Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Twenty

Endarion

Dykumas, Kalduran

20th of Tournus

Wrongfooted by the lack of resistance in occupying Vadonis, Endarion left a garrison behind. Dobran volunteered an infantry battalion for the task, and though he didn't like the idea of his cousin holding an enemy settlement, Endarion had no legitimate reason to deny him. If it meant the bastard's army was down a thousand men, he reasoned, then so much the better.

After leaving Vadonis behind, Endarion separated the Imperial armies as they penetrated the Kaldurani heartland to ensure they covered more ground. Moving six armies, each boasting at least twenty-five-thousand soldiers plus camp followers and trains, in one ungainly lump would be dangerously cumbersome and serve only to invite attack. Besides, he hoped to flush the enemy out, wherever they now hid.

Kavan Aza and Ricardus Naevon he'd sent northeast, combing the untamed foothills and valleys Endarion knew might conceal considerable forces. Korzha Mazilu and Byrria Dumerian he'd pointed northwest, across flatter land the Kaldurani could use for pitched battles. The two pairs remained close enough to be reached by a swift messenger in a matter of hours, and had been instructed to scour the wilderness but not tarry, and certainly not waste time claiming towns and villages. Kalduran boasted few enough cities that the smaller settlements could be reasonably ignored.

And he didn't want unsupervised Imperial soldiers running rampant through the peaceful Kaldurani countryside. The rural populace didn't deserve to have enemy soldiers inflicted upon them by the thousands.

That left him with Dobran, of course. He and his cousin embarked on a direct collision course with Dykumas, second largest city in Kalduran behind only its capital. He'd intended to strike straight for Varanos, but Dykumas presented too convenient a stopping point. Somewhere to rest his army after a relentless march across difficult terrain lacking the cobbled roads of the Imperium. Somewhere to pause in hope of the counterattack he knew Estrid must've surely prepared. Somewhere to tarry to delay the inevitable.

The sprawling settlement squatted over a stretch of the River Kald. It resembled a bulbous carcass torn asunder, its entrails spilling out over its twenty-five foot tall walls. Though the only large settlement for dozens of miles, a smattering of villages and farmlands dotted the hills of the pristine wilderness around it. Of its estimated population of seventy-five thousand, easily a quarter had carved out their homes in the spill of life cascading in the overflow around the city's western entrance. As was the case with most cities—Empyria included—the population had exploded beyond the metropolis's original constraints.

He halted the armies of Denjin and Adhistabor a full mile from the city; distant enough to not yet attack, but close enough for a visible threat. His scouts confirmed the city's gates were wide open, the ruling prefect having offered a formal surrender. Just like Vadonis.

He knew the Baltanos had ordered this, that Estrid had helped plan it. He just didn't understand why. Why the enemy commanded its cities to fall, one at a time, into his custody. Why the Kaldurani didn't challenge his invasion when the previous Imperial campaigns had all been bitterly opposed from the moment they'd crossed the border at Dujaro. Why Estrid and Aladar allowed him a direct path to Dykumas, when his progress could be hindered.

Perhaps they meant to lure him in, to surround him and then destroy him.

Let them. Better Estrid be my killer than the Caetoran.

As he surveyed Dykumas from a raised knoll of earth on the outskirts of his waiting army, First-General Cato Romanus joined him. Of all Endarion's officers, Cato chafed for battle the most, and this consistent lack of action riled him like a cornered stray. Decades spent serving alongside Cato had shown Endarion his first-general enjoyed the feel of enemy blood splashed across his skin almost as much as Endarion had. Cato's bloodlust had often inspired Endarion's. Now, the man's scowling patrician features inspired only disgust at what Endarion had once been and Cato still was.

He knew Cato watched him now with a near-hateful glare; the other man considered this prolonged inaction Endarion's fault. If Endarion commanded it, Cato would happily take the Denjini into Dykumas and violently crush it

Before he could consider how best to approach the city, one of the scouts he'd sent to assess the countryside beyond returned, charging straight for him. The young man threw himself from his horse and, breathless, stumbled up to Endarion.

