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

Infinite's End: Book Two

Part One: The Killing Never Ends

One

Tali

The Karhes

24th of Tantus

The two thunderships waited in a tense deadlock.

Rabid Dog, though far larger than its opponent, had been damaged irreparably by its rough landing. Maelstrom, newer, sleeker, manned by just four permanent crew, squatted at a predatory distance, waiting. To Tali's eyes, the large mercenary ship resembled a wounded whale, Maelstrom a circling shark plotting the killing blow.

As the foundered stormking's crew assessed the damage to their craft, Helleron Boratorren and his small cadre licked their own wounds from their recent fight with the Novhar.

Tali still thrummed with the energy she'd expelled in that fight. In a moment of unrivalled panic, she'd turned the Novhar's own powerful magic against him and burned his hand in the process. Though the ten-foot-tall monster had backed down from the confrontation and fled, Tali knew he wouldn't stop pursuing her. Not when he'd followed her all the way from her home in Alzikanem, half a world away.

The injury the Novhar had inflicted to her uncle's chest turned out to be nothing more than bruised ribs where the beast had struck him and then stepped on him. Shira, Mariska, and Tornjak, the other three members of his cadre, were only winded and drained; they'd recover their energy and the aasiur they'd expelled by the end of the day, as long as Rabid Dog's crew didn't attack them. Tali herself was tired and aching, though the fact she hadn't dropped unconscious, as she had after her previous aasiurmantic displays, made her feel accomplished.

She watched her uncle as he moved through Maelstrom's cramped confines, still not quite ready to believe he was alive. He'd fallen into a collapsed street during a cataclysmic attack on the Shifting City of Verden, and both she and Shira had thought him killed. Their captivity aboard Rabid Dog kept them from mourning, though Tali had all but accepted Heller's fate, because it hadn't seemed possible he'd survived Verden's catastrophic death.

Yet here he was, the only one of her family she had any relationship with, alive and mostly hale.

"What are we going to do about them?" Shira, her mentor, asked from her position in the gunner's chair. She dipped her head towards Rabid Dog's downed carcass.

Unlike the lumbering hulk of Rabid Dog, Maelstrom was a modern cloudskimmer, agile and knife-sharp. Where the fallen mercenary ship had required an entire command room dedicated to its functioning, Heller's craft required only a pilot and a gunner at the front, and a lone thundermancer—Mariska—to power its engines at the rear.

Their downed opponent boasted a crew of several hundred, at least, though the captain, Katja, had never shared such sensitive information with Tali. Defeated though they may be, they presented a nagging issue.

"We 'ould 'eave 'em behin'," answered Tornjak's guttural voice. His elongated face and flat, canine tongue slurred his speech, and Tali strained to understand the Vasipan mage.

"We're in the middle of nowhere," Heller countered. "They'd die of exposure or starvation if no one happened upon them."

"E'actly," Tornjak replied with a derisive flick of his brindle-furred head.

Mariska, coarse-mouthed renegade that she was, crossed her arms over her chest and snorted. "We should kill the bastards ourselves."

"That's excessive," Heller said.

"They snatched Shira and Tali, kept 'em captive. They would've handed them off to a fucking slaver eventually," Mariska said.

Tali cleared her throat for attention, feeling childish. "The captain never hurt us," she said. "She wasn't handing us off to anyone." In fact, in the moments before Maelstrom had pounced, her Novhar pursuer demanded that Tali's mercenary captain captor, Katja Westervelt, surrender Tali to him. Katja had refused. Despite everything else she'd done, Katja had never treated Tali or Shira as anything less than honoured guests and had stood against a powerful immortal for their sakes.

It didn't negate the large-scale slavery Katja and her pirate crew engaged in, of course. But to Tali, it meant something.

"You weren't with 'er long enough, then," Mariska said. She awarded Tali her full attention, gaze softening. "These people don't deserve our mercy. You never saw the extent of it when you were with us years ago, but we did. Slaves aren't treated as people, or even cattle, for that matter. You'd be just a bit of flesh to whip and abuse and work to death. That would've happened to you."

Tali looked away from the young, pale-skinned Drasken woman, instead focusing on her uncle, who leaned against the back of the pilot's chair, one arm still cradled protectively over his ribs. Upon noting her regard, he glanced at her.

"Is Katja involved with Indro? Does she know about him?" Heller asked.

