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

Thirty-Three

Tali

Rabid Dog, above the Karhes

18th of Tantus

They covered more ground in the thundership in five days than Tali and Shira had managed in weeks. The rippling expanse of the Karhes, from this height a calm green sea, enfolded the landscape's entirety. It was easy for Tali to imagine the whole universe as one shimmering pelt of emerald grass, broken only occasionally by the winding curves of rivers, the gentle ululation of hills, and the frothing mass of herds of wild horses.

Katja had yet to do anything but treat Tali and Shira as welcome guests, but still they remained wary. Tali couldn't scour from her mind the mercenary woman's excitement at the prospect of patricide, nor the ease with which she'd ordered Verden's destruction and enslavement.

At the very least, though, Tali hadn't had her hands tied up again.

The stormking they were aboard was called Rabid Dog, a name awarded by Katja herself. She'd told Tali the ship had once borne a much more civilised Drasken name and, when it had been seized by mercenaries about a decade ago, they'd stripped its identifying marks.

It was, by Tali's estimations, bigger than her father's estate on Alzikanem, though much more enclosed and labyrinthine, its hallways crushing, its cabins claustrophobic, its covered deck stifling. It was equipped for a permanent crew of five hundred, with enough space spare to accommodate some of the mercenary soldiers Katja's fleet was ferrying, as well as the Surrekan engine Katja had stripped from Verden's ruins.

"Part of the reason we target those hulking monsters," Katja had told Tali a few days ago. "We need those engines for our thunderships, and the Shifting Cities are the only place we can get them."

The only two places aboard that didn't press down on Tali was the bridge and the engine room, both of which Katja had excitedly shown her. The latter had given her a headache courtesy of the endless thrumming of the electrical energy needed to power the Surrekan engine. She stood now in the former, well back from the myriad control panels flanking the wide room, her eyes darting across it all with a childish awe she couldn't contain.

The thunderships in the Imperium—known to Tali only through her father's drawings—were primitive by comparison, built to resemble ocean-going ships, with only the most rudimentary of engines and a stark lack of control beyond a simple steering wheel and stunted sails. By contrast, Rabid Dog's bridge glimmered like a clear night sky, its panels flashing with ethereal light.

Tali darted her eyes across the screens, found gibberish punctuating anatomical-style illustrations of the ship and its innards. Katja stood resolutely in the centre of it all, occupying the space Tali assumed was where the wheel would sit, had the ship possessed one. Control of the thundership, she'd been told, was conducted entirely through this network of screens, which were powered by the same Surrekan engine that lifted Rabid Dog.

Tali wondered how advanced Drasken's fleet would be if a ravaged pirate vessel was as powerful as this.

"I can see you're impressed," Katja said. She nodded towards the bridge's window, to where the main deck sprawled beneath them. "We've got sixty aasiur-canons altogether. Ten on each side per deck. We could tear up the sky if we wanted."

Shira, who'd been a silent presence so far, stiffened. When Tali had first arrived at their shared cabin to find Shira waiting, the woman had demanded to know what the mercenary captain had said, no doubt fearing they were about to be enslaved. Tali had shared her conversation with Katja, assuming her mentor might try to contest the captain's opinions of the Drasken Jalin, but instead Shira had quietly listened, then said nothing. She'd kept glancing aside, as if she expected Heller to appear and direct the conversation.

Between the attack on Verden and their current incarceration, neither of them had had time to think on Heller's fate. Tali supposed, as she stood on the Rabid Dog's bridge, they should've discussed the matter then, and decided how they might proceed without her uncle. But neither of them could, not yet.

"You ever seen anyone hit full-on by a canon blast?" Katja asked, turning to Tali with her gleaming predator's eyes. "Shreds them and pulps them. What's left isn't even recognisable as human. Some of the other captains like to strap prisoners to the canon mouths and fire them, but I don't think that's any fun. You don't get to test your aim."

Tali shuddered, trying to read a potential threat in the woman's words. They hadn't been harmed yet, and Katja's first conversation with her suggested a strange sort of bond, but Tali wasn't ready to believe herself safe.

"I can't wait to see how easily Kaltoren's famous fucking towers fall," Katja continued. "I wonder how many people will leap from them rather than fall with them. You'd be surprised by the stupid things people do when they're just about to die."

"We're going to Kaltoren, then?" Shira asked. They were, as far as Tali knew, the first words she'd spoken to their captor.

Katja aimed narrowed eyes at Tali's mentor. "Not yet."

"Where are we going?"

A suspicious frown darkened the mercenary's fine features. "North. To deliver our prisoners. It needn't concern you, though. You are an honoured guest, and not expected to participate."

"I wouldn't mind helping," Shira replied, her tone as cold and neutral as Tali had ever heard it. "We do owe you, after all."

Katja cocked her head to the side so far, her shoulders leaned with it. "Do you?"

"We were refugees from the incident in Sinnis, aboard Verden only because we needed somewhere to go." Shira opened her arms to encompass the bridge. "You've offered us something better than a rented hovel in a Shifting City."

