The rails sang long before the trains came into view.
First a tremor, then a rumble, and finally a roar as armored locomotives screamed across the frontier, their steel flanks painted with the double-headed eagle of Russia and the crowned Eagle crest of Tyrol intertwined.
Smoke and steam boiled upward, blotting out the pale winter sky.
Behind them trailed strings of cars: troop carriages bristling with rifles at the windows, flatbeds stacked with armored hulls under tarpaulin, boxcars stuffed with ammunition and grain.
It had been three days since France crossed into Belgium.
In those three days Russia had moved as if some ancient giant had risen from its slumber.
Gone were the ponderous mobilizations of 1914 that had once doomed her armies to disaster.
Now railways cut like arteries through the empire, armored trains thundered along their length, and the logistical spine of a modern war bent westward with ruthless precision.
