As Ronald Tolkien muttered curses under his breath and tried, with increasing failure, to understand what in God's name was happening to the wider battle, the lonely tank rolled through the outer streets of Paris without concern for any man's confusion.
It came down the long boulevard from the northeast, tracks grinding over broken glass, fallen roof tiles, splintered shutters, shell-scattered bricks, and the torn remains of a city that had been alive only days before.
One track passed over the head of a dead French soldier lying half in the gutter.
His bright red cap gave way first.
Then his skull cracked and burst with a wet pop beneath the weight of the machine, spraying brain matter and dark blood across the cobblestones. A smear of red and grey streaked along the tank's side armor, where it gleamed dully under the weak morning sun filtering through the clouds up above.
Not long ago, the boulevard had belonged to ordinary life.
Horse carts had rolled along it with milk, bread, coal, flowers, and parcels tied down with rope. Paris taxi cabs had rattled past them with impatient drivers, polished lamps, and passengers leaning out to shout at traffic. Shopkeepers had lifted shutters in the morning. Bakers had set warm loaves in their windows. Newspaper boys had called headlines from the corners. Men in hats and dark coats had walked beneath the trees on their way to offices, cafés, stations, and shops.
Women had crossed the street in pale dresses and fitted jackets, parasols open against the sun, shopping baskets hooked over one arm. Maids had hurried behind mistresses. Old men had sat outside cafés with newspapers and coffee. Delivery boys had pushed handcarts through the crowd. Now and then, a mother had passed with children at her side, though fewer children than one might expect in a great nation that had spent years worrying over empty cradles, falling birth rates, and the slow fear that France was growing older while Germany grew young, frighteningly young.
There had been voices then.
Hooves, wheels, bells, laughter, arguments. The ordinary music of a city certain it would still exist tomorrow.
Now all of that was gone.
The shops were shuttered or broken open. Windows had been smashed inward. Doors hung loose on hinges. The trees along the street were stripped by shell fragments and rifle fire, their branches hanging down like broken arms. The sidewalk was empty except for debris, bodies, and the occasional animal too frightened or too stupid to flee.
And down the center of that dead boulevard came the tank.
Its turret turned slowly as it moved, the short 7.5-centimeter gun settling toward the distance beyond the hotel. At the far side of a four-way intersection, past overturned carts and a tram carriage burned black, the French had built barricades across the road. Rubble, barrels, paving stones, doors, wagons, furniture, iron railings—whatever could be dragged into place had been piled together in layers.
Behind those barricades, men in blue coats and red trousers crouched with rifles ready, creeping closer street by street, building by building, trying to tighten the noose around the German-held hotel.
The tank fired almost lazily.
The gun cracked.
A single high-explosive shell crossed the boulevard and struck the forward barricade.
For one instant the whole thing seemed to lift. Then it vanished in a flash of light, smoke, and flying debris.
Barrels burst apart. Cart wheels spun into the air. Splinters tore through coats and flesh. Men were flung backward into the street or thrown sideways against walls. Some did not rise. Others crawled blindly, hands clamped over wounds, faces blackened with dust and blood.
The survivors scattered like cockroaches into alleys, doorways, and the broken mouths of nearby buildings.
A few brave men tried to drag the wounded with them.
The tank's machine gun caught them in the open.
Its fire swept the intersection in a hard, mechanical line, cutting across legs, backs, and shoulders. One Frenchman fell across the man he had been trying to save. Another spun twice before collapsing behind the remains of the barricade. A third made it as far as a doorway before the gun found him and tore him apart against the frame.
The tank rolled on.
Its turret was already turning.
This time it aimed at one of the buildings overlooking the boulevard, where muzzle flashes had begun to wink from the second floor. The gun fired again. The shell punched through the wall and exploded inside. Brick and plaster blew outward. The façade sagged, cracked, and then collapsed in a sliding roar across part of the street, throwing up a curtain of dust and smoke that formed a new barricade of its own between the French and the hotel.
On top of the tank rode five men in black armor.
