Chapter 24: Blades of Ice and Hidden Daggers

Princess Natasha Frostbloom, Bureya Tsarevna, Knyazhna Burevestnitsa, Natasha Ledyanaya Devitsa, sat astride Velikiy Grom with the easy balance of a girl who had been riding war bears since she could walk. The wind cut across the tundra like a thousand invisible knives, whipping her long golden braids against the white fur of her cloak. Snow hissed against the silver white pelt of Grom’s immense shoulders. His breath steamed in great rolling clouds that smelled of pine and storm magic. Around her rode her twelve chosen sisters, the flower of the Bogatyri: stern faced women in embroidered blouses and clinging breeches, white fur cloaks flung back to free their arms, lances tipped with frost that glimmered like captured starlight. They looked to her the way pilgrims looked to an icon, fierce and reverent, ready to follow her into the mouth of hell itself.

This was her first true battle.

Until now the war had been raids: lightning strikes on supply sleds, ambushes in moonless blizzards, vanishing again before the Reich could bring its full weight to bear. Natasha had frozen patrols in their tracks, shattered golem joints with ice lances, left blackened banners snapping in the wind above heaps of southern corpses. Tsarina Sofia had kept her niece leashed, precious and untried, the hope of the Frostbloom line. Today the leash was off. Today the Reich had marched in force onto the open tundra, and the combined host of Rus’kiev, ten thousand infantry in scale coats and fur caps, Druzhina heavy cavalry on shaggy steppe ponies, both men and women mingled in the ranks, had come out to meet them.

Natasha’s lips curved in a thin, severe line. Let the southern barbarians come. She would teach them what winter truly meant.

Ahead, the Reich line crawled forward like a black scar across the snow.

Even at a distance they were unmistakable. Tall women marched in perfect lockstep, black uniforms gleaming with runic silver, jackboots crunching through the crust. They were unnaturally tall, seven feet and more. Tlalli auxiliaries flanked them, bronze skinned Amazons in scaled skirts and feathered crests who had betrayed their own kind for the Reich’s promises. Between the ranks lumbered the golems: towering Eisenfaust constructs of black iron, faceless helms glowing with red coal eyes, massive articulated limbs ending in claws that could rend bear plate. Reich intelligence called them unstoppable. Rus’kiev scouts called them abominations. Natasha had shattered three in raids, but never more than one at a time.

At the fore rode two figures who could only be the dreaded Blutwalküren. One was braided blonde, cold as glacier ice, mounted on a monstrous black destrier. The other had wild platinum hair streaming like a battle standard and laughed aloud even across the distance, a sound that carried on the wind like breaking glass. Kael’vath and Brynhild’ra, names whispered in Kievgrad with curses. The disciplined killer and the flaming madwoman. Natasha narrowed her cool blue eyes. Let them come.

The Rus’kiev horns sounded, deep and mournful as dying mammoths. The infantry line advanced at a steady tramp, shields locked, spears bristling. Druzhina cavalry fanned out on the wings, lances lowered. Natasha raised one gloved hand. Her Bogatyri reined in, bears grumbling deep in their chests. Not yet.

She wanted the Reich fully committed.

The clash came like thunder.

Druzhina horses slammed into Tlalli shields. Spears splintered. Men and women screamed. Infantry lines collided in a grinding roar of steel and scale. Natasha watched from the rise, pale cheeks flushed with cold and eagerness. Moroz’Zauber stirred in her blood, eager for release, but she held it tight. Discipline first. Always discipline.

The Reich fought like devils.

Black clad SS women, fanatical and tireless, drove forward in perfect wedges, runes flaring on their corsets as they shrugged off axe blows that should have cloven skulls. When a Rus’kiev soldier fell, the SS did not simply kill. They tore scale coats open, dragged women down into the snow, and mounted them there in the midst of battle. Natasha’s stomach twisted as she watched one SS officer, a statuesque blonde with chains dangling from pierced nipples, pin a wounded Druzhina rider beneath her. The Reich woman ripped the fur cloak aside, baring heavy Slavic breasts to the freezing air, then ground her hips down with deliberate cruelty. The fallen rider screamed, legs kicking uselessly, while the SS laughed and thrust something thick and black between her thighs. Natasha looked away, jaw clenched. Barbaric southern filth. They fought not for victory but for degradation.

