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

Twenty-One

Endarion

Dykumas, Kalduran

20th of Tournus

Dykumas awaited them, naively unaware of its condemnation. Once again the architect of the slaughter, Endarion had already scattered his scouts into the city itself to oversee standing down the city guard and the expected unconditional surrender of the prefect. He'd also sent a message to the prefect himself, asking the man to spread the word to his citizens: evacuate, and the soldiers of Denjin would permit their escape. Failing that, if Dykumas's people didn't fight back, didn't flock out into the streets in defence of their homes, they would be left unmolested. Only in retaliation and self-preservation were Endarion's soldiers to take innocents lives. He hoped he'd be able to refuse the Caetoran's command under those parameters.

It was all he could do, scant as it was.

He hadn't had cause to wear his battle armour for four years, since Shaeviren, and fumbled when arranging it. Where once it had been sculpted for him, it now hung loose, a testament to the tolls of age and torture. The gleaming silver lorica, with clasps a stark Boratorren blue, seemed heavier than it should be. The woollen tunic underneath, dyed a similar colour, had been fashioned for a younger, more muscular version of himself and almost drowned him. The helmet, hammered into a vaguely wolven outline with an open maw framing his face, had been commissioned back when he'd been seduced by the stories of himself as the Iron Wolf. He found it and the accompanying dogs' heads pauldrons distasteful now. The weighted belt he had to fasten as tight as it would go and the metal greaves left no room for his leg brace, meaning he would have to hide his limp as best he could.

Though he should've felt pride at donning the outfit, at leading the charge, he was instead tainted, as if already poisoned by the deeds he would commit today.

For assurance, and for the symbolism of it, he had his entire pack, all four stonehounds, at his side. Steadfast Basirius, the largest of them, was his unwavering shadow. The smallest but easily the most ferocious, Demon lingered to his right, the impending violence making him slaver with hunger. Andaria, the only bitch, waited patiently at Basirius's side. Behind her, the youngest and least blooded, stood Styros, the bulkiest of Basirius's first litter.

The stonehounds sported the silvered armoured harnesses he'd commissioned for all his war-dogs. Worth a small fortune on their own, each set afforded the dogs an intimidating aspect, making of them mythical beasts torn straight from ancient fable. The spike-studded main plate saddled their shoulders and upper back, secured across their front by bronzed ropes of chainmail and around the barrel of their chests by twin strips of hardened leather. A shaped helmet, similar to those worn by cavalry mounts, protected their heads whilst allowing their proud ears to stand tall. Two straight and sturdy horns, each the length of a long dagger, jutted skywards several inches above their eyes, allowing them to stab and gore as well as rend and tear. Many an errant blade had the harness and helmet turned aside, many a stonehound life saved by the considerable investment.

Cato Romanus loomed again at his side, hand steady on the hilt of his blade. Endarion used only five of his fifteen fielded infantry battalions, and several doglord companies, commanded by Avelyn, in this razing. Cato had insisted on supporting Endarion in person because he claimed to believe a general should lead from the front.

Really, Cato had come because he enjoyed killing and was irritated with the lack of conflict so far.

Though she'd insisted on joining him, Daria he'd kept behind with the rest of his army. His refusal had angered her and earned him accusations of trying to protect and shield from battle a grown daughter who'd already fought in one. In truth, he hadn't wanted her party to this massacre. Didn't want this stain on her reputation. Didn't want her waking, years from now, with vivid and haunting memories of what she'd done. He knew Avelyn had kept their son Remus behind for the same reason. As callous as his Doglord often was, at least Avelyn was compassionate enough to spare their child this gory reality. For now.

He'd considered having Palla with him, if only because he recalled the strength of her pyromancy that night in Dujaro, when she'd burned his assassin to death. Though he hadn't had time to confront her about her identity as 'Sudarium's Blade' and her mission here in his army, he couldn't deny the power she concealed. Then again, he couldn't afford for anyone else to know of her magic, not with her worldstriding such an asset. Besides, he didn't trust her, despite her saving his life, and so hadn't wanted her by his side in this.

The dogs of war and their soldier-handlers he'd already sent ahead as a vanguard to sow discord into a city expecting peace. When he and Cato entered through its open gate, the main thoroughfare already resembled a decaying battlefield. Gutted buildings and gutted corpses marked the passage of his soldiers, the detritus of splintered homes smeared against the savaged remains of Kaldurani citizens. Though he'd given his forces only the vaguest instructions—as if that removed the blame—he hadn't mentioned setting buildings alight, yet small fires already spread through the streets.