They crouched low behind and around the turret, not like passengers clinging to a ride, but like a squad that had turned the tank itself into a moving assault platform. Heavy silhouettes against the pale morning haze, faces hidden, weapons locked close to their bodies, they looked wrong for 1914. Too modern. Too disciplined. Too heavily equipped. Their armor was black and hard-edged, layered over dark combat uniforms, with steel helmets, masked faces, ammunition pouches, grenades, radio gear, and weapons fitted to them with brutal efficiency.
They looked like men from a war Europe had not yet learned how to imagine.
The one with the backpack radio gave two short hand signals.
No words were needed.
The man with the grenade launcher shifted at once, rising just enough above the turret to bring the weapon to his shoulder. He did not hurry. He did not expose himself more than necessary. He braced, aimed, and fired.
Thump.
The grenade slipped through a second-floor window of a French-held building and burst inside with a white flash. Glass, smoke, plaster, and screams spat outward into the boulevard.
He broke the weapon open, fed in another round, snapped it shut, and adjusted his aim to the next opening.
Thump.
The second grenade vanished into a higher window and detonated deeper within the room. The blast punched dust through the broken frame and silenced the rifles there for several precious seconds.
Then the French answered.
Men appeared in windows, roof gaps, and holes smashed through walls, desperate or furious enough to show themselves. Rifles flashed. Bullets cracked around the tank, striking armor, stone, and the cobbles below.
The five black-armored men replied instantly.
Carbines snapped from atop the tank in short, controlled bursts. No wasted fire. No shouting. No panic. The squad machine gun came alive with a hard metallic roar, firing in disciplined cuts rather than wild streams, stitching window frames and roof edges until the French ducked back or fell away. The tank's own gun added its voice again, punching into another room and tearing half the wall into dust.
For a moment, the boulevard belonged to them.
The French fire weakened, and stopped.
Not forever.
Just long enough.
The tank continued forward and ground to a halt at the mouth of the alley behind the hotel.
Its tracks shrieked against the wet cobblestones. The turret kept turning, slow and watchful, the gun searching through smoke and broken masonry for the next threat.
There, tucked against the side of the building, sat one of Tolkien's armored trucks.
Its driver and gunner crouched beside it, both men blackened with grease, powder, and exhaustion. The driver was trying to refit chains around one of the six tires, his hands shaking from haste. The gunner had the machine gun's feed cover open and was clearing the mechanism with the desperate care of a man who knew the weapon might be the only thing keeping him alive in five minutes.
Both looked up as the tank stopped at the alley mouth.
Then the five men in black jumped down.
One after another, they struck the cobblestones with heavy, controlled impacts, weapons already raised, each man covering a different angle before his boots had fully settled. One watched the boulevard. One checked the windows above. One covered the alley. One swept the back door of the hotel. The grenadier had already slung his launcher and brought up a shotgun, its dark barrel held low and ready as they moved toward the open rear entrance.
The driver rose first, staring.
"Holy heaven above," he breathed. "It's you. The Eternal Guard."
The gunner frowned at him, still half-deaf from hours beside the machine gun.
"What?"
The driver ignored him, eyes fixed on the five black-armored figures.
"What are you doing here?"
The man at the lead jogged toward them, the backpack radio rising behind his shoulders, one earpiece pressed beneath his helmet. Static hissed constantly at his ear.
"I am Sergeant Günther of Third Company, Eternal Guard," he said. "Designation: Suicide Squad. By order of the Crown Prince, we are here to retrieve Ronald Tolkien. It is my understanding he is here."
The driver blinked, stunned.
"Wait — what? Aren't you supposed to be on the Eastern Front? Is His Highness coming here?"
The gunner leaned closer.
"What's he saying?"
Günther's eye twitched beneath his goggles.
Fortunately, the driver realized his mistake before the sergeant had to repeat himself.
"Yes—yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Ronald Tolkien is here. Fifth floor, I believe. Near the front windows."
"Good."
Günther clapped him once on the shoulder.
"Prepare the truck. We are leaving soon. All of us. Spread the word to the neighboring buildings as well. We are pulling back before this position is overwhelmed. No reinforcements are coming."
The driver stared at him as if the words had taken a moment to arrive.
"Pulling back?"
Günther did not answer.
He had already turned toward the hotel.
The five men vanished through the rear door.
Behind them, the gunner squinted after them.