Golems waded through the melee like iron gods. One seized a Rus’kiev infantryman by the throat, lifted him high, then slammed him down across a kneeling woman’s back. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a white plume. The golem’s plated codpiece split open. Natasha’s eyes widened in revulsion. A monstrous articulated cock unfolded, thick as a man’s forearm, ridged and barbed. It drove into the woman with mechanical precision while the golem’s claws pinned her wrists. Her shriek cut across the battlefield, thin and despairing, before another SS trooper silenced her with a gauntleted hand over her mouth and took her from the front. Blood steamed on the snow.

Natasha’s fingers tightened on her lance. Her sisters shifted uneasily around her, bears growling low. They had heard tales, but seeing was different.

Yet the Reich paid for every yard. Rus’kiev axes bit deep into Tlalli flesh. Frost lances from allied Stormcallers punched through SS corsets and burst hearts in cages of ice. A golem toppled, joints shattered by concentrated icicle barrages, its iron cock still twitching like a dying serpent. The line wavered.

But only wavered.

Slowly, inexorably, the black wedge pushed forward. More Rus’kiev fell than Reich. More women were dragged down into the churning snow to be used like battlefield whores. Natasha saw a Druzhina captain, Anya Varkova, she recognized the banner, fighting back to back with her husband. An SS trio surrounded them. Anya’s sabre flashed. One attacker fell clutching her throat. Then a golem’s claw closed around her braid, yanking her head back. Her husband roared, charging, only to be gutted by a second golem. Anya was forced to her knees in the snow, mouth pried open, while the SS women took turns riding the golem’s iron cock in front of her face, smearing her cheeks with black fluid that steamed in the cold. Natasha tasted bile.

Enough.

The Reich center was fully engaged now, reserves committed, golems lumbered deep into the melee. Their flank hung open like a raw wound.

Natasha rose in her stirrups. Velikiy Grom reared beneath her, fifteen feet of silver fury, roaring a challenge that cracked the air like thunder. She swept her lance forward.

“Za Rus’kiev\! Za Sofiyu\! Za Moroz\!”

Twelve bears answered with a roar that shook snow from the ridge. Lances lowered. White cloaks streamed behind them like battle standards.

They charged.

The tundra blurred beneath pounding paws. Wind screamed past Natasha’s ears. Her braids snapped like golden whips. Grom’s muscles bunched and surged, eating the distance in enormous bounds. Her sisters fanned out on either flank, a perfect wedge of white and gold and fury. She felt the Moroz’Zauber rise in her like a winter tide, cold fire in her veins. Ice crackled along her lance tip, forming a spiraling spear of frozen razors.

The Reich flank turned to meet them.

Too late.

A dozen Eisenfaust golems pivoted with mechanical precision, red eyes flaring brighter. Codpieces split open in perfect unison. From each groin unfolded those obscene articulated cocks, thick black iron shafts ridged with barbs, already swelling, dripping dark fluid that hissed where it struck snow. The nearest golem fixed its glowing visor on Natasha and took one earth shaking step forward, cock rising like a siege ram.

Velikiy Grom roared again, thunder answering thunder.

Natasha leveled her lance, lips peeling back from small white teeth in a snarl that was half battle joy, half purest hate.

“Come, iron monsters,” she whispered to the wind. “Taste the storm.”

The golems loomed closer with every thunderous bound of Velikiy Grom’s paws, their iron cocks jutting obscenely forward like siege weapons, barbs glinting in the pale sunlight. Natasha felt the cold fury rise in her chest, pure and clean as fresh powder. She would not let those abominations touch her sisters.

She thrust her lance skyward. Moroz’Zauber surged through her veins like liquid winter, answering her call with eager hunger. Words of power spilled from her lips in the old tongue, sharp, biting syllables that cracked the air.

The ground answered.

Permafrost melted in an instant, a roaring wave of heatless thaw that turned the tundra’s iron crust into a sea of black, viscous mud. Glacial Quagmire, her favorite battlefield curse, spread outward from the golems’ feet in a perfect circle, thick and sucking, the kind of bog that had swallowed entire invading armies in Rus’kiev legend. The Eisenfaust constructs took one more lumbering step and sank.