Shira turned around in the pilot's chair. "She supplied Indro's mercenary allies with slaves and was outspoken in her support for him."

Heller stroked his bearded chin and nodded. "Arm yourselves," he said, addressing them all. "We'll speak to the crew."

As mages, the cadre's primary weapon was their aasiurmancy, so Maelstrom's storeroom only boasted a handful of plain arming swords and throwing daggers, alongside the red-trimmed black greatcoats Tali now recognised as Fensidium necessities. Dressed in their coats and now visibly armed with naked blades, the four Fensidium agents made for a menacing sight. Tali lingered behind them as they disembarked onto the plains below, still unsure of her place within their ranks. Her uncle didn't ask her to stay inside or keep out of the way, and she hoped he now comprehended the boon her own magic could be if it came to another fight.

Several of Katja's mercenaries clustered around Rabid Dog's sundered nose, offloading what she assumed were supplies. If the crew decided to brave the Karhes and leave their ship behind, she didn't fancy their chances; the plains were too vast and inhospitable to those who hadn't grown up within them. Even to natives, the endless grasslands were merciless.

"Listen," Heller shouted at them, using the more common variant of Karspeech. "We have an offer for you. Hand us your captain, bound as a mage-prisoner, alive and unharmed, and we'll let you all live."

The mercenaries turned at Heller's words and watched him, hesitant. When they offered no reply, Mariska stepped forward and extended a hand already wreathed in lightning. She let loose a snapping strand and aimed high above the mercenaries' heads, smiling with malice as they cowered from its collision with Rabid Dog. Mariska lowered her hand, her slight swaying the only sign the magic had sapped her.

"If you refuse, we'll kill you all," Heller said. He paused a beat, to make sure the frightened mercenaries paid heed, before turning away. He moved to the side, close enough to pose an imminent threat.

The wait proved a short one. One of the mercenaries abandoned his task and scampered into the thundership's ruined guts, and Tali's gaze followed him. She couldn't help but recall the battle that had taken place within that metal hulk earlier that day. How the Novhar had chased her and Shira from the command room down onto the main deck. How their exchange of magic had killed crew members in grotesque ways. How the falling ship's uncontrolled rocking had thrown one-ton canons about and crushed their luckless operators. She wondered how many of Katja's men had died earlier that day, how many more would die in the coming days from lingering injuries. How many, she thought with a jolt of guilt, were dead because of her, directly of otherwise?

When the mercenary reappeared, five of his fellows supported him, all armed. They looked to have escaped any serious harm, and Tali suspected the mercenary had sought out the strongest of his surviving crew to fulfil Heller's request. A bound Katja stood within their cluster, her hands splayed across her chest and fastened in place, so that any magic she thought of conjuring would damage only herself. Her roughened visage had been roughened further by the crash, her dirty face now smeared with soot and ash and dried blood. Her sharp eyes fixed on Tali, then moved to assess Heller's cadre.

"We give you our captain, and we live?" the first mercenary asked.

Heller strode forward, the pain of his bruised ribs concealed well, until he was face to face with the speaker, who flinched away from him. "How many survived?"

The mercenary seemed to mentally calculate before answering. "One hundred and fifty whose chances I favour. The rest are dead or will die."

Heller nodded, his gaze slicing across to Katja, who met it with all the unbowed arrogance of the noblewoman she'd once been. "We won't be offering you any aid. We're taking your captain and leaving. How you get out of this mess is up to you."

The speaker dipped his head. "Understood. That's all we want."

Tali watched as her uncle beckoned to Katja, who was propelled forward with a push from one of her former crew. She stumbled over the detritus of Rabid Dog's torn carcass, caught herself, then waited as Heller took her elbow and guided her back towards his ship. Even as he led her up the ramp into Maelstrom's flank, Shira, Mariska, and Tornjak remained facing the mercenaries, hands pointedly on hilts. Tali waited with them, only turning away when the last of the mercenaries had returned to the darkness of Rabid Dog's corpse.

Maelstrom was far too small to harbour anything like a brig, or even a singular cell they could keep Katja held within. Heller placed her instead in the storeroom, now empty, and checked her bonds. Clearly unsatisfied, he looped a length of rope around her torso, tight enough to make her grimace, then tied the loose end around the rack that had held the blades they all now wore.

"The purpose of this?" Katja demanded.