"What did they say?"
The driver rounded on him.
"Shut up, you deaf fool, and get that machine gun working!"
Inside, the first floor of the hotel was a wreck of plaster dust, torn carpet, broken glass, and blood.
The men posted there turned as the five Eternal Guards entered. For a moment, the gunfire outside seemed almost distant. Exhausted infantrymen stared at the black armor, the covered faces, the strange weapons, and the imperial eagle marked on their plates.
One man whispered, "Damn. Those are actual Eternal Guard."
Another crossed himself.
"They came for us?"
The five did not stop to explain.
They moved straight for the staircase.
Their boots hit the steps in a hard, steady rhythm, climbing past bullet-scarred walls, shattered railings, bloody handprints, and wounded men laid out along the landings. Some groaned. Some stared blankly. Some clutched bandages already soaked through. A single medic worked among them with a canteen, a roll of cloth, and the expression of a man who had run out of everything except duty.
Günther paused only long enough to point.
"Wounded to the armored truck. Now. We are leaving soon."
The medic looked up, saw the eagle and the three marks of Third Company on Günther's shoulder plate, and did not argue.
No one did.
These were the Crown Prince's personal guard. Their authority did not need paperwork. It arrived in black armor, carrying weapons, and expecting obedience.
The squad continued upward, breathing hard as the stairs dragged at their legs and equipment.
Otto and Max were already ahead of the others, lighter than the rest and moving faster for it. Otto carried his sharpshooter's rifle with careful ease. Max followed with the restless energy of a man who considered being told to wait a personal insult.
Günther saw them pulling ahead and called up after them.
"Otto and Max, get to the Roof."
Both men glanced back.
"I need eyes up there," Günther said. "Watch the streets, the alleys, the rooftops. Most of all, watch for anyone trying to flank the hotel or cut our line of retreat."
Otto nodded once.
Max grinned.
"Yes, now I'll finally get to see a proper view of Paris."
They picked up the pace and disappeared upward.
Goebbels reached the third-floor landing last, burdened with the machine gun, spare belts, heavy armor, and the general misery of being the squad's walking thunderstorm. He stopped beside the wall for half a breath, shoulders rising and falling beneath his gear.
"This hotel," he said, "has too many stairs."
Adolf looked back at him.
"You brought too much ammunition again, my man."
Goebbels patted the machine gun with one gloved hand, almost tenderly.
"Brunhild is a hungry girl. I merely wish to keep her satisfied." He shifted the weapon against his chest. "And she is beautiful when she sings."
Günther pointed into the third-floor corridor, where smoke drifted from several rooms and German riflemen fired from smashed windows.
"Goebbels. Set up here. Support the men covering the boulevard. Keep the French out of bayonet range while we get Tolkien moving."
Goebbels straightened.
"Copy."
He vanished into the corridor, already barking for men to clear a window position, while beneath his mask a private grin spread across his face.
Brunhild was hungry, and Goebbels was eager to let her sing.
That left Günther and Adolf.
They continued upward together, boots striking the stairs in a hard, steady rhythm. The backpack radio on Günther's shoulders hissed constantly in his ear: broken voices, half-orders, artillery requests, aircraft reports, men shouting over one another from a front too large for any one commander to keep track of in his head in the midst of battle.
Adolf kept his shotgun low as they moved.
"So," he said, "you think this is actually our Tolkien?"
"There is only one Ronald Tolkien in the German Army."
"That we know of."
Günther glanced at him.
Adolf shrugged.
"Writers are strange."
"Not strange enough to multiply in Paris."
Adolf gave a short laugh.
Günther did not.
"I hope it is him," he said. "I want this finished. The Western Front is a mess, and I am tired of climbing through it looking for one overexcited writer."
"You would rather be east?"
"I would rather be with Third Company and the Crown Prince," Günther said. "Where we belong."
Adolf nodded toward the stairs.
"Then let's collect the poet."
They climbed past another landing.
While outside, French rifles cracked again and again. Bullets snapped through broken windows and buried themselves in plaster. Somewhere above the hotel, German aircraft droned through low cloud and smoke, one dropping a small bomb beyond the boulevard. Below, the tank answered French fire with its cannon, then its machine gun, holding the street one burst at a time.