Iron legs plunged deep, mud closing over articulated knees with greedy slurps. Motors whined in high pitched protest, steam hissing from overheating joints as the golems strained to lift their massive weight. One tried to pivot, servos screaming. Its barbed cock slapped uselessly against the mire, flinging dark droplets that steamed where they landed. Another toppled forward, helm splashing into the muck, red eyes flickering in frantic distress.

Natasha laughed, a bright, fierce sound that rang across the snow like shattering ice.

She swept her lance in a wide arc. Her Bogatyri veered as one, bears wheeling with impossible grace around the stranded iron giants. The golems thrashed helplessly, sinking deeper, unable to bring their weapons to bear. Perfect.

Ahead, a wedge of Tlalli auxiliaries had turned to face the sudden threat, scaled skirts flashing, feathered crests bobbing. Bronze skinned traitors who had sold their wombs to the southern barbarians. Natasha’s lips peeled back in a snarl.

“Na nikh\!” she cried. To them\!

Velikiy Grom hit the Tlalli line like a thunderbolt.

His massive paw swatted the lead Amazon aside, crushing her ribcage with a wet crunch. Natasha’s lance punched through another’s throat, frost blooming outward in a red white flower. Her sisters crashed in behind her, whoops of savage joy rising as lances rose and fell. White fur cloaks swirled amid bronze scales and spraying blood. The Tlalli fought fiercely, spears stabbing, but they were infantry against mounted fury. Bears reared and slammed down, crushing skulls beneath paws the size of shields. One Bogatyri sister, tall and stern Irina Snowblade, drove her lance through a Tlalli captain’s belly, twisting until the woman screamed and folded.

Natasha yanked her lance free and spurred Grom onward, braids whipping. Another Amazon lunged at her, dagger flashing. Natasha parried with the lance shaft, then backhanded the woman across the face with a gauntleted fist. The Tlalli staggered. Grom’s jaws closed on her shoulder and flung her rag dolling into the snow.

They rolled through the wedge like a storm tide, leaving broken bodies and crimson snow in their wake. Natasha’s heart sang. This, this was what she had been born for.

A sudden flare of black red light snapped her attention left.

Hexenzirkel witches, half a dozen of the Reich’s black clad sorceresses, had rallied on a low rise, cloaks billowing, Runenpeitschen cracking like living serpents. Runes flared along their corseted bodies. Dark hexes lashed out toward the charging Bogatyri, barbed threads of corruption seeking flesh.

Natasha raised her free hand. Frost Ward Veils shimmered into existence around her sisters, walls of glittering ice that hung in the air like frozen auroras. The hexes struck and shattered, reflected back in bursts of agonizing cold that made the witches scream and clutch burned faces. One dropped her whip, skin blistering black.

Natasha’s virgin troops roared approval, lances dipping to impale the reeling Reich soldiers below. Blood steamed on white fur. The Bogatyri pressed forward, mobile and relentless, bears bounding from target to target. They struck isolated knots of SS next, a cut off squad of Todesengel who had been dragging Rus’kiev wounded into the snow for their depraved games.

Payback tasted sweet.

Natasha led the charge personally.

Velikiy Grom barreled into the black clad women like an avalanche. One Todesengel turned too late. Grom’s paw smashed her flat, bones cracking audibly. Natasha’s lance took another through the corset, frost exploding outward to freeze the woman’s scream in her throat. Her sisters swarmed the rest.

The Todesengel fought like cornered wolves, Runenpeitschen lashing, but the Bogatyri were mounted fury. Lances punched through leather and flesh. Bears mauled and crushed. One SS officer, a platinum haired bitch with chains dangling from pierced nipples, tried to mount a counterattack, whip cracking toward Natasha’s face. Irina Snowblade intercepted, her own lance shearing the woman’s arm off at the elbow. Black blood sprayed.

Another Todesengel went down beneath three Bogatyri, screaming as they took turns stabbing. A third tried to crawl away, dragging a wounded Rus’kiev woman by the hair. Svetlana Bearheart, broad shouldered and merciless, leapt from her bear and drove her boot between the SS woman’s shoulders, pinning her. She wrenched the Todesengel’s head back by the hair.

“This one thought to dishonor our sisters,” Svetlana spat.

She drove her dagger into the SS throat, sawing until the body twitched and stilled. The rescued Rus’kiev woman sobbed thanks, clutching a torn blouse to her chest.

Natasha allowed herself a fierce grin. The Reich would learn. Rus’kiev women were not prey.