"You're coming to Kaltoren with us," Heller replied. "I'm sure the Jalin will be pleased to have you back."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The mercenary captain spat at Heller, a glob of saliva landing on the collar of his coat. He ignored it. "You might as well kill me now," Katja continued. "Save the dear, vaunted Jalin the trouble."

"You're more useful to us alive," Shira said from Heller's side.

Katja regarded the woman who had so recently been her prisoner and curled her lip in distaste. Her eyes flashed over to Tali, who waited at the threshold. "I was going to help you with your magic, girl," she said. "I wouldn't have let the Novhar have you. Just as I would've taken steps to avoid the Jalin getting you. You're trapped now."

Heller turned and shepherded his cadre out of the storeroom. He slammed the door behind him, ensured it was locked, and only then swiped away the spit on his collar.

"What an unsavoury woman," her uncle said. "I see why the Jalin drove her family out."

Tali kept her mouth shut against the argument she wanted to voice. Katja had shared her story with Tali, during Tali's brief captivity aboard Rabid Dog, and something in it had resonated with her. Katja's family had been killed by the Jalin, a politician who'd feared their power. Only the woman herself and her father, Maze Westervelt, had escaped, fleeing into the wilderness of the Karhes and seeking refuge with the mercenary fleets there. After several decades eking out a life amongst harsh company, Maze had taken the woman's young daughter and abandoned her, before returning to the Jalin who'd so wronged them both.

Tali, who'd spent most of her life abandoned on the remote island of Alzikanem, understood Katja's turmoil. Understood, even, the bitterness birthed by it.

The rest of the cadre set about preparing their vessel for take-off. Heller and Shira took the pilot and gunner's seats respectively, and Mariska disappeared into the cramped bowels of the ship to oversee the running of its Surrekan engine. Tornjak, lacking any real place in the craft's functioning, hovered in the small space behind the two seats, his wolf-like eyes fixed on Rabid Dog. Tali parked herself at his side and waited.

When Rabid Dog had settled down on the plains a few days into Tali's captivity to deliver the prisoners it had taken to the mercenary army camped there, the process had been painstakingly slow. Taking off was worse, the huge beast clawing skywards painful inches at a time, its entire length groaning with the effort. Maelstrom gave a slight jolt as its engine thrummed to life, but its rise was so smooth, Tali wouldn't have known they'd left the ground had she not been looking through the canopy.

Rabid Dog sank beneath them, the full extent of its death now visible. Shira shifted in the gunner's seat, and a heartbeat later an explosion bloomed on the exposed main deck below. A second and third followed, pummelling the already shattered wood of the deck until it resembled Verden's collapsing streets in the throes of its demise. The shockwaves rocked Maelstrom, but Heller, who'd obviously been prepared, maintained expert control of the craft.

It wasn't until Maelstrom lifted clear of the conflagration and Shira settled back in her seat that Tali realised her mentor had fired on the dead ship—striking the already compromised Surrekan engine if the explosions were anything to go by—even though the surviving crew had been promised their lives.

She moved up behind the older woman, bracing her hands on the back of the chair. "Why did you do that?"

"Because it needed to be done."

"But you lied to them."

Shira glanced up at her, a gleam of something malicious in her gaze. "Words and promises mean nothing to slavers, Tali. You should know that by now."

"You didn't need to kill them," she insisted. "We'd already beaten them."

Shira frowned and returned her focus ahead. "Better a dead enemy at your back than a downed one who can come after you again."

Tali dragged her gaze to Heller, who spared her the briefest of raised brows before looking away, apparently unwilling to challenge, or even question, his partner's sudden actions. "We're out of shot now," he murmured.

"We'll restock at Kaltoren," Shira said.

Something sun-bright speared the canopy's reinforced glass. A few heartbeats later, a loud, low boom erupted, not dissimilar from the rabid roar of some deep-chested, primeval monster. The final shockwave blasted their tiny thundership off course, the wind swatting at Maelstrom like an immortal slapping at an errant insect. Tali caught herself against the back of her uncle's chair, her chin striking the padded leather with a painful jolt.

"Well aimed," Heller muttered once he'd wrenched the steering straight.

"Better a quick death than lingering starvation," Shira muttered.

As if Rabid Dog's annihilation needed illustrating, Heller banked their ship around, granting those in the cramped cockpit an eagle-eyed view of what Shira's shots had wrought.