Inside, the hotel was running out of war.
Men counted their last cartridges before deciding whether a target deserved the shot. Some used their captured French rifles. Some clutched grenades like precious diamond's. Every face Günther passed looked grey, hollow, and too young.
At last, they reached the fifth floor.
The corridor was full of smoke, broken sunlight, dust, and the sour smell of men trapped too long under fire.
A soldier crouched beside a doorway, loading a French rifle with stiff, unfamiliar motions. Another sat on his knees near a window, peering over the sill with one eye while clutching his last cartridges in his fist. At the far end of the hall, a man shouted for ammo, then stopped when no one answered.
Günther stepped into the corridor.
"Ronald Tolkien."
Several heads turned.
A corporal pointed weakly toward the room at the end.
"There. By the front windows."
Günther and Adolf moved toward it.
And there he was.
Ronald Tolkien crouched low beside a shattered window frame, loading his rifle with clumsy, exhausted fingers.
He looked young despite the dirt on his face, not boyish though, but not made for this either. A scholar's face forced beneath a soldier's helmet. Pale skin under soot and plaster dust. Strong nose, narrow features, mouth drawn tight with strain. His hair, cut short in the German military fashion, showed dark brown beneath the rim of his upgraded steel Pickelhaube—one of the Oskar Industrial safety models, old in shape but reinforced for the new war.
His eyes were grey-blue and fever-bright, fixed somewhere between the smoke outside and the thought still burning behind them.
He wore a grey German uniform, though almost nothing clean remained of it.
Mud clung to his knee pads. Dust lay thick across his shoulders. Blood marked one sleeve, though not his own. Pump World training and military drill had hardened him far beyond the soft life of a writer; beneath the stained fabric, his body looked lean, tense, and coiled with muscle, as if the uniform itself were struggling to contain the man war had begun to make of him.
Günther studied him for half a second.
Then stepped forward.
Adolf moved with him, shotgun low, muzzle angled toward the floorboards but ready to rise in a heartbeat. The two Eternal Guards crossed the room in a crouch, keeping below the window line as French bullets cracked from down below and through the broken frame smacking into the ceiling above them.
Tolkien saw them coming and for a moment, he only stared.
Then recognition struck him.
"Eternal Guard?"
Günther dropped to one knee beside him, as another burst of French rifle fire shattered what little glass remained above them.
"Ronald Tolkien, right?"
Tolkien blinked.
"Yes?"
"Good," Günther said. "You're coming with us."
Tolkien frowned as if the words had arrived in the wrong order.
"Coming with you?"
"We are leaving."
The room seemed to pause around them.
Outside, the tank fired again. The boulevard flashed white, then vanished behind dust and smoke as another building crumbled.
Tolkien turned sharply toward the shattered window, eyes searching through the haze. There, beyond the rooftops, beyond the smoke, beyond the dead and the barricades and the ruined streets, the Eiffel Tower still rose over Paris.
It was close.
"But…" Tolkien said, voice tightening. "Can't you see it? It's right there. The Tower is right there. We are almost at the heart of the city. The war is almost over. We only need to push a little farther."
"Yes," Günther said. "It is right there."
Tolkien looked back at him.
"And between here and there," Günther continued, "is a great deal of France with rifles."
The words landed coldly.
"Worse, if the reports are right, the French Sixth Army is gathering on our flanks and inside the city itself. Soon you will not be facing a few scattered French units behind barricades. You will be facing an army closing around this position from every side."
He pointed once toward the cracked ceiling.
"And when their guns are in place, they will not storm this hotel room by room. They will bury it under artillery."
Tolkien's mouth opened, but no answer came.
Günther leaned closer.
"The little forts you captured will not save you forever. They will be isolated within hours if the line keeps bending. Your men here will be surrounded, shelled, and killed to the last. So gather your things. Gather your men. Get the wounded to the trucks and onto the tank. We leave now, before the road closes."
"Wait," Tolkien said. "Wait, just a moment. You're here. The tank is here. Surely there are more coming. Ammunition, men, armour. Besides we still have aircraft. If we can just get a few thousand men—"
Adolf cut in then.
