mad Minute" had not been forgotten.
The second German had just touched his grenade when his head was shattered like a watermelon by a .303 round. Red and white sprayed across the delicate wallpaper, forming an abstract graffiti.
The last German tried to turn and flee back upstairs, but he was facing a Coldstream Guards squad that had fully hit its stride.
Arthur stepped out from behind the column. He didn't fire — there was no need.
A short burst from MacTavish precisely shattered the German's spine.
From the first shot to the last shell casing hitting the floor, the whole process took less than five seconds.
Gunsmoke filled the hall, mixing with the smell of blood, jangling everyone's nerves.
"Cease fire."
Arthur's voice cut through the ringing in their ears, clear and commanding.
He walked out from behind the column, his boots crunching on spent casings. He glanced at the three twisted corpses at the stairwell. There was no trace of victorious joy on his face, only a cold, almost finicky disdain.
"Your aim is terrible, Williams," Arthur said, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief as if displeased by the smell of blood. "You wasted two rounds on the wallpaper. That's 18th-century handcrafted paper. Restoration costs are quite high these days."
Williams froze for a moment, then offered a smile uglier than crying. "Sorry, sir. My hands were a bit shaky."
"Next time, mind it. In the Guards, waste is shameful."
Arthur turned, ready to order the withdrawal.
Suddenly, a bone-chilling mechanical grinding came from the direction of the main hall entrance.
Creak — creak —
The sound of tracks crushing masonry.
Arthur spun around. The RTS overlay on his retina flashed a piercing red alert.
In the courtyard, the previously stationary StuG III Ausf.A had not reversed away or called for infantry support as he had anticipated.
It did something insane.
Its commander, unaware that his infantry had been wiped out and therefore unwilling to fire blindly, was nonetheless either enraged or panicked. The steel beast was turning in place, its short 75mm gun and entire hull aimed at the not-very-sturdy wall of French windows that led into the hall — and it was charging!
"Damn it! He's insane!"
Watching this, Arthur's mental image of "Hansi the tactical genius" shattered instantly.
This was pure "random match" stupidity!
Without infantry to scout, without flank cover, you'd drive an assault gun — an iron coffin with terrible vision — straight into a building? That made no tactical sense! The only reason it worked was that it was 1940 and British infantry had no bazookas. If there'd been any kind of anti-tank capability, this kind of "suicide scout" move would just be feeding kills!
But here it was, happening.
"Scatter! Get away from the walls!" Arthur roared, his voice no longer a baritone but a cracked scream.
CRASH —!!!
An earsplitting explosion.
The beautiful French window wall, draped with heavy velvet curtains, was torn apart like paper.
Bricks flew, dust billowed.
A menacing, dark-grey-painted steel bow, with unstoppable momentum, smashed into the hall. The tracks churned up the rose bushes and rubble from the courtyard, leaving two deep gouges in the expensive Persian carpet.
The short 75mm gun pointed at them like a giant finger aimed at their noses, its black muzzle radiating death.
"Machine gun! Take cover!"
Young Lance Corporal Jenkins screamed in terror, instinctively trying to scatter. For a newbie, a tank charging meant a storm of metal.
Of course, that would only be true if it were a pre-modification Panzer III.
"Stay put! It's a Jerry assault gun! There's no machine gun!"
Sergeant MacTavish's roar cut through the dust. After weeks in the French campaign, he recognized this "toothless tiger" at a glance.
Yes, no machine gun. This twenty-ton steel monster, at this stage of its model, had neither a coaxial machine gun nor a hull-mounted machine gun.
The Germans hadn't needed them yet! This vehicle was originally designed to provide direct fire support for Guderian's panzer divisions' infantry. You could use it to knock out bunkers, or to crack open enemy tanks.
At long range, its 75mm high-explosive shells were infantry's nightmare. But once it charged indoors, it became a huge, blind iron coffin.
Arthur was knocked down behind the marble column by the blast wave, dust stinging his eyes. But he didn't need his eyes.
In his RTS god's-eye view, the red assault gun was thrashing uselessly in the hall.
The German commander was clearly panicking. He must have heard the gunfire stop and assumed his infantry were in a tough spot, so he'd crashed in recklessly to help.
But he'd misread the situation — there was no tough fight here, only corpses.
In this enclosed space full of dead angles, the short-barreled gun, turretless and with a narrow traverse, found itself embarrassingly unable to aim at any living person.
"Damn... he's trying to run us over!"
Arthur's mind raced.
The assault gun was spinning in place, its engine screaming. Since it had no machine gun, the mad German commander decided to use his tracks and sheer tonnage to solve the problem.
And in its path of rotation, frozen in terror, lay Lance Corporal Jenkins.
Jenkins had heard the Sergeant's shout and knew there was no machine gun, but the steel tracks bearing down on him had stolen his wits. Faced with this industrial juggernaut, primal fear overwhelmed reason.
The track plates, chewing up rubble, were less than two meters from Jenkins' boots.
"Jenkins! Move, you idiot!" MacTavish screamed from behind the piano, but he was too far to help.
In that instant, reason told Lin Rui: Leave him. The vehicle has no machine gun. Just hug the wall, get to its flank and rear, and it's a sitting duck.
But his body — the body belonging to Arthur Stirling, belonging to the Coldstream Guards, ridiculed for centuries — did the exact opposite.
An ancient toxin called "Noblesse Oblige" seized control of his brain.