He saluted smartly. "Paramount-General, sir."

"Report," Endarion said.

"All inhabited land for at least ten miles of our position is being ravaged," the messenger began, words pouring out in a rush. "Every settlement, no matter the size, is being put to the sword."

"By whom?" Endarion asked.

"Arch-General Tyrannus, sir."

The news, as shocking as it should've been, didn't surprise him. Dobran, like Cato, revelled in an unfair fight. If there was blood to be spilled, he needed no command to spill it.

What shocked Endarion most was that he'd assumed the soldiers peeling away from Dobran's army that morning were scouts, relatively harmless. He hadn't considered that his devious cousin would execute so blatant an attack on non-combatants, and for no good reason. Maybe he was losing his touch after all, to not assume the worst of the bastard.

"He spits on your authority," Cato hissed once the messenger had been dismissed. "He knows you won't do anything."

"Won't I?" Endarion asked, glancing at the other man.

"You know your title means nothing to Tyrannus," Cato said, sharp brows bunched in a vicious frown. "You'd never challenge him."

"So, your astute analysis of the situation has brought you to the conclusion that we shouldn't retaliate to an act of unwarranted violence on civilians?" He snorted. "This will only prove to the others that I am indeed a fearful old mongrel."

Cato bared his teeth in a semi-feral snarl. Despite being of noble blood, the first-general was the furthest one could stray from the romanticised ideals of the noble caste. Much like Endarion had been, back in a prime untroubled by conscience.

"Don't mistake me," Cato said, voice low and menacing. "I think Dobran would look far better as a defiled corpse. My point is that you're powerless."

Endarion clenched his fists and opened his mouth, a derisive reply on the tip of his tongue. But, he reminded himself, Cato didn't mind insults. They only fuelled his ferocity.

"I'll confront Dobran," Endarion said. "In the meantime, mobilise the troops. Send out some light cavalry to impede my cousin's men. He can't be allowed to kill innocents."

Cato scoffed and turned away, his coat whipping out. "Don't pretend the lives of the innocent concern you. Paramount-General," he said, the last tacked on in passing.

―

Before departing for Dobran's army, Endarion paused at the arm of his camp dominated by the doglord battalion. The ceaseless undercurrent of excitable, frustrated growling and whining directed him straight there, and he located his own pack by virtue of how calm and unmoved the largest among them was.

"I'm borrowing Bas," he said when Avelyn slunk up beside him.

"What for?" she asked.

"Might set him on Dobran."

The woman's eyes brightened. "Can I come?"

Although of a different calibre to Cato, Avelyn harboured the same base bloodlust. Endarion realised now, looking at her, why she and Cato had excelled in his army; their penchant for violence mirrored his, and he had only himself to blame for encouraging them both.

He shook his head. "I also might not set him on Dobran. Then you'd be bored."

"You know me so well." She patted his shoulder and pushed him playfully away. "At least bring his head back with you so we can play fetch with the pack."

If the sight of the Paramount-General donned in a ceremonial knee-length greatcoat of Boratorren blue didn't cow the sentries ringing Dobran's army, then the pony-sized war hound certainly did. Neither of the soldiers he brushed past attempted to stop him, and their right arms seemed to spasm halfway between saluting, as if unsure whether they should be thumping their fists to their chests to a man who wasn't their arch-general. Endarion allowed himself a grin at their discomfort and, one hand resting comfortably on Basirius's thick-furred shoulders, proceeded into the camp.

Endarion couldn't help but notice his cousin's army existed in a state of upheaval, their numbers thinned. Had he paid attention to the force camped at his side before now, he would've noticed a thousand of Dobran's infantry missing, even now raping the countryside.

Soldiers halted and stared as he limped through them. Basirius paid them no heed, his lupine head raised high with well-deserved pride. The dog had already read Endarion's body language and understood he needed to play the part of intimidating predator rather than the loll-tongued puppy he sometimes impersonated. He loped with all the grace of his wolven forebears, his presence as reassuring to Endarion as that of an old friend.