"Young man, those ammunition trucks you're dreaming about are busy being shot at."
Tolkien turned to him.
Adolf kept his shotgun angled toward the corridor, speaking without taking his eyes from the doorway.
"As we speak, the British Expeditionary Force and the Belgians have gathered in the north and are pushing south. And since our generals were kind enough to race forward without properly securing the ground behind them, the Entente is now walking straight into our captured territory and cutting at our supply lines."
He glanced briefly at Tolkien.
"Right now, our logistics men are holding parts of the northern line with truck guns, pistols, and whatever rifles they can find. So no, those ammunition trucks you are hoping for are not coming here anytime soon."
Günther nodded once.
"Understand this, Tolkien. What you did here was bold. Brilliant, even. You took a small force, used shock, speed, armored trucks, aircraft, and His Highness's advanced firepower to do what no sane officer would have attempted."
Tolkien's eyes flickered.
"But tactics and maneuvers such as this don't win wars," Günther said. "Logistics do, and right now, our logistics are fucked."
The words landed heavily.
The old captain near the window shifted in the shadows, but Günther ignored him for the moment.
"Every army on this front is pushing forward as if the next mile will end the war. First Army. Second Army. Third Army. All of them. They are killing Frenchmen, yes. Taking villages, yes. Advancing, yes. But they are doing it without cohesion. Without secure flanks. Without enough ammunition close behind them. Without enough infantry to hold what they have taken."
He pointed toward the window.
"You opened a door into Paris. Good. But there is no army in position to walk through it. You outran the men who were supposed to follow you."
Tolkien looked back toward the Eiffel Tower.
"But… we took the forts," he said softly.
"You did," Günther said. "And if we live through today, perhaps we can take them again when there is an army close enough to hold them."
The building shuddered as another explosion struck somewhere down the boulevard. Dust sifted from the ceiling.
Günther's radio hissed in his ear. He ignored the noise.
"On the way here," he said, "we passed the Western Front as it truly is now. Not the lines drawn on the maps. The real thing. Supply convoys wandering through roads they no longer understand, drivers trying to find units that have already moved or been shot apart, ammunition meant for one corps ending up God knows where because no one knows where the corps actually is anymore."
Tolkien swallowed.
"We saw trains crawling back toward Germany packed with wounded men and corpses," Günther continued. "We saw field kitchens abandoned, trucks burning, couriers lost, and staff officers screaming into telephones connected to lines that had been cut hours before."
His voice hardened.
"Understand this: we are bleeding too fast and stretching too far."
The room was silent except for the gunfire outside.
"If we do not pull back," Günther continued, "parts of First Army will be cut off. Then Second. Then whatever other army still believes momentum is the same thing as victory. We leave now, or we become another pocket on a map no one has time or men enough to rescue."
From the side of the room came a harsh laugh.
"Cowardice."
Captain Wolfgang von Reuter pushed himself upright from the shadows beside the window.
He was old, but not weak. His grey mustache and beard were stiff with dust. A blood-dark bandage crossed one side of his head. His coat was torn, his rifle battered, and his eyes still held the hard, flint-bright anger of a man who had seen France beaten once before and had spent forty years waiting to see it happen again.
"Young men," he said, voice thick with contempt. "Always counting things that do not matter. Losses. Flanks. Ammunition. Roads. No wonder this war drags on."
He took the bayonet from his belt and fixed it to his rifle with a sharp metallic click.
Then he pointed the weapon toward the window.
"Paris is there. I marched through France once as a young man, and I remember how it was done. Battle after battle, road after road, village after village, we advanced. Yes, there were sacrifices. There are always sacrifices. But we won because we had the courage to keep moving forward."
His old eyes burned.
"We did not win by staring at maps and whimpering over supply columns. We won by attacking when the opportunity showed itself."
He nodded toward the smoke beyond the window.
"And just like then, the French are shaken. If we press them now, even with our small numbers, they will think we are many. They will break. Attack, press, break them. That is how it was done then, and that is how it must be done now. The defender always loses. The man who hesitates loses. Worse, if we pull back now, we teach the French courage — and our own men will lose heart in turn."
The room went quiet.
Wolfgang lifted his chin.
