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

Twelve

Endarion

Dujaro, Kalduran-Tharghest border

16th of Satimus

After every scout he'd sent out to Dujaro returned with reports of a glaringly empty stronghold, Endarion reluctantly gave the command to start moving their forces into the valley. The doglords went first, acting as a glorified vanguard. How they proceeded from there would depend on whatever the stonehounds' keen senses picked up.

Dujaro's apparent emptiness unnerved Endarion; it was one of the most defensible strongholds he knew of, a besieging army's nightmare, yet Dobran didn't seem to have left even a token garrison or set any traps obvious enough to be triggered by the initial scouts. It would've been trivial to lay in wait amongst the peaks of the Sidian Mountains and fall upon the stretched force below, but the path directly into Tharghest, and the Imperium beyond, was as open and empty as a disembowelling wound.

"We should send a squad or two up the mountain on either side before we proceed," Endarion said, glancing up at the rubble-strewn slopes flanking him and the half-battalion of doglords he'd directed into the winding valley. The other half he'd left with the rest of his army, still waiting in Kalduran proper at the valley's mouth, just in case Dobran had concocted some scheme meant to separate them. Avelyn had left their son, Remus, in charge of that force, a fact Endarion silently appreciated even if he had no right to.

"Should give them a little bit of sport, at least," Avelyn mused at his side, her arms folded imperiously across her chest. As ever, she'd insisted on spearheading this precarious mission herself, and her eyes gleamed wildly with the prospect of much-desired violence.

Endarion regarded his Doglord, seeing glimpses of his old bloodlust still prevalent in the way she carried herself, and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at her. "If there's anyone up there, I want prisoners. Which means alive, Avelyn."

Avelyn's scoff shaved the years from her aspect and rendered her the petulant youth she liked to play at when accepting his orders. "You're no fun anymore."

"What about this situation is fun to you?" he asked.

She knocked her shoulder into his. Prepared for the move