When he located Dobran's opulent pavilion at the army's heart, the rising sun had set the sea of hastily erected tents afire and heralded what promised to be a warm spring day. It was stifling here, and Endarion yearned for the blade-sharp winds of his mountain home, the Howling Tower, back in Denjin. Beside him, Basirius was unmoved by the heat despite his impressive slate-grey coat.

He limped into Dobran's pavilion unchallenged, having to stoop his tall frame considerably to fit beneath the canvas flaps. His knee, still griping from the injury sustained at Dujaro, twinged with the awkward movement. His stonehound padded in behind him, ears pricked forward and nose trembling as he scented out the scene.

Dobran was alone, leaning over a map of Kalduran. "We have an issue," Endarion began.

"We do?" Dobran asked, glancing idly up. His eyes alighted on Basirius. "Get that mongrel out of my tent."

Endarion quirked a snide grin. "I don't think Basirius is the mongrel in this tent, cousin."

"You're right: its owner does have the look of a kicked stray about him." Dobran braced his hands against his desk. "Have it wait outside."

Endarion bridled at his cousin's tone. In response to his master's disquiet, Basirius pulled his lips back to flash gleaming canines.

"Or I can have my soldiers escort you both from the camp?" Dobran suggested.

"You'd threaten your Paramount-General?"

The younger man snorted. "Don't pretend you are under any illusions that your title actually means anything," he said. "Now get that filthy cur out of my tent."

"Speak about my dog like that again and I'll have him rip your bastard throat from your bastard neck," Endarion spat.

A low rumble rippled from Basirius's deep chest, leaving his snarling mouth as an eldritch growl. Before the hound could tense himself into a lunge—and Endarion so sorely wanted to see Basirius bear Dobran to the floor and butcher him—he set a hand on the dog's head, forcing those pricked ears aside. He huffed a low breath, the signal for calm, then parted the tent flap with one hand and shepherded Basirius out with the other.

"Stay," he commanded, and the dog obediently slapped his rump to the ground in an alert sitting position.

When he turned back into the pavilion, he gave his cousin no time to spout any more venom. "My scouts report your men engaging in the slaughter of innocent civilians in the surrounding area."

"A minor issue, if an issue at all."

Endarion narrowed his eyes at his cousin, imagining an insect he could pin with his stare. "I was under the impression the intent of this campaign was conquest. A nation is hardly worth conquering if all its inhabitants are dead."

Dobran drummed his fingers against the map. "The intent has changed."

"To include mindless massacre?"

Endarion was sure he detected a flicker of uncertainty pass over the other man's features.

"War is filthy business, cousin," Dobran said, recovering his composure. "You of all people should know that. Innocents die. Villages are pillaged. Peasants are killed to sate a soldier's bloodlust. Before questioning my actions, ask yourself how many Tharghestians died because you commanded it. How many Kaldurani. How many villages and towns, none your enemy, were destroyed because you willed it. Even now, when we camped in Aukruna, I noticed how desolate the country was. Sixteen years after you conquered it and Tharghest still hasn't recovered from the wrath of the Iron Wolf."

Stolen novel; please report.

Endarion took a few faltering steps towards the table, then flattened his hands on it. "I never went out of my way to attack a settlement. If a town fell to my armies, it was because I could not control every individual soldier under my command."

"Bullshit, and we both know it."

He smothered the urge to snap. "I need not justify my actions from more than a decade ago. You, however, need to justify your actions of today."

Dobran released a bellowing laugh, equal parts amusement and mockery. "Are you angry I didn't invite you on the hunt? Fret not, for the Kaldurani apparently put up no fight and stole all enjoyment from the endeavour." His mouth curved wickedly. "There were no royal families to slaughter, I'm afraid. When I come across one, I'll keep them alive for you."

His cousin's words summoned those vile, clouded memories. Endarion struggled to bat them away before they found a foothold.