"I told the soldiers not to attack unprovoked," Endarion muttered. "I made it fucking clear to every officer I sent ahead."

"Seems they didn't listen," Cato replied.

Or the prefect hadn't passed the word on.

Battle-hardened veterans might claim to no longer baulk at the sight of spilt blood, but they were all liars. Endarion had served in dozens of battles and led numerous campaigns, had seen and caused gruesome spectacles that would drive an untrained soldier mad. He'd seen live men strung up by their intestines, partially impaled victims still clinging to life, people quartered, disembowelled, beheaded, flayed, sawn in half, eaten alive by his dogs, immolated.

None of it had ever fully desensitised him.

When he cast his gaze over the trampled remains of hundreds, knowing there were thousands more, a surge of revulsion gripped him. When he looked over and saw Cato licking his lips like a wolf preparing to devour its most recent kill, the revulsion curdled.

Basirius probed the first few bodies they passed but soon grew uninterested when he decided they posed no threat. Animals had no concept of cruelty. They killed when needed or, in the case of his dogs, when commanded, and without malice. Endarion admired them for it.

The stench of death formed a thick, rancid smog. In the distance, he saw yet more fat pillars of black smoke. If he drowned out the sounds of his own soldiers and focused, he heard the echoes of screams even through his helmet, the eerie ghosts of people not yet dead. They whispered in his ears like the memories of a nightmare.

A pack of hunting hounds carving through a herd of sickened deer, Endarion and his soldiers pushed forward along the thoroughfare.

His infantry broke away from the main body on the commands of their captains, moving in smaller groups and covering individual buildings. It never failed to surprise him how callously even the most common of rank and file approached the act of murder. Perhaps it was simple obedience, or perhaps something more. Perhaps, like him in his prime, the bloodlust gripped all men, turned them into unfeeling beasts capable of inflicting the worst agonies on their fellows.

He looked on as citizens armed with kitchen knives and gardening tools fought back against the invaders. Most didn't have a chance to land a blow as Denjini blades felled them. None of them seemed aware of the fact they'd be spared if they kept out of the way.

What a waste of life.

"Disarm if possible," he shouted to his soldiers, knowing the futility of it. "Don't kill anyone if you can help it." He'd shout to the citizens in their own language as well if he thought it might make a difference. But he was the violent invader, so why should the people of Dykumas believe in his mercy?

Had the prefect neglected his warning? Or did these Kaldurani ignore the prefect and defend their homes the only way they could?

Does it really matter, in the end?

Cato's shout dragged him back to lucidity.

In the chaos of the street's purging, a small group of citizens had erupted in a disorganised but passionate defence. Demon entered the fray, latching his ghastly maw onto the back of a man's head as he tried to drive a kitchen knife through a soldier's back. Demon decapitated his victim in one messy bite, viscous lifeblood splashing his fur and coating his muzzle. A short distance away, Andaria and Styros toyed with their victim, dancing in on nimble forelegs and lowering their heads to puncture unarmoured flesh with their metal horns. How easy it had been to train them to do that, Endarion thought as one of Andaria's attacks disembowelled the poor bastard in a stinking wash of viscera.

And there loped Basirius, majestic and leonine, his horns blooded, his lips skinned back over gleaming fangs. His bite crushed bone and pulped muscle, burst skin and snipped tendons. When he clamped down on a civilian's shoulder and whipped his head about in the canine equivalent of a death roll, it took perhaps three heartbeats for the arm to tear away at the joint in an almighty welter of crimson.

Hot bloodlust churned within Endarion, cancerous, oily black with wrongness. It made him think of the creature stalking his nightmares.

A blade flashed towards the side of his head. He took a step backwards and, before he could quell old instincts, freed his arming sword and slashed it across his assailant's neck. His sword hitched mid-arc when it met the spine, but Endarion flung his arm with enough force to sever bone.

He crashed back into reality at the sight of his first victim, a young man clenching a poorly made dagger, his head almost entirely cleaved from his shoulders. The man, no older than Daria, staggered, then his head lolled backwards in a sickening mockery of drunkenness. Blood fountained. He collapsed, skull falling away at Endarion's feet, spurting bright scarlet over his armoured boots.

