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

Part Two

We Are the Wolves

Eight

Endarion

Aukruna, Tharghest

6th of Tournus

It was often said the city of Aukruna possessed two faces.

When one approached from the south, from the direction of the Imperium, they encountered the industrious sprawl of life, boisterous and colourful. Its northern face, the one it showed to Kalduran, presented a stronghold, with impenetrable defences, sheer walls, and battlements scarred by the campaign to conquer Tharghest sixteen years ago. It had been built at the root of a fork where a smaller tributary joined the River Ghest and, on a map, resembled a colossal bridge spanning the water.

When Endarion and his retinue arrived at Aukruna from the south, ahead of the winding column of the army of Denjin, he almost assumed the city still thrived, that Tharghest hadn't been torn asunder more than a decade ago. Marching closer, though, he saw the people flocking the expanse of Aukruna's river dock sported the colours of Dobran's army, those soldiers who'd been stationed here for several years now. Enter the city itself, and he knew he'd find only Imperials; Tharghest's grey-skinned, horned natives had been displaced not long after he'd murdered the ruling family, most of the population fled westwards towards the Borrian Princedoms.

"It's a shame we let the city sit here and fester. Could've been a second capital, but instead it's a glorified garrison for Tyrannus and his troops." The voice, unannounced, startled Endarion. He turned as his Doglord, Avelyn Brazus, drifted up beside him.

Her coat was ruffled in characteristic disregard, and the breeze had whipped her dark hair into a full, feral mess. She flashed a lopsided smile in greeting, looking wild and girlish. Despite being only a handful of years younger than him, she wore her age with far more success.

"The Caetoran was never interested in what happens after a campaign. He only wanted to have Tharghest painted in his colours on his maps, and for better access to Borria if he ever wanted to topple that as well," Endarion said, shifting his gaze to the beasts loping at Avelyn's side.

Four stonehounds, each the size of a small pony. Far superior to a standard dog, stonehounds were intelligent and loyal, the result of generations of his family's selective breeding. For more than twenty years now he and Avelyn had overseen the breeding programme and, in the early years of his time as arch-general, he'd created a battalion of doglords with Avelyn in command. A thousand trained soldier-handlers and their armoured war dogs made for a terrifying sight on any battlefield, and they'd won him several key skirmishes in his career.

The largest of the canines accompanying Avelyn trotted up to his flank and pushed a wolfish head into his hand, demanding attention. Basirius, the eldest of the pack he and Avelyn shared, was sleek and thick-maned, with a long muzzle as wide as a lion's and the jaw strength to complement. At more than six and a half feet tall himself, Endarion was the tallest man he knew, yet Basirius's withers matched his waist. He and Avelyn had often joked that, in another few generations, the dogs would be big enough to ride into battle and might replace the cavalry.

The other three—wiry Demon, lithe Andaria, leggy Styros—arrayed around Avelyn, the most intimidating bodyguards one could hope for.

"How long do you think we'll be on campaign?" Avelyn asked.

Endarion looked back at the city and the stream of soldiers feeding into Aukruna's exposed, south-facing river dock. "Why? You have prior commitments back home?"

The Doglord snorted a laugh. "Wanted to be back at the Howling Tower in time for dinner."

He cocked a brow and rubbed the velvet fur of Basirius's pointed ear. "Did you bring Remus?" he asked, naming his illegitimate son by her. One of his 'mistakes', as Valerian would phrase it.

Avelyn hesitated a beat before answering. "I did. Was that wrong?"

His mind lurched back to his conversation with Iana before he'd left the capital. How she'd accused him, rightly, of seeing his children as potential soldiers. How Lexia, his second youngest, had expressed interest in learning to fight and Iana feared what would become of her. What would, on this campaign, become of Daria and Remus.

But Avelyn was one of his senior officers, and therein lay the problem. Her son served as her heir and would one day take the title of Doglord himself. Endarion hadn't considered the ramifications of starting a casual, brief affair with Avelyn, decades ago. He hadn't seen the danger when she'd announced she was pregnant, nor when his son was born, nor even when Avelyn had introduced Remus to the stonehounds at the Howling Tower and begun mentoring him.

Remus, like all his children, lived a life dependent on who his father was, without the accompanying paternal bond.

He realised his mental wanderings had caused an odd silence and shook his head. "Not wrong, if that's what he wants."