"The Caetoran and the Warmaster gave me updated commands," Dobran said. "It's simple: Kalduran is to be destroyed, its leaders slain, its lands laid waste. My brother has no further interest in conquest."

Endarion frowned. "What was the point of the campaign in the first place? What is the point of destroying it now?"

"The intent has always been vengeance for the death of our dear departed Warmaster," Dobran said. "Kalduran will become part of the Imperium. The Caetoran simply believes we must cleanse it first. A province-wide purge of its corruption, of its current high-command, of Drasken's influence over it. We will use it as a warning to Drasken and their would-be godkings, the Varkommer. No one wants another Arisen Theocracy, after all."

Lies. Dobran delivered the lines as if he performed them before a paying audience, as if the words had been supplied for him. That the orders had been given to the Caetoran's brother first, not made known to the rest of the Imperial armies before Dobran started carrying them out, meant this new motive was hollow, false.

Besides, Janus wanted Kalduran conquered and intact, to add to his far-reaching domain, to bolster him for future attacks against Drasken itself. Even Tharghest, ruined as it now was, had never been deliberately torn apart; it had been a potential gateway into the Borrian Princedoms to the west.

But that suggested someone else directed the Caetoran in this.

"What does Nazhira think?" Endarion asked, probing. "She gave over forces for conquest, not genocide."

"My wife remains loyal to our cause."

Meaning she knew if nothing else.

Though certainly ambitious, what would Nazhira, and the Castrian League by extension, gain from the annihilation of a nation it didn't directly involve itself with? For that matter, what did the Caetoran gain from it?

Dobran rubbed his face and, affecting an exasperated look, gestured Endarion close. Though the shorter man by half a head, Dobran was stronger, younger, haler. Endarion couldn't help but feel the physically inferior, something that was occurring with increasing frequency.

"On your command, your army will march on Dykumas," his cousin said. "You will destroy it completely."

"Kill seventy-five thousand people, you mean," Endarion said flatly.

Dobran nodded. "You are the Paramount-General. You must spearhead this mission."

"Why?" he asked, not quite processing the command.

Dykumas, like Vadonis before it, had opened its gates without so much as a dissenting murmur. In war, commanders respected unconditional surrenders, no matter how violent the conflict or immoral those involved.

"You lead this campaign, if not in truth, then at least in theory. So far, that has manifested in directing us without action across the wilderness of Kalduran. Whether by your own design or our enemies', we haven't yet had the opportunity to defeat them in the field, and their surrender of two cities is uncharacteristic. This has bred suspicion about you and your motives. Your loyalty." Dobran loomed close. "My brother and I know you understand threats better than implications, so I will be blunt: if you don't prove yourself willing to actually fight the enemy by razing Dykumas, we will pin evidence of treason against you and execute you. Maybe your daughter as well. Maybe here, on the ashes of the city we'll burn without you. Or maybe back home, so your brother and your children and your whores can watch."

The threat didn't mean much. He'd spent his entire life being threatened by others; his father, Novissa, Valerian, the Caetoran, now Dobran. At some point, threats lost their significance, even if he allowed them to direct his actions still. Even if, sometimes, those threats were carried out in full.

He regarded his cousin, who didn't look particularly stricken to have condemned thousands of non-combatants to death. In fact, his expression was resigned.

Realisation punched him. "Dykumas isn't the first, is it?"

Dobran shook his head, though he had the decency to conceal whatever perverse pleasure he reaped from massacre.

"Vadonis toppled soon after we left it," he said. "My garrison there razed it and now guard the ruins."

Shock flared bright and brief in Endarion's chest. He quelled it, reminding himself of the low calibre of bastard he dealt with in the Tyrannus family. "I suppose Varanos will meet the same fate, when we get there." Not a question.

The younger man rocked on his heels. "The whole of Kalduran. Eventually, if the Caetoran wills it, Drasken."

Endarion could almost imagine it; a quarter of a continent sundered, reduced to a barren graveyard littered with the corpses of dismembered cities. It didn't fit the vision the Caetoran claimed to nurture of a revival of the United Empire of Adhistabor, nor did it make any sense. Why had Janus decided on genocide? And if not him, who?