A young life, half Endarion's age, ended for no good reason.

Cato sidled up next to him, weapon slicked with a sheen of dark ichor. He panted, an expression on his face resembling sexual ecstasy.

"Oh, Paramount-General," he tutted, looking down at the corpse as if it was an animal carcass. "You picked the weakest. You can do better."

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"This isn't a game," he snapped, lifting his sword Cato's way. Cato eyed the blade with a raised eyebrow.

"We're soldiers; we kill," Cato replied. "It might as well be a game."

Endarion tore his suffocating helmet away and ran a bloodied, gauntleted hand through his hair. "We're commanders. We need to be better than that."

"Now is not the time to lose your touch."

He snarled and turned away from the first-general and signalled forwards, replacing his helmet. The next command he bellowed he addressed to no one in particular, though he glanced over his shoulder to ensure Cato heard him. "No needless murder," he said. "Kill only as a final recourse."

They pushed deeper into Dykumas's bowels, moving towards the southern flank, away from the rising orchestra of screams to the north that marked where the rest of his army was at play. The sounds, dimmed by distance, were all too familiar.

The city's south housed the wealthy, with the prefect's estate located at the apex of the main thoroughfare's southern branch. The city guard had roused themselves here, organising a more efficient defence. Knowing he couldn't hope to disarm these more trained foes, Endarion slapped a careful hand against the unarmoured side of Basirius's maned neck, signalling the stonehound to take the offensive. The war-dog tore into the first guardsman to stumble into his path, felling the man with his superior weight. Like any predator, Basirius caught the scent of blood and became intoxicated. He ripped at the man's chest, his weight crushing ribs even as his fangs ended the man's life. Those brutal horns speared into his victim's neck as he gnashed, and when Basirius raised his head, grisly chunks of meat tore free, impaled on the tips of the helmet's spikes.

Endarion tore his eyes from the scene, hyperaware of the spark of pleasure ignited by the sight. An old sensation, unearthed now. He was an ex-alcoholic reintroduced to the joys of the bottle.

Two dozen Denjini soldiers peeled away to engage the guards Basirius tore through. Cato, still beside him, positioned himself at a slight angle, ready for an attack. Endarion pushed away from him, trying to wipe his mind of his immediate surroundings even as his military training forced him to register it.

In the ensuing onslaught, the Iron Wolf exploded from the cage Endarion had erected around it. Ignorant now of his disgust, his anger, his hesitance, he surged forwards, the brutal animalistic ferocity that had made him famous driving him on. As much as he wanted to claim the Iron Wolf pushed him away and took over his mind, he and the beast were one and the same, their bloodlust shared, their brutality mutual.

This was not a pitched battle between field armies; this was a fox loosed among chickens. His sword whipped through flesh with the ease of a Kanem shark through tranquil waters. Limbs fell away, branches hacked from a tree. Blood spurted in violent waterfalls. It drenched him, saturated him so thoroughly his boots squelched with each step. Drops pattered down from his hair where it had splashed through his visor and dried around his eyes. A thin trail found his mouth and the metallic taste awakened some bestial impulse. The dull throbbing of his crippled knee joint became more insistent as he danced through his victims, though the pain served only to fan the flames of his violence, making him punch out harder than necessary.

He lost count of how many he killed. Only Cato's fervent bellow momentarily pushed the Iron Wolf aside.

He'd latched his hand around a throat, fingers squeezing, wringing the life from a man. Just as he'd almost done to Dobran.

But rather than Dobran, he gripped an infantry soldier wearing Denjini plate, his helmet knocked off in the struggle. Endarion released the soldier, then looked down and saw his sword spitted the man's stomach, thrust beneath the protection of his battle plate. The soldier coughed blood into Endarion's face, eyes searching, panicked. Confused. Accusing. Fearful. He sank to his knees as Endarion stumbled back. With practised ease, Cato stepped forward, assessed the man, then slit his throat. Before Endarion's eyes, the man's paling face melted away and cast itself into more familiar features. A sharper chin. Soft green eyes. An expression of maternal love.

His mother.

His mother on the night she'd died.

Phaedra Boratorren glimmered like a vision, then rose and reached out an imploring hand. "Why?" she choked, blood flooding her mouth.