"I yielded command to this Tolkien boy because he had imagination and nerve. But this?" He spat the word like spoiled meat. "Talk of retreat from the Eternal Guard themselves? How can you speak of such a thing? Are you not meant to be the bravest and finest men in the Empire?"
His grip tightened around the rifle.
"Where is your courage now? Or must I show you? Fix bayonets, and I will lead the charge myself. I will show you youngsters how Paris is taken the old way."
Günther stared at him for a long second.
"Absolutely not."
The captain's eyes narrowed.
"I understand your point," Günther continued. "But even if we took more of Paris, we could not hold it. Besides the Eternal Guard do not blindly throw themselves into the front to prove courage. We support the Crown Prince and carry out his will. That is all."
He rose to his full height, black armor scraping faintly as he straightened. Even Wolfgang von Reuter, stubborn old wolf that he was, had to look up.
"And as we speak, Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke the Younger has no fucking idea what is happening on this front. He is drowning in reports—Belgium, Amsterdam, Paris, Verdun, rebels, supply lines, broken communications, and every screaming army commander who thinks his little piece of the war is the center of the universe."
Von Reuter's jaw tightened.
"We do not have one clean front," Günther continued. "We have seven armies acting like seven different wars. Corps do not know where neighboring corps are. Divisions are outrunning their own ammunition. Supply columns are being forced to fight like infantry. And now the British, Belgians, and French are finding the gaps. Once they understand how thin our line truly is, they will strike with everything they have."
His voice hardened.
"You say attack wins wars. Fine. Attack when there is a line behind you. Attack when ammunition follows. Attack when the army still knows where its own bones are. But right now, this is not the time to fight forward. This is the time to regroup, reform, and pull back before everything is lost."
Von Reuter said nothing.
Günther stepped closer.
"The attack is not a religion, Captain. It is a tool. And only a fool worships his tools."
The old captain's eyes burned.
But he did not answer.
Günther looked back to Tolkien.
"And one more thing. Rain is coming. When it does, the roads will turn to mud. Trucks will slow. Armored cars will bog. Tanks will crawl. If we wait until the sky opens, even retreat becomes a luxury."
Tolkien's face had gone pale.
Outside, the clouds were indeed growing thicker and darker.
He looked once more toward the Eiffel Tower.
So close.
Then he looked at the wounded men, the empty pouches, the French rifles in German hands, the dust falling from the ceiling, and the Eternal Guard sergeant standing before him like the final punctuation mark at the end of a bad idea.
At last, Tolkien nodded.
"All right."
Günther did not waste a second.
"Good."
He turned toward the corridor and raised his voice until it carried down the fifth-floor hall and into the stairwell.
"All men, prepare to move! We are withdrawing! Wounded first—onto the trucks and the tank! Destroy what cannot be moved! Gather in the alley! Take the motorcycles if they still run. Everyone else moves on foot. Use the tank and armored trucks as cover!"
Men turned in shock.
Günther kept going.
"This position is about to be overwhelmed. Anyone who stays dies for nothing. We fall back to the forts and higher ground. That is an order!"
For one frozen heartbeat, the fifth floor did not move.
Then Ronald Tolkien stood.
His rifle hung in his hands. His voice came rough but clear.
"You heard him. Pack up. Help the wounded. We leave now."
That did it.
The men obeyed.
They did not fully understand. Some were angry. Some looked relieved. Some stared toward the windows as if Paris itself had betrayed them by remaining unconquered. But they moved.
Cartridges went into pockets.
French rifles were gathered.
Grenades were counted.
Wounded men were lifted.
At the window, Captain Wolfgang von Reuter cursed under his breath and slung his rifle over his shoulder.
"Damn machines," he muttered. "Damn young men. Damn weather."
Adolf glanced at him.
"Don't be so upset, old man. Live a few more years, and I'm sure you'll get to march through these streets in victory again."
The old captain glared at him.
For a moment, his eyes flicked toward the window, toward Paris, toward the bayonet on his rifle.
Then he followed.
He still looked like he wanted to charge the French by himself.
Günther was already moving toward the stairs.
"Everyone down," he ordered. "Quickly. Before Paris notices we are leaving."