He shook his head. "I don't think the Caetoran will touch me or my daughter right now. He can't afford to if he wants his war won for him."

"So you refuse to claim Dykumas?" Dobran asked.

Endarion scoffed. "I refuse to murder tens of thousands of innocent non-combatants. They have no part in the Caetoran's delusions of bloody grandeur, so I will not touch them."

Dobran nodded, one hand cupping his chin in a caricature of deep thought. "You've finally outgrown the threats, have you?" he said. "Let us try something else, then."

"What else is there?"

"Decimation."

Dobran delivered the word as a death sentence. Endarion felt the impact of the blade on the back of his neck.

"You wouldn't dare."

"The punishment for refusing a direct order is the same as cowardice on the field. Decimation, cousin. One in ten, beaten to death by the other nine."

"I know what decimation means." Endarion clenched his fists. "You expect the other arch-generals to allow you to murder a tenth of my army?"

"Unlike you, the other arch-generals would obey their Caetoran."

Endarion turned away, jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache. Decimation hadn't been employed within the Imperium's armies for generations, but it remained a legitimate punishment if the need arose.

If he allowed Dobran to make his soldiers pick lots and have them butcher the luckless one in ten who plucked the short straw, he would lose his entire army. They'd desert or revolt, as they rightfully should.

And Endarion knew without having to be threatened that Avelyn and Remus, and perhaps even Daria, would pull those short straws.

Tens of thousands of Kaldurani citizens against the three-odd thousand of his own men who would be condemned to death. To any other person, the numbers were simple, and Dykumas outweighed Denjin. As an arch-general commanding the loyalty of Denjin, Endarion found the issue simpler even than that.

He couldn't condemn his own men.

Which meant he'd have to condemn Dykumas. All seventy-five thousand of them.

He scoffed to hide his hesitation. "The last time the Caetoran attempted to conquer hostile territory in totality, we were soundly and embarrassingly defeated. So embarrassingly, in fact, we still haven't ventured back through the Atlas Gate to Shaeviren, have we?"

Dobran leaned forward, bracing himself over the table. "You didn't come here to talk about Shaeviren, but it's obviously on your mind. Are you having nightmares? Is your madness returning?" His mouth slanted into an ugly smirk. "Or is the trauma of your castration finally overwhelming you?"

Anger, hot and painful, snapped like wildfire in his chest. He lurched forward, one hand falling to the dagger sheathed at his hip in place of his usual arming sword. He curled his fingers around it, drew it free with a muffled scrape, and stabbed it into the table just shy of Dobran's splayed left hand.

"I wasn't castrated," he seethed, tempted to wrench the dagger free and plant it somewhere more fatal. He checked his breathing and lowered his voice. "You sabotaged the Shaeviren campaign just to see me killed."

Dobran raised his hands. "In fairness, I thought you'd perish in the battle. I didn't consider the monster natives would keep you alive and torture you."

"That makes it better?"

"It does," Dobran said. He plucked the dagger from the table and studied the blade. "You would've done the same had our positions been reversed."

"We are in the same position," Endarion snapped. "I have just as much reason to kill you as you do me. More, even."

"Pah. Because I ruined your plans for a happy marriage with Elerius?" Dobran set the dagger down onto the table's surface. "I did you a favour with that one, cousin. She's emotionally stunted, disloyal, and, so I heard, prone to sharing her bed with her betters in return for promotions."

A streak of something malevolent sharpened the red blade of his anger. He couldn't challenge the insults to Estrid's name lest Dobran assume him still loyal to her, but he couldn't brush away such slander. "You are jealous," Endarion hissed. "I know how empty your marriage is. Would I be wrong to assume I bedded your wife more times than you did?"

Dobran straightened. "I bedded her more than once."