Avelyn wasn't like Iana; she didn't think Remus would be better away from the army, seeking a quieter destiny. Maybe because she was a soldier herself, and as unsuited to parenthood as Endarion. She offered a slow nod, her eyebrows raised in concern. He glanced away from her, suspecting she thought his lapse of concentration just another sign of lingering madness.

"Are you okay with all this?" Avelyn asked.

"All this?"

She threw her arm out to encompass the winding snake of their army's train as it carved through the grassland surrounding Aukruna. Three-quarters of Denjin—thirty thousand, give or take, including camp followers—all under his personal command. Though a quarter of them had been left back in the Imperium, either training at the Howling Tower or garrisoning various barracks, he hadn't seen so many fielded at once since his first foray into Tharghest. Even on Shaeviren, his last campaign, he'd taken only half with him.

"You doubt me?" he said.

Avelyn scoffed. "Should I?"

He knew the truth was yes, she should doubt him. It wasn't something he could admit, though. Not as an arch-general, and certainly not as the Paramount-General.

"You've never doubted me before," he noted.

She let her eyes fall to his braced leg. "You were never tortured before. Never broken."

"I'm not broken anymore." He shifted on the spot, his brace suddenly cumbersome.

An obvious lie. Avelyn was a permanent resident at the Howling Tower, so she'd been privy to his bouts of madness when he'd returned there to recover. He knew she saw everything and, despite them no longer being lovers, knew she still cared and would've eventually intervened and offered him support he didn't want to be seen taking.

"I can try and believe that, if it'll make you feel better," Avelyn replied.

He made to conjure a reply; he owed her that, if not for the easy romance they'd once shared then for her decades of steadfast friendship after. Instead, he patted Basirius's shoulder and moved wordlessly away.

―

Despite being mostly empty and large enough to comfortably house most of the Imperial troops, the process of moving them all to the open grassland at Aukruna's north face proved laborious and time-consuming. None of the fielded armies—six instead of all seven, with Reveka Rom left at the Sentinel—were at the full official strength of forty thousand, but all of them boasted at least half. For the sake of convenience, only the senior officers lodged in the city proper. When the Castrian force Nazhira had offered to their cause arrived, an estimated week from now, they would garrison the city, though Nazhira herself was already here. Abyss forbid that woman not be in the nexus of events.

An hour after sunset, with the armies finally settled on the grassland north of Aukruna, Endarion retired with his senior staff to the rooms they'd claimed. He'd taken a section of the building that had once served as the seat of Tharghest's government, a place Endarion knew too well and for all the wrong reasons, having personally ended a foreign dynasty within these walls. Like the rest of the city, it had been abandoned in the conquest and wore sixteen years' worth of dust over its interior surfaces.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

With Avelyn, Cato, and Palla he'd briefly discussed the matter of the recent murder of Iana's director, and how the upheaval of her armoury would impact the Denjini army. They'd departed the Imperium burdened by a lighter supply train than Endarion would've preferred, his last order of arming swords, arrows, and plate armour for his cavalry having gone unfulfilled after the signing of Iana's new contract. A detailed report from the Denjini quartermaster implied the soldiers could be reliably outfitted for at least a month, depending on the number of scrapes and scuffles the Kaldurani dragged them into. Any longer, and Endarion would struggle to arm his men.

Compounding that issue was the sudden and recent death of one of the exalt-lords who funded Endarion's stonehound breeding programme, a minor aristocrat named Gaius Cassian. The heat of that wouldn't scald Endarion yet, not with his entire battalion of doglords already trained and outfitted, but the loss of the money the deceased man had poured into the Howling Tower would rot his army's stability. As an arch-general and brother of a Corajus, Endarion's personal funds pooled deep, but the upkeep of a thousand dogs of war would soon erode his accounts.

If he returned from this campaign alive—if the Caetoran allowed it—his army would be much reduced and he would be in no easy financial position to restore it. Either way, his political rivals won.

A part of him suspected Sephara would, in time, learn that Gaius Cassian had been, like Novissa and Iana's director, assassinated.

Later, after ensuring his officers were satisfied with their lodgings, he secluded himself in his room, mind drowning in the implications of the upcoming negotiation with the Kaldurani. They'd agreed to meet on neutral ground at nearby Dujaro, but Endarion knew it to be a mere formality. The Caetoran wanted war. Dobran, Nazhira, and Khian, all three attached to the negotiation party, would no doubt arrange it for him.

Daria planned to join Endarion at Dujaro. He wondered if she offered support or wanted to ensure his madness didn't collapse an already precarious situation.