Nothing but a ragged crater remained of what had seconds before been a foundered ship and its numerous crew. The grassland had been blasted inwards, forming what resembled the mouth of a dead volcano perhaps the size of a small town. Curls of smoke wafted from the wreckage, and when she squinted, Tali saw huge chunks of sod flung clear of the impact site. If she'd expected a huge bloody smear to mark the final resting place of more than a hundred and fifty souls, she was sorely disappointed.

"That's what happens when a Surrekan engine is destroyed," Heller told her without turning around.

Without another word, Tali retreated into Maelstrom's claustrophobic depths, seeking out the cramped sleeping quarters they all shared.

―

She waited until night had suffocated the plains before leaving her camp bed. Moonlight pooled in from the canopy, bending around the dark silhouettes of the pilot and gunner's seats and the figures occupying them. Tali felt like a stowaway as she eased the door shut behind her, her senses sharpened by her need to stay hidden.

She'd expected something different when she reunited with her uncle and his cadre. As much as she understood the mercenaries Shira had killed were criminals aiding the enslavement of innocents and the destruction of Shifting Cities, the casualness of the cold-blooded mass-murder, the fact Shira hadn't discussed it beforehand, and the ease with which Heller accepted the act discomfited Tali. Of course, the mercenaries wouldn't have survived long on their own, but there'd always been the chance someone would come across them and offer aid.

Now they'd be just another pile of bodies in the plains, as Verden was behind them.

Well, not bodies. Just the crater.

She remembered something Shira had told her not so long ago: the world she lived in now, by virtue of the power she'd awoken to, was one of death and cruelty. That'd been proven accurate when she'd battled the Novhar in Sinnis and torn the city apart in self-defence. She'd killed people then, same as she'd killed people when she'd panicked and blasted down a mercenary cloudskimmer as it attacked Verden.

The Jalin of Drasken had killed most of Katja's family and rendered her an outcast, but Shira had justified it by claiming they were all capable of worse than that. Her father, an arch-general in the Imperium, was capable of worse. Tali herself, capable of worse. And Shira, her role model, her mentor, the only steady presence in her life, capable of worse.

She wanted to go back to how things were when she'd been stuck on Alzikanem. It seemed childish, she knew, but she didn't want to live in this world, and the cadre's actions only hammered into her naïve skull what kind of world it really was.

The storeroom door loomed before her, wrenching her from her thoughts. It was locked only by a single bolt and, before she could reconsider her actions, she slid it free, stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

Katja slumped beneath the rack she'd been tied to, head held awkwardly against it, knees folded beneath her. She'd rubbed her wrists raw in trying to loosen the rope binding her hands to her chest, and her eyes were dark and heavy with exhaustion. They flicked up to Tali when the door eased shut and stayed there.

"Hello," Tali greeted lamely.

Katja groaned as she stretched her legs out in front of her. "Come to kill me?" she mumbled.

"No."

"Might as well. You killed my crew already; I heard the canons. You realise the Jalin will do so much worse to me. You'd be doing me a kindness by killing me." She averted her gaze. "I meant what I said. I never would've enslaved you."

Tali edged away from the door, placing herself in the corner opposite Katja. It was strange to look down upon the woman who had until recently held all the authority over her. Not quite an empowering sensation, but not far off. "You'd have made me a weapon for a warlord."

"Instead, you get to be a tyrant's instrument," Katja said. "And you would've been more than a weapon. You don't understand the cause Lord Indro and his allies fight for. I barely understand it, yet he has my loyalty."

Tali leaned against the wall and frowned. Even now, standing before the woman, she wasn't sure why she'd come. She'd felt the need to talk to the mercenary, to clarify her stance, to maybe even offer an apology for Shira's heartless killing of her surviving crew. Instead, she said nothing.

"You chased off the Novhar, then?" Katja prompted. She lifted her shoulders, hissing with pain as the rope raked her sore wrists. "Is he dead?"

Tali shook her head.

"He'll come for you again," Katja continued. "He was determined to have you, even after I told him Lord Indro would be interested in you."

"He doesn't work for Indro?" Tali asked. The Novhar had suggested as much when he'd told Katja his interests and those of the crusading Lord Indro weren't necessarily tied.

Katja rocked her shoulders in as much of a shrug as she could manage. "It isn't too late, you know," she said.

"For what?"

"For you to decide not to become the Jalin's tool." The mercenary angled her head towards the door. "I understand this cadre is your family, but they're making a mistake, delivering you to that wretched snake."