"It was an accident," he replied, trembling like a child. "It was his fault. Father did this to you. I made him suffer."

"My son, how could you?"

"You thought I was him," Endarion stammered, shying away from her reach. "You attacked me. I retaliated without thinking."

Then the soldier who wore his mother's face went still. As still as the mother whose life he'd accidentally stolen. As still as she'd been when he'd left her body behind to hunt down his abusive father.

He couldn't breathe. His mind had numbed. The air was hot and cloying.

Cato pulled Endarion's sword from his victim's stomach with a wet sucking sound, then marched towards him and thrust it out. Around them, their soldiers continued their frenzy, unaware their commander had just killed one of their own.

"If I were you, I would keep your crazed mutterings to yourself," Cato said. "I don't rightly know what you were rambling about, but it sounded incriminating and patricidal."

Endarion took his sword and looked at the other man, not really seeing. Cato grabbed his helmeted head in both hands. "Snap out of it," he said. "People will think you really are mad."

And then, with no warning, Endarion's father replaced Cato, clutching his skull, spitting acid barbs at his face, raking fingers through his hair as if trying to claw his scalp off. His father, who he resembled so greatly. His father, who'd tormented his saintly mother and driven her to madness out of hatred for the marriage they'd both been forced into. His father, who'd ended life as a charred, butchered corpse.

"Boy," Asterion Boratorren snarled. "Look at you now. You're just like me."

"No," Endarion growled in reply, though the denial was pointless.

"A triumphant tyrant, a brilliant killer," his father continued, spitting each word with venom. "A perfect monster."

Monster.

Endarion pulled away and aimed his sword at his father's throat. The tip rested against his neck, the steel indenting soft flesh.

And then Cato resolved again, Endarion's sword against his windpipe.

To his credit, Cato didn't waver. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" he said, swatting the blade aside. "You're actually mad, aren't you? I never believed the rumours because you're my commander and I know you. But you're warped in the head."

He ignored Cato, his mind still anchored in the past. Why would his parents plague him now, twenty-four years after they'd died?

Am I really mad? Has this first taste of conflict since my recovery made me relapse?

Some of his gathered soldiers turned away from their killing to look upon their crazed general. He lifted his head and squared his shoulders, affecting a falsely confident stance.

"We aim for the prefect's residence," he bellowed, more to distract them all from what he'd done than to direct them. He wanted to confront the prefect, to find out why Dykumas's people hadn't been evacuated, why they fought back when he'd promised they'd be spared if they stayed out of the way.

He spared a glance for the ranker he'd killed, bloodlust and guilt warring within him. Seeing his regard, Cato slapped his shoulder, far harder than necessary. Beside him, Basirius growled at the rough treatment, and Cato snapped his hand away. "The Kaldurani killed him. A lucky hit. A tragedy. I'll be sure to note his name in the reports."

Endarion bristled, though knew there was nothing he could do. The soldier certainly wouldn't be the only blue-coated body sprawled in this burning city by the end of the day.

The prefect's estate proved to be a small affair, barely half the size of the standard Empyrian palace. Aside from its central location on a slight rise in the southern half of the city, nothing distinguished it beyond the cleanness of the stones comprising its face and the height of its protective walls. When they met with resistance at the gates, he sent forth a vanguard that made short work of what he assumed were the prefect's personal guard.

They hadn't expected massacre. Defeating them was child's play.

His stonehounds shoved their noses through the mess, the sight eerily like the spectacles he'd overseen when he'd thrown prisoners-of-war to his dogs. Sometimes, he'd leave his pack unfed for a few days before any executions, to let them feast on the flesh of unfortunates. Though none of them made use of this macabre bounty today, their red-painted faces and gleaming teeth made it seem like they had. He shuddered and looked away, then hailed one of his officers.

"Secure the gate," he instructed. Then, to another he said, "Search the gardens for guards." To a third, "Secure the prefect's family. Secure, don't kill."

He turned to Cato. "Find the prefect. Bring him to me. Alive."

As Cato departed, the Iron Wolf joined the company assigned to finding the family. They stalked the hallways of the estate, dripping blood onto the unstained marble floor. Their surroundings became less bare the further in they went, the signs of family life becoming prominent. He spotted a painting on one wall, depicting a man and a woman with their young child, all bowed close together in obvious affection. Affixed to another wall was a coat rack, some of the garments small enough to fit the young child, with shoes arranged in a neat line beneath.