As a precaution, Cavalry-General Palla Hasund would also accompany them. Her secret talent as a worldstrider meant that if the negotiation turned violent, she could whisk him and his daughter to safety and leave the Tyrannuses behind to a hopefully final fate.

As a worldstrider, Palla could tear a rift in the world and step through it to any destination she wished, provided she'd already been there. To aid with this, a small room at Valerian's estate in Empyria had been set aside for her, which contained a canvas painting of Basirius mounted on the back wall that she could 'stride to whenever she needed. When on campaign, she carried a replica canvas around with her supplies. Though the canvases weren't strictly necessary, without it as an anchor to focus on, or if she pictured a place that had since changed from when she'd formed her memory of it, she might end up anywhere. She might, she'd once warned him, end up nowhere, in the space outside space.

"If things go so poorly we need Palla's magic to get us out, then we're all fucked," Endarion muttered to himself.

It seemed likely they were all fucked anyway. The Caetoran had set him up to fail. Janus knew of the Boratorren insurrection plot. How, Endarion couldn't guess. Maybe one of their co-conspirators had betrayed them. Ricardus or Kavan, maybe?

To sit here and think of his old friends as traitors would be to drive himself mad. Rather than submit to his paranoia, he left his room and wandered Aukruna's dim, empty corridors, seeing monsters in every flickering shadow. The echoes of the already-dead reverberating between the walls haunted him, a prodding reminder of all the lives lost in this building. Killed at his command or by his hand. Killed because they lived in a city Janus Tyrannus wanted for himself. Killed because the Iron Wolf had done as commanded.

In his mindless meandering he came upon a balcony, moonlight-painted, and expected to find a place to stand in solitude for a while.

His shoulders slumped at the sight of Nazhira Tyrannus's graceful silhouette leaning against the parapet, gazing down at the gently glistening river below. In the far distance, cast into blackness by the night, rose the jagged peaks of the Cloudbreakers. Beyond them, the Imperium, and everything he left behind.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Nazhira said, without turning.

She already knew he was here, so he huffed a resigned sigh and moved to join her. "Don't tell me you have nightmares as well?"

"Of course not," she replied. "I'm not a fearful child. I just appreciate a clear night and a full moon." She angled her face towards him, a sharp smile on her full lips. "Did you want some privacy? I understand you like to howl when it's full."

He scowled. "Your husband invented those rumours."

"Yes, he can be quite imaginative when he wants to be," Nazhira said.

He turned to leave, but she grasped his arm and pulled him back, setting her other hand on his chest as if to hold him in place.

"Why are you here?" he asked, refusing to acknowledge the pressure of her touch.

"The Caetoran asked for my support in his campaign. I'm here in the capacity of commander and ambassador, as a favour to my brother-in-law."

He pulled his arm away and stepped back. "Let's forgo the bullshit. Why are you really here?"

"What answer would you like?" Nazhira said, closing the distance between them again. She was more than a head shorter than him, but he felt as small as he had when he'd confronted Dexion back in Empyria. "Should I tell you I'm concocting an evil plan to topple the Imperium by helping it win a war in Kalduran? Should I admit that I'm such a paragon of villainy that I killed your feeble old aunt for no good reason? What about my ambition? I could always claim to want to dominate the entire continent?"

Endarion huffed. "That all sounds plausible."

She wrapped her hand around his neck, drew him in close enough for their breath to mingle in the air between them. "I'll admit to my treason if you admit to yours."

He didn't pull away lest she think she'd affected him, didn't let her alluring scent overwhelm him. He held himself steady, kept his breathing even, and showed her that he wouldn't be swayed like last time, when they'd both had something to gain from each other. "You already know about mine, don't you?"

One of them, anyway. She and her family might suspect the finer details of his and Valerian's plans to overthrow the Caetoran, but they didn't know everything. Just as they didn't know of his more subtle treason represented by his youngest child, Tali, secreted away her entire life. All Nazhira had to do to find cause to execute him was journey to his estate on the island of Alzikanem and see for herself the daughter he'd sired illegally.

But, like with Sephara's dual identity and his and Valerian's renegade younger brother, none of their political rivals thought to investigate their family too deeply, and tended to forget those ancillary members who'd disappeared. Perhaps it would be the Caetoran's undoing.

"And I didn't even have to bed you this time," she said with a low chuckle. She pushed his head away, none too gently, and leaned back against the parapet.

"Who killed Warmaster Boratorren?" he found himself asking.