"Bloody British Empire."
Arthur cursed under his breath.
He burst out from behind the column.
No tactical crouch, no hesitation. Like a cheetah in an expensive uniform, he sprinted towards the soldier collapsed on the floor, straight into the billowing dust and engine roar.
SCREECH—!
The assault gun suddenly accelerated, its bow smashing into the nearby fireplace, trying to crush everything under its right track.
Arthur dove, hurling Jenkins out of the way.
The instant they flew clear, the heavy track rolled over the spot where Jenkins had been sitting. The expensive sofa was instantly reduced to splinters and rags.
THUD!
Then, a sharp fragment of marble that had fallen from the fireplace crashed down onto Arthur.
It was a corner of the mantelpiece — heavy and sharp-edged. It slashed across Arthur's left cheek, from the corner of his eye down to his chin. Blood gushed out instantly, blurring his vision. The tremendous impact jarred his left arm, sending a crack of bone-deep pain through him.
"Sir!" MacTavish's shout went shrill.
Arthur lay on the ground, breathing heavily, blood dripping from his chin onto the grey-white rubble. But he wasn't dead.
And the assault gun, having rammed the fireplace too hard and gotten chunks of marble jammed in its drive sprocket, let out a painful screech of snapping metal.
It stopped there, engine still roaring, the hull shuddering violently like a beast caught in a trap.
Its side — that vulnerable side with no firing ports, no machine-gun turret — was now facing Arthur, less than five meters away.
This was the opportunity. Exploit its blindness and toothlessness.
Arthur struggled to roll over. With his right hand, still trembling uncontrollably, he fumbled at his tactical webbing and pulled out a black iron lump.
A No. 36M Mills bomb.
Arthur bit the pin ring with his teeth. The taste of rust, mingled with the blood in his mouth, gave him a savage thrill.
"No machine gun, and you still charge in?"
He spat out the ring, looking at the vehicle as if it were already a corpse.
"Hans, was your tactics instructor Japanese?"
Arthur didn't throw the grenade like a baseball. Instead, as if on the cricket pitch at Eton, he used an extremely standard, almost elegant underhand lob to send the Mills bomb on its way.
The grenade traced a short, precise arc through the air.
It slipped into that fatal gap — between the drive sprocket and the stone beam jamming it, into the cavity inside the track run.
BOOM—!!!
A muffled explosion echoed inside the enclosed track compartment.
The shriek of snapping metal instantly drowned out the engine's roar. The already strained track, shattered by the blast, broke completely. Like a severed python, it clattered off the drive sprocket and slumped limply to the ground.
With power lost on one side, the assault gun became a useless hunk of scrap spinning in place.
"It's tracked! Go!"
Sergeant MacTavish needed no order. The instant the explosion sounded, he charged forward with his Thompson. Williams followed close behind, clambering onto the hull and shoving his rifle muzzle directly into the observation slit.
But Arthur didn't need to worry about that anymore.
Once a turretless assault gun lost its mobility and got swarmed by infantry, it was just an expensive iron coffin.
Arthur struggled to push himself up from the ground.
The left side of his face was soaked in blood, the wound hideous. His once-handsome features now looked like a demon's. His immaculate uniform was torn in several places, coated in dust and gore.
Jenkins came to, saw his officer's blood-soaked face, and was too terrified to speak.
"S-Sir..."
Arthur ignored him. He swayed, refusing the help of Sergeant MacTavish who rushed to support him.
Using his walking cane — still clutched in his hand — as a support, he slowly straightened his back.
Though he shook with pain, though his ears rang with a deafening buzz, he still forced his chin up, maintaining that almost laughable dignity belonging to the Stirling family.
He glanced at an MP40 he'd picked up from beside a German corpse, bent down to retrieve it, then fastidiously wiped the blood off with his handkerchief.
"Stop gawking, Sergeant."
Arthur's voice, though trembling slightly, still held that infuriating arrogant drawl. He pointed towards the French doors at the back of the hall leading to the garden.
"This wreck is blocking the front door. We'll take the back. So ill-mannered."
Sergeant MacTavish stood there, his still-hot Thompson in his hands. He looked at this aristocratic young officer — face drenched in blood, swaying on his feet, yet still putting on an air of "this is no big deal."
He looked at that gruesome wound — taken saving a lance corporal. He looked at the still-smoking wreck of the assault gun — taken out by a single hand grenade.
The Sergeant's Adam's apple bobbed. Something hard cracked inside his chest.
He didn't speak.
But he suddenly snapped his heels together with a sharp click.
The standard British Army position of attention.
Sergeant MacTavish raised his grimy right hand and saluted the officer he had once most despised — a flawless salute, belonging only to the Coldstream Guards.
Not perfunctory. Not mocking. Respect.
The other soldiers saw this and straightened their own backs.
Arthur froze for a moment, as if not expecting this old warhorse to pull such a gesture.
He twitched his mouth as if to smile, but the movement pulled at his wound, making him hiss in a breath.
"Alright, MacTavish."
Arthur turned, slinging the MP40 over his shoulder, and waved his cane backhandedly at the men.
"Save your strength for running. That's more like the Guards."
He strode towards the mist-shrouded garden.
In his RTS vision, more red dots were converging on this location from all directions.
But that didn't matter anymore.
Because he knew, from this moment on, the men behind him were no longer broken soldiers ready to abandon him.
They were his pack.
And he was the alpha wolf.