It was thirty minutes since the boarding of Brünhild.
Hideous bloodshed had already reduced the Rosen Ritter regiment to less than the size of a company. Even at the beginning of the operation, they had lacked the numbers to form a full battalion. Now the imperial troops were successfully pursuing a strategy of separation, isolating and cornering them one by one.
However, each Rosen Ritter death cost the Imperial Navy at least three men of its own. When it came to former regiment leader Walter von Schönkopf and current leader Kasper Rinz, it was anyone’s guess what sort of human resources would have to be expended. Several times now von Schönkopf had been boxed in by the enemy only to push them all back again, terrified and beaten.
“Reuschner! Dormann! Harbach! Anyone shameless enough to still be alive, respond! Zefrinn! Krafft! Kroneker!”
Standing amid stacks of enemy corpses, von Schönkopf lowered his tomahawk with one arm and called out the names of his men. After a few echoes with no reply, von Schönkopf struck his helmet with his fist.
At that moment, an imperial soldier lying on the floor sat up. He was a young man, perhaps not even twenty. He had blacked out after taking a tomahawk handle to the back of his skull, but now he had finally regained consciousness. As blood trickled thinly from his nose, he gripped his own tomahawk, took aim at the broad, muscular back currently at sixty degrees of elevation relative to his position, and hurled it with all the strength he had.
Shock exploded in von Schönkopf’s back, followed by pain. The tomahawk had pierced his armor, torn skin and flesh, and smashed his right scapula.
Von Schönkopf turned, the axe still planted in his back. Expecting retaliation, the soldier covered his head with both hands, but von Schönkopf only looked down on him, making no attempt to bring his own tomahawk down.
Finally, the former imperial noble spoke.
“Young man. What do they call you?” he asked in fluent Imperial Standard.
“What difference does it make to you, rebel scum?”
“I just wanted to know the name of the man who wounded Walter von Schönkopf.”
“Sergeant Kurt Singhubel,” said the man after a pause.
“Thank you. To repay you for introducing yourself, let me show you a trick.”
So saying, von Schönkopf reached behind him with his right hand, pulled the tomahawk from his back, and threw it. A soldier who had been taking aim with his rifle to finish von Schönkopf off took a direct hit to the chest and toppled with a scream.
But this intense action only widened von Schönkopf’s wound. New pain spiraled hotly through his body, and blood welled forth to paint his silver armor red from the inside. Crimson streams flowed down the surface of the armor plate, reaching the heels of his boots. It was clear to the imperial troops that his wound was fatal.
An imperial soldier, perhaps emboldened by von Schönkopf’s injury, moved around behind him and ran him through with a bayonet.
Von Schönkopf’s tomahawk flashed and the soldier’s head went flying as if struck by lightning. The enemy fell back uneasily. Drenched in human blood, von Schönkopf seemed to them the Erlkönig himself. How could he endure such terrible wounds, lose so much blood, and still stand armored and undefeated? Singhubel was frozen, glued wordlessly to the ground where he lay. Emptied of all longing for glory, he silently called his mother’s name in terror.
“Come on, then! Who wants the honor of being the last man killed by Walter von Schönkopf?”
Von Schönkopf laughed. It was a laugh that could only have come from him—an indomitable laugh without an iota of pain. His bloodstained armor already looked as if a great crimson serpent had wrapped itself around him, and still he bled.
He coughed, and a hint of red came with it. He did not feel hard done by. His life, like Yang Wen-li’s, had been stained with more blood than he could ever hope to repay with his own. It seemed that debt had come due.
Von Schönkopf began to walk. His pace was leisurely, and the imperial soldiers gasped to see him shrugging off blood loss and pain that would have left an ordinary man unable to stand. Too shocked to aim their weapons at him, they only watched.
Arriving at a staircase, von Schönkopf began to climb it as if out of duty. He left a small puddle of blood behind him on each step, and when he finally reached the top he turned and sat down.
He placed his tomahawk across his knees and looked down at the imperial soldiers below. A fine view, he thought. To die on the low ground would not have been to his taste.
“Walter von Schönkopf, age thirty-seven,” he said. “Before my death, my parting words: I need no inscription on my gravestone. Only the tears of beautiful women will bring peace to my soul.”
He frowned, not with pain but dissatisfaction.
“Not quite the last words I was hoping for. Maybe I’d’ve been better off letting young Attenborough write them for me.”
The imperial soldiers inched toward the foot of the stairs. Von Schönkopf watched with little apparent interest. The core of the network of cranial nerves controlling his vision, however, was traveling backward up the dark river of memory in search of something else. When it found its quarry, von Schönkopf closed his eyes and began to speak to himself.
“Ah, yes, she was the one—Rosalein von Kreutzer. Preferred to be called Rosa, as I recall…”
The exact time of Walter von Schönkopf’s passing is unclear. At 0250, when the imperial troops cautiously approached, trying to determine whether this dangerous man was living or dead, he remained seated on the staircase, not moving a muscle. He had already passed through the gate reserved solely for the dead, chest thrown out with pride.
At around the same time, Captain Kasper Rinz’s advance had also halted.
Wounds in more than twenty places garishly adorned his form. He had been saved from critical injuries up to that point by his armor and his fighting ability, but it seemed that these were at their limit now too. His tomahawk was already lost, and fatigue bore down on his shoulders with ten times the weight of his armor. He leaned against a square pillar covered with embedded cables and then slid down to sit at its base.
He looked at his combat knife. The blade had snapped in half and it was soaked to the hilt in blood. His hands, too, looked as if he had dipped them to the wrists in red paint. Exhaustion and resignation pressed on his back, growing by the second. He lovingly kissed what remained of his faithful knife’s blade, then leaned back against the pillar and waited, with serene detachment, for death—in the form of some enemy soldier—to make its self-important arrival.