The Great Battle of Karánsebes
They march through Karánsebes like they’re carving a path through history, boot leather grinding earth, armor clinking in rhythm. Each soldier’s face a frozen mask, every pore sweating the iron pride of empire. Austria, big and gleaming, a beast of regiments, bayonets, and pride. The sun dips low over the valley, stretching shadows long and dark as they press onward.
Colonel Baranski leads the hussars, every fiber of his being screaming for glory, that sickly-sweet stench of honor that’s impossible to scrub off. He sits tall on his stallion, jaw clenched like he’s already posing for his victory portrait. Every leaf, every rock, every tree—they’re just extras in his grand story. "Let the Turks come," he tells his men, his voice like gravel poured over metal. “We’ll eat them alive. We’ll make their bones our trophies.”
Behind him, the infantry slogs on, dust in their throats, eyes tired and ready to break. Lieutenant Hummel lags near the rear, his mind drifting to Vienna’s smoke-filled taverns, the soft arms of the girl he left behind, her laugh something bright in a dark room. War’s supposed to be noble, they told him. The Empire needs you. He looks at the men around him—faces like chiseled stone, cracked and tired. Noble? Maybe noble like a pig rolling in mud, he thinks.
“You think the Turks will actually show up?” says Fischer, a private with a missing tooth and too many scars for someone his age.
“The day Turks come to Karánsebes, Fischer,” Hummel says, “is the day you grow back that tooth.”
Baranski sneers from atop his horse, his eyes narrowing at the ragged lines of infantry dragging themselves like shadows. “You see that?” he says, his voice just loud enough to reach them. “That’s what a real man looks like,” he says, pointing to himself like he’s some paragon of Austrian grit.
One of the soldiers coughs, muttering, “Real man’s never met his own mud-soaked boots.”
The column stretches a mile back, every nationality the Empire could scrounge up for a fight: Austrians, Romanians, Croats, Italians from Lombardy who barely speak enough German to know when to load a musket. The grumbling comes in five languages. Half of them wouldn’t understand a command if it slapped them. You’ve got Italians muttering about home, Croats counting medals they’ll never win, Romanians glancing at the hills like they’d be anywhere else. It’s a battalion stitched together with old grudges and cheap promises. But here they are, marching forward.
Baranski raises his arm, signaling a halt. He sniffs the air like he can smell the Ottomans from miles off. In his mind, they’re right there, lurking just over the hill, watching him, trembling in fear. He imagines Turks waiting in the trees, thick-bearded men with sharp scimitars, eager for a fight. In reality, it’s just silence. No drums. No Turkish cavalry hiding in the trees. Nothing but a single blackbird picking at the dust.
“Think of it,” Baranski says, his voice barely a whisper now, leaning down to the nearest soldier. “Tonight, we’ll have a feast. Ottoman heads on pikes.” He grins, eyes wild and teeth bared.
Hummel mutters under his breath, just loud enough for the nearest man to hear, “More likely schnapps in a mug, but a man can dream.”
Baranski shoots him a look. “Something you want to share, Lieutenant?”
“Just marveling at the plan, sir,” Hummel says, straight-faced. “Invading an empty valley. Tactical genius.”
The silence stretches, thick and heavy. There’s no victory to be had here, not today. The men know it; they can taste the bitterness of empty bravado like stale beer.
But Baranski just cracks his knuckles, flexes his fingers over the reins like he’s grasping for glory, a hero in his own mind.