"Indeed," Katja said. "You were in Sinnis? We heard about that. Mages going crazy and slinging parts of the city at each other. It's why they're executed." She flicked her attention back to Tali. "You didn't have anything to do with that, did you?"

Tali smothered the sudden spike of fear with a forced laugh. "I'm not that good. The fireball trick is about the extent of my magic."

"Perhaps Indro can be convinced to allow your magic to be honed. You could man one of my canons, perhaps," Katja said. "It would be nice to see skilled aasiurmancy again. I fear I've left it too long to be able to return to it."

The captain turned away. They stood in strained silence awhile, the plains skimming away miles beneath them. Flickers of orange light speckled the perfect green expanse, and Tali felt the ship shift as it dipped down into a descent. As large and cumbersome as Rabid Dog was, it took them some time to draw near enough to the lights for Tali to identify them.

Campfires, thousands of them. An army, too large to count.

"Whose is it?" Tali asked.

Her father had once told her that, as Arch-General of Denjin, he commanded forty thousand soldiers altogether, scattered across his home Reign. As she scanned her gaze across the resting ranks below, she wondered how this force stacked up against the Denjini. Did this encampment outnumber her father's force? She couldn't tell.

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"A mercenary company loyal to Lord Indro," Katja replied.

"How many?" Tali said, still trying to guess.

Katja shrugged. "About thirty thousand. Twenty are trained mercs, the other ten are whatever prisoners I and other fleet captains deliver to them."

"Prisoners." Tali tasted the word. As much as she considered herself and Shira prisoners here, they existed in relative luxury compared to everyone else this violent woman encountered.

"Most of them we can turn to our cause," Katja mused. "Any who don't are made examples of. I suggested throwing the rebellious ones overboard onto Drasken's cities when we finally invade."

Tali looked up to the mercenary, then quickly averted her gaze. The woman spoke so casually of mass enslavement and cold-blooded murder. She reminded herself that Katja was irreparably damaged, but she still shuddered. Beside her, Shira frowned and moved imperceptibly closer to Tali, as if to shield her from Katja.

After the thundership had gone through the laborious motions of landing on the outskirts of the mercenary camp, Katja ordered Tali and Shira escorted back to their room. Tali couldn't decide if this was to conceal Katja's dealings with the army, or because she didn't want other mercenaries knowing of Tali and Shira's existence. Either way, they were at Katja's mercy and Tali was, yet again, helpless.

Shira waited at their door a few moments after they'd returned before moving away and settling on the edge of one of the beds. "We need to escape and get to Drasken. The Jalin needs to know how extensive the enemy is."

Tali said nothing, instead pacing towards the window at the far end of their shared room and glancing down to the army below. "Maybe we should try and find out why they're going to target Drasken? To then tell the Jalin?"

"You can't be serious," Shira replied, a bite to her tone. "Tali, everything you've heard about their motives, everything about the Cataclysm and Erdohan, and Sudarium and the Jalin trying to re-enact it, is all nonsense. Indro wants to justify a war against Drasken, and he'll say anything to do it. Their reasons don't matter because it's madness."

"But why Drasken? Why a nation on the other side of the continent?" Tali couldn't understand it. Katja's motives she comprehended; the woman had been shattered by her home nation and wanted revenge. Indro and his allies, though, were more enigmatic. Drasken was separated from the Empire of a Thousand Kings by the vast Karhes, and the two political entities couldn't have had much to do with one another by virtue of that enormous distance. The more Tali thought of it, the further convinced she was that there was something else to the crusade. If not truth to accusations of trying to end the world again, then at least something to make waging a war across endless, unmapped plains worthwhile.

"I don't know," Shira admitted. "I'm hoping Sudarium knows."

Tali folded her hands together before her and shifted uneasily. "I want to come with you. With Uncle gone…" She stopped, forced down the rising emptiness Heller's death had left. "You'll be alone. Let me come with you."

Her mentor swallowed noticeably, as if trying to push down tears. Tali had to remember, as close as she'd considered herself to her uncle, Shira was closer. Heller had mentored her, after all. Shira had been so close to Heller, so loyal, Tali had thought they were married when she'd first joined them.

"I don't want to train with this Jalin," Tali continued. "Katja told me he had her family killed."

Shira didn't deny it, didn't even bother with a lie. "He had his reasons."

"For murder?"

"This is the world we live in, Tali. It's a world where killing is often the best option."

Tali pushed herself away from the window and stood before her mentor. Shira looked up, eyes narrowed. "That's the excuse? 'It's the best option'?"

"What about the people you killed in Sinnis?" Shira replied testily. "An accident, sure. But still murder. What's your excuse?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but snapped it shut against any argument she might make.

"How many people do you think your uncle has killed in his life?" Shira pressed, anger swelling in her voice. "And your father? He's the Iron Wolf, Tali. There was a time, years ago, when everyone feared him because of his cruelty. Whatever Katja told you the Jalin did to her family, your father has done much worse. Heller's done worse. I've done worse. You've done worse."

Tali stepped back. "I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go home."