Endarion grinned. "So did I," he said. Then, even though it wasn't true, he added, "She actually came to me when we were at Aukruna." His cousin's jaw clenched, so he continued. "She must find you inadequate indeed if she has to seek out the company of a man who is supposedly castrated."

Without warning, Dobran surged from his seat, dodged around the table, and threw himself at Endarion, one arm pulled back for a devastating punch. Endarion briskly sidestepped. He felt the breeze of Dobran's fist as it ghosted past his cheek.

Dobran's ferocious momentum carried him along, and Endarion gave him no time to recover; he grabbed Dobran's collar and yanked him upright, then tried to shove him back across the table. Dobran snatched at Endarion's shoulders and dragged them both down to the floor in a chaotic tumble. Endarion fell, Dobran pinned beneath him. He straddled his cousin, his knee complaining as he shifted his weight onto it.

The tent flap parted and Basirius streamed in, all glinting fangs and feral eyes. Endarion glanced up only to ward the dog off with a warning growl of his own; the hound wavered at the entrance but didn't interfere.

They wrestled, and Dobran almost bucked him off. Dobran drove his knuckles into Endarion's scarred cheek. His head whipped sideways, jaws slamming together with a crack. He growled, all animal rage, batted aside Dobran's next punch, then wrapped his hands around his cousin's throat.

Dobran's blood pulsed beneath his palms, throat bobbing as he tried to breath past the iron grip. He grasped at Endarion's forearms, tried to wrench himself free, lashed blindly out with ill-aimed fists. His eyes bulged with panic. Endarion didn't react to the blows, even as they clipped his face again.

As Endarion stared down at his cousin, Dobran's battle-hardened features dissolved into the hopeless face of a younger, far more innocent, long dead opponent. The youth of this memory struggled against Endarion, grey Dontili skin bruising odd shades of blue and purple as his body was starved of air. The young man's throat had been crushed by Endarion's mistimed punch, and he'd taken a devastatingly long time to die.

An adolescent. Barely twenty years old. The son of the Tharghestian monarchs.

Endarion had killed the four royals at the end of the conquest. The king and queen he'd dispatched with a blade to the heart. Ruthless, but quick. The king's brother, a veteran warrior, had fought hard, only going down when he'd been disembowelled. The young man, the Tharghestian prince, had hidden. When he'd been found, he'd been thrown at Endarion's feet in a small council hall in Aukruna. Endarion had been ordered to kill him.

Instead, he'd engaged the boy in a fistfight, thinking to give the prince a fighting chance. If the boy proved himself an able warrior, Endarion had even hoped he could argue for the prince to be spared. A puppet-monarch, maybe.

Despite the young man's terror, he'd composed himself enough to duel. The punch Endarion landed to his throat had been meant to incapacitate, to end the bout non-lethally. But he'd thrown it just as the prince lurched forward, and their paired momentum had been fatal.

The prince's dying, fearful face compelled him to peel his fingers away from Dobran's neck and push himself away just as his cousin's harsher countenance usurped the invasive memory; the young Dontili's bugging eyes and gaping mouth misted to oblivion.

Endarion collapsed to the floor, beset by a barrage of his victims' faces, the Tharghestian prince at the forefront. They circled him, dominated his vision, whispered his crimes and demanded death in return. Their hushed vocal caresses were as painful as any knife to the heart.

Tyrant, mad dog, depraved murderer, just like your father.

Dobran gasped his first breath, heaving in great mouthfuls of air to refresh abused lungs. Endarion felt a strange burst of relief when his cousin levered himself into a sitting position. Dobran's life shouldn't matter to him but, when every other life he'd taken meant less than nothing, in that moment it did.

"I should have you executed," Dobran wheezed.

"And I should have killed you," Endarion replied. He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the thumping ache in his skull brought on by the ghosts and the blows Dobran had scored to his face. His knee, flaring now, refused to be ignored. "Tell me the truth now," he added, after regaining a slither of himself. "Why are we razing Dykumas?"

Dobran crinkled his brow into a frown, then shrugged heavily. "I honestly don't know."