One empty room he peered into showed signs of recent habitation; an office with a desk upon which documents had been thrown. On the top of the pile was a scrawled but colourful drawing, of the kind a child might sketch for their parents.

A second contingent of house guard challenged them not long after they'd cleared what he guessed to be a child's playroom. He had twenty five men at his back, alongside his war dogs, the house guard matching their numbers.

A decent fight, then.

The Iron Wolf grinned like a predator at the prospect.

The first guard he killed resurrected the bloodlust. The second exacerbated it, coaxing the flame into an inferno. The gore spattering him soothed like a cold shower at the end of a stifling day. Each life taken at the end of his blade provided a fresh burst of ferocity, as if he were a soul-sucking beast that thrived on suffering. Even his knee pain, steadily growing on the march through the city, vanished in the exhilaration of the fight. His earlier commands to spare the city's inhabitants had long been forgotten.

In the chaos, he separated from the company. He kicked a door down, the impact deadened by the steel toecap in his boots. He filled the threshold, a true nightmare.

A figure crouched at the far end of the single cramped room, holding down a struggling man, pressing smiling steel into his cheek. Endarion saw the blade pushed under skin, then pulled upwards towards the forehead, then over the eyebrows. The Kaldurani screamed and thrashed as two others, a woman and child—the people from the painting—watched in frozen horror. When Endarion blinked and focused, he realised the two spectators were already dead, crimson waterfalls spilling from gaping necks.

The figure sheathed the dagger in the victim's thigh and worried at the wound they'd carved. Endarion watched with rising disgust as the soldier tried to peel the man's face away, lifting the skin with the methodical precision of a surgeon removing a bandage. By then the man's agonised cries had faded to muffled whimpers as his own blood flooded his mouth.

Endarion struck then, leaping forward and slapping the flat of his blade into the side of the soldier's head. They reeled, crashing sideways to the floor, the awkward weight of their chest plate tipping them onto their back. He leant forward and sunk his sword between the bottom of their lorica and the weighted belt, the strike precise and practised and delivered without consideration. The soft belly offered no resistance.

"Fuck," Cato Romanus sputtered as he wrapped his hands around the blade protruding from his stomach, slicing his naked palms along it. "Fucking knew you were going to kill me."

Shock sliced Endarion's chest. "Shit," he hissed. "I didn't mean to."

Cato spluttered, blood on his lips. His words, when he spoke, were garbled, wet with his own gore. "Like you didn't mean to kill your father?"

Endarion dropped to one knee beside his dying first-general. "No, I meant to kill him."

As Cato fumbled at the blade, as if pulling it out could save him, Endarion glanced over to the victims, who he now knew to be the prefect and his wife and child. The same prefect who'd offered unconditional surrender in the belief his city would be spared, who now lay sprawled and mutilated beside the bodies of his family. His face, an ugly mass of slashes, had stilled, his chest unmoving. He must've succumbed to shock and blood loss already.

Although it hardly mattered anymore, it truly did seem like the prefect had neglected to pass on Endarion's warning, instead choosing to affect a cowardly retreat and hole up in his estate with his guards. As his people had been butchered around him, he'd hidden. Not that it had saved him or his family in the end.

He returned his attention to his first-general. A blaze of grisly righteousness undercut his shock and guilt; Cato had killed an unarmed woman and child and had been in the process of torturing a helpless man. He'd deserved the sword in his gut. Perhaps Endarion would've stabbed him even if he'd recognised him from the doorway.

Cato sighed the long and laboured sigh that always preceded death. "I'm just one of many to end at your hand." He pushed weakly at the sword, further cutting his palms. "That's it. You destroy things. You're poisonous, disgusting. You were made to destroy. Capable of nothing else." His mouth parted in a macabre grin. His own blood spotted his teeth. "Your family, the Imperium, Kalduran. Estrid. They'll make you kill her. I hope it hurts you both." He pulled his dagger from his now-dead victim's leg and pressed it into Endarion's grip. Cato grasped him and raised the blade to his own throat. "I hope you feel despair at the end. You'll be left with nothing." He pushed at Endarion's hand. "Nothing."

It was Endarion Boratorren, not the Iron Wolf, who slit his first-general's throat and watched the cruel bastard, his loyal officer for decades, fade feebly away.