Nazhira cocked her head in a gesture of feigned confusion. "The Baltanos's envoy, of course."

"I thought we agreed to forgo the bullshit."

"I made no such agreement." Her eyes narrowed, her coy smile becoming wicked. She beckoned him closer. Like a trapped animal mesmerised by its soon-to-be-killer, he complied, letting himself be snatched into her embrace again. Her hands strayed to his belt and hovered there. "Maybe I'll be willing to tell you what I know, if..."

"What?" he said, a whisper. He wanted to believe himself wise to her games; he knew who she was, knew the cunning she concealed with seduction, and still he hadn't turned around and retired to his room at the beginning of their encounter. It had been many years since their brief dalliance, and though he'd been the one to turn away from her in the end, he was apparently still stirred by her. Not nearly enough to lean in and afford her supremacy, though. But just enough to wonder at her intent.

She clasped his jaw with one hand, let the other fall just below the line of his belt and hover there without touching him. Rather than let her believe she'd discomforted him, he offered no resistance and didn't step back, though had to clench his jaw against the hitch in his breath. But rather than push their conversation in the direction he'd believed her to be leading it, Nazhira canted her head to one side and offered an innocent frown.

"Not going to stop me?" she asked. Before he could answer, she added, "What about poor Estrid?"

He pulled his head from her grip and stepped away, the evening chill scouring away the heat rising to his face. Only Estrid's mention defogged his skull, gave him the strength to deny Nazhira.

"What about her?"

"What would she think if she knew her paramour fraternised with other women?" The corners of her mouth lifted upwards in a subtle smirk.

"This is hardly fraternising." He shook his head, as much to clear his thoughts as to deny her suggestion. "And I am no longer her paramour. You know that."

Nazhira clicked her tongue. "My husband told me what you said at the Conclave, about encouraging the war and thinking of her as an enemy. You may have convinced the other arch-generals, but I find your words empty."

The seductive aura she'd worn at the beginning of their conversation sloughed away; the hardened armour of a professional revealed itself beneath. Whether she'd known he would come out here and waited for him deliberately, or chance had brought them together, she clearly used this opportunity to undermine the narrative he'd laid out at the Conclave. As the Caetoran's sister-in-law, she would have enough authority to level charges of treason against him, if she found cause. He expected this was her intent, and that his life, or at least his freedom, depended on the outcome.

"I don't suppose there's anything I can say to convince you."

She shrugged and moved over to the parapet, leaning against it and folding her arms across her chest. The openness she'd displayed in the brief moment where he'd thought she meant to beguile him had soured.

"If I were truly still loyal to Estrid, would I not have already defected to Kalduran alongside her?" he said, an idea taking hold. Though he'd already shared Estrid's presence at Shaeviren with the Conclave, there were details he'd left out, details that might, if framed the right way, be enough to allay Nazhira's very justified suspicions. "She's already asked me to defect, and I didn't. If I'm colluding with her, or plotting, or whatever other lies you and your allies spin, why am I still here?"

"She tried to sway you?" Nazhira asked.

He tilted his head as he recalled one of the first conversations he and Estrid had shared on Shaeviren after he'd regained consciousness following his rescue. She'd asked him to come back to Kalduran with her once he'd recovered. She'd told him about the estate in a secluded little valley the Baltanos had gifted her upon her ascension to kandras. Told him of the surrounding wilderness his stonehound pack would thrive in. Told him of the nights she'd spent on her second-floor balcony watching the sunset with a glass of her favourite Padrean wine in hand, and how she desired him there beside her.

As much as he'd wanted to accept and leave behind a homeland he'd never loved, his obligations to his family remained too pressing. He couldn't leave Daria behind with the consequences, nor could he let Valerian suffer for his defection. When he'd said, "I can't," to Estrid, and nothing more, she'd understood and left the matter alone.

It burned his mouth to lie, but he still looked Nazhira in the eye and replied, "Yes, she tried to sway me. I denied her."

"How noble of you," Nazhira said. She pushed away from the balcony and moved in close again, reaching a hand to his cheek as if to console him. He turned away, pretending the small refusal strengthened him.

Nazhira shrugged the rejection off. "If Elerius truly tried to have you defect, that would be attempted sabotage." Her eyes glinted with her malicious smile. "The crimes keep stacking up, don't they? I can't imagine what sort of execution awaits her when we finally secure her."

She departed then, leaving him to fester on the threat lacing her final words.