He was telling the truth. Endarion didn't know how he knew, but he was certain the Caetoran's brother harboured just as much confusion as him about the campaign's new direction.

Dobran rose to his feet with the swift motion of a practised veteran.

"Shaeviren," Endarion said. "Your idea?"

Dobran set his mouth into a grim line. "Let's just say you are not the only one to be on the receiving end of the Caetoran's not-so-subtle threats."

The admission left Endarion speechless.

Even in their younger years, Dobran, to him, had always been the Caetoran's malicious weapon, a man evil for the joy of it. They'd never been on friendly terms, and their family ties seemed only to exacerbate the ill feelings they nurtured for one another. His cousin had committed vile acts, dishonoured allies, pursued Estrid to the point of making her defect in fear for her life. It was so much easier to believe Dobran did it because he wanted to, because he relished the cruelty of it.

Just as it was easier for Endarion's own enemies to think he committed his atrocities of his own accord, because he enjoyed them, because he was inhuman. In truth, he'd been threatened by the Caetoran, but that didn't matter to those he'd wronged. It didn't lessen the pain of their passing. Didn't make them any less dead.

It didn't matter to the displaced survivors of Tharghest that he'd conquered them and subjected them to Imperial oppression and driven them from their homeland not because he wanted to, but because he'd been ordered to. The same as it didn't matter to Estrid that he'd abandoned her in her time of need because of one old tyrant's cruel words, when a better man would've stood by her.

He couldn't think of his cousin as a good man; too much had passed between them for that. But could he think of Dobran as more human, less monstrous? A tool used and abused by the Caetoran, much like himself? He didn't know what the Caetoran might use as leverage against his younger brother, but there must've been something.

"We'll kill seventy-five thousand people, Dobran," Endarion said. "Innocent people."

"There will be more before we're done," Dobran said. Without ceremony, he latched a hand around Endarion's throat and applied just enough pressure to hurt. Basirius snarled and lurched forward, but Endarion waved him back; let the dog tear Dobran apart only if he moved to re-escalate the confrontation.

They stood in a stalemate for a strained second before Dobran released his grip and snatched Endarion's collar, dragging their faces almost intimately close. Again Basirius made to pounce, and again Endarion splayed a palm to warn him off. Dobran's eyes flickered with uncertainty and his grip slackened, though he must've noticed the speed with which Basirius obeyed Endarion's commands and guessed Endarion had no plans to murder his cousin today, because he spat his vitriol anyway.

"If you ever lay your hands on me again, I will cut off your crippled leg and beat you to death with it." He pulled back, thoughtful. "Then I'll feed your broken corpse to your dogs."

"My dogs would eat your still-living body before they ever touched my corpse." He glanced down to Basirius, as if his point needed highlighting.

Dobran blanched but quickly composed himself. They both knew Endarion would be cut down moments after setting Basirius on the arch-general. As powerful as the stonehound was, Basirius alone wouldn't be able to carve his way out from Dobran's camp and protect Endarion at the same time.

He released Endarion, stalking towards a chest in the corner of the pavilion no doubt heavy with alcohol. Endarion reclaimed his knife in silence and moved for the door, Basirius sticking close to his side with a confused whimper. He'd served his purpose as a symbol, and for that Endarion was grateful.

"I didn't sleep with your wife at Aukruna," he said over his shoulder before he departed. "I know it's a sore spot for you, hence why I said it."

When he glanced back, his cousin watched him without expression. They both knew Dobran had attacked him more out of principle than any real care for his wife's reputation. Like the common knowledge of Khian not being Nazhira's, it was also well-known but never acknowledged that Dobran and Nazhira were married in name alone and had likely never even consummated their union.

Dobran looked like he wanted to say something in reply, perhaps deny the sensitivity of the issue or insult Endarion for bringing it up. Instead, he sighed. "And I have nothing against Estrid," he said. "I never wanted to chase her away, just as I never wanted to destroy Vadonis. Just as I don't want Dykumas to be destroyed now. But, as we both know, no one defies the Caetoran."