"I can't do anything now," Tali said.

"You could free me, and I'll take control of this ship. I wouldn't hurt any of your friends."

Having seen the woman order the razing of Verden and then deliver its inhabitants to an army that would persecute them, Tali had a hard time believing her claims.

"And then what?" Tali asked.

"We'd go back to Indro, of course."

Tali had encountered Lord Indro, only very briefly, when she'd first landed in Sinnis. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, but it had only been a matter of weeks. A few days after the public execution of a mage, Indro addressed the gathered crowd and told them of his plan to raze the Drasken Empire and kill every aasiurmancer who stood against him. At the end, before he'd left the platform he'd orated from, his eyes locked with Tali's and he'd smiled knowingly. Not five minutes later, the Novhar had tracked her down and thrown part of the city at her in his attempt to apprehend her.

The Novhar wanted her for his own purposes, but it was clear Indro would secure her if he could. But why? Would he just have her publicly executed, to make a point? Or would he, as Katja claimed, draw her into his cause and persuade her to help him destroy the empire she and Heller's cadre now sped towards?

"So that we can help him destroy the empire and kill your father," Tali said. Not a question; the woman had stated as much to her before. Katja's patricidal desires drove her.

Before the woman could offer a reply, the door snapped open, and Heller loomed at the threshold. His glare sliced between the two of them before he grabbed Tali's shirt collar and dragged her out into the hallway. He slammed the door shut behind him and punched the bolt in place as if it had personally offended him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

Tali pulled herself away. "Just talking," she hissed, brushing at the ruffled collar of her shirt. It occurred to her that she stood almost as tall as her uncle—her father's domineering height the sole useful inheritance Endarion had given her. When she'd last seen Heller, four years ago, he'd loomed as a giant, mythical and all-powerful. Now he looked human, mortal.

"She's the enemy, Tali. Not some friendly neighbour to chat to." Her uncle rubbed a hand across his face and sighed. "Why would you even want to talk to her? She kidnapped you, need I remind you? Her attack on Verden almost killed me."

"But you always gave off the impression you were hard to kill."

The lightness in her tone worked, and a small smile tugged at the corner of Heller's mouth. For the first time since they'd reunited, the amicable man she knew her uncle to be emerged from beneath the veneer of weariness he currently wore.

"Don't think on what Shira did to Rabid Dog," her uncle said. "Those people were slavers and murderers, and Katja is the worst of them."

She nodded, putting her back to the door and the woman within. It would be easy to think of every life they took as someone deserving of their fate, but Tali no longer had that luxury. Not since Sinnis, where she knew her fight with the Novhar had killed innocents. It was likely not all Rabid Dog's crew had been ruthless mercenaries. Some might've been aboard because there was nowhere else to go or they'd been press-ganged into service. What was to say Katja hadn't had other 'honoured guests' aboard, salvaged from Verden's culled ranks and held prisoner like she and Shira had been?

Heller steered her back to the front of the ship, to where Shira still slouched in the gunner's seat. This far skywards, with no other thunderships to contend with, there was little for the woman to do beyond stare through the canopy and watch the blackness of the plains unfurl below.

"What will happen when we get to Kaltoren?" Tali asked.

Not if anymore, but when. The Drasken Empire and its capital were becoming a reality, and Tali didn't know what to think of that. Surely an improvement on the boredom of Alzikanem, but would she truly be safe there?

"I'll speak with the Jalin, ask him to train and protect you," Heller replied. "We'll give him that story about you being half-Arisen, so no one else needs to know you're half-Novhar. Once he agrees, I imagine my cadre and I will return to the Fensidium headquarters to share what we know of Lord Indro with our superior."

Her shoulders slumped unbidden. "You're leaving me. Again."

"Not forever," her uncle replied, setting his hands on her arms. "Once you're trained, there's no reason you can't join us."

"Empty promises," Tali muttered. She knew, while the Novhar chased her, while Lord Indro plotted war with Drasken, she'd never be free to live with her uncle.

"Not empty promises, Tali," Heller said. "You think this cadre would pass up the opportunity to have someone of your power in our ranks?" He punctuated his words with a sly smile, though to Tali it fell flat.

"Training takes years, doesn't it?" she asked. "Decades, even."

"We'll always be there, no matter how long it takes," Shira replied, looking over the back of her seat.

Tali shook her head but offered no reply. She turned away and trudged back to her room.