"You can't," Shira snapped, those two syllables a whiplash. She softened almost at once, a gentle sigh chasing the harshness of her words. "You're half-Novhar, Tali. You're too powerful, too untrained, to go home."

"Ever?"

Her mentor shrugged, the gesture weighted rather than dismissive. "Something is happening out there." She pointed towards the window. "Not just with Indro and his war against Drasken. There was a Novhar chasing us, Tali. Still is, probably. They are supposed to be extinct, and yet there one is ready to grab you as soon as you awake to your aasiurmancy."

"I don't want to do this anymore," Tali repeated.

Shira stood and grasped Tali's shoulder in a firm grip. "I know," she said. "We'll get you trained by the Jalin so that you can defend yourself. Then I'll speak with Sudarium, and see if he'll talk to you, face-to-face."

"Sudarium was the one who wanted me trained by the Jalin," Tali stated. It had only just occurred to her then, with Shira's words. "I am just his pawn, aren't I? In whatever his fight is." She would forever be controlled, no matter what happened to her. No matter who she sought training from, or whose hands ended up wielding her.

She raised a palm to halt Shira's reply and turned away. "There I was thinking I'd found some freedom in getting off Alzikanem. Might as well've stayed there, let the Novhar burn me to ash."

―

"I would never endeavour to control you. If you had approached me, I would have given you what you needed to obtain your own freedom."

Erun appeared, it seemed, the moment she'd closed her eyes that evening. It stood watching her as she coalesced into the landscape of her dreams, a knowing expression gilding its bold features. She found she wasn't as terrified of it now it had encased its malevolent hugeness in a mostly human form and was no longer a bodiless entity drifting just out of sight. It remained a monster, of course, but every so often she caught a glimpse of humanity in its otherworldly eyes.

"You approached me," Tali replied with a grimace. "These are my dreams, after all."

The monster bounced one shoulder in a lazy half-shrug. "I could not help but seek you out when you offered me a tantalising sense of yourself on Shaeviren. In the time I worked on him, your progenitor became like kin to me. In your own terms, I would say that makes us family."

"I don't want you here anymore than I want any of this shit to happen to me." She clenched her hands into fists and paced past Erun. Her dreamscape tonight was the plains wreathed in moonlight. "It took me long enough to realise how good I had it on Alzikanem, but I got there in the end. Far, far too late."

Erun followed her, silent but for the hiss of its breath against the night breeze. "Had you remained there, un-awakened, the crusade against Drasken would have progressed in your absence. Perhaps you can make a difference. Perhaps you can prevent your race from sundering this world."

All at once the plains rippled away, the moon-bathed darkness beneath her feet decaying. The faint breeze became a scouring wind, the taint of death riding upon it. As far as the horizon, and probably beyond, the ground was barren and black. The sky was stained dark hues of bloody red and poisoned green, as if the atmosphere itself writhed in its death throes.

"When I and my kin destroy, it is righteous, and with purpose. When you and your kin do so, it is needless and wasteful. We do as we have been designed, for the sole object of fulfilling our nature. You do only what inflicts the greatest suffering on your fellows."

Tali looked over her shoulder to the monster. In the harsh light of this dead world, the figure almost glowed. "This is what will happen if Indro wars with Drasken?"

"Perhaps. I do not know the future."

"And you?" Tali asked. "What's your role in all this? You appeared in my life right as everything started. You have a stake in this fight?"

The monster shrugged again. "Shaeviren is far removed from this conflict," it said. "For now."

Tali shivered at its tone. When she saw it had noticed, she exaggerated her tremble, tried to make it mocking. "How ominous."

Erun's features melted into Uncle Heller's square-faced countenance.

"Don't," Tali said.

Looking into her uncle's eyes—the veneer of her uncle's eyes the monster hid behind—now that she knew he was dead and gone, made the void within her yawn.

"Don't use his face."

Erun raised Heller's heavy brows and curled the mouth up into a cocky smile. "Had you allowed me to help you, make you whole, you would have been able to protect him."

"Take his face off," Tali snapped.

"He would be alive. Perhaps you would even be able to remain by his side, as you sorely wish."

"Take it off!"

Heller's thick brows and defined jawline receded into Shira's younger, sleeker, more feminine cast. Her dark skin was tinted blue, her eyes clouded and lifeless with death.

"Stop."

"Do you want her to die as well?" Erun asked.

Tali shoved the monster's shoulders, but it barely moved. "Leave me alone. I don't need your help." She slashed her hand out towards the carcass of the world around them. "Showing me the future to scare me won't work."

"The future?" Erun said. "Child, this is the past. This happened ten thousand years ago."

Understanding took a moment to dawn. "The Cataclysm," she murmured. "This is the far north, then. The part of the world destroyed by it?"

"No, child," Erun said. "This is the planet Incáraï. This is what awaits all worlds, when my kin and I are free to fulfil our purpose."

Tali skidded her gaze around again, alighting upon the jagged silhouette of the landscape with a new appreciation. When she looked back to Erun to question it, to ask what it was, to get a straight answer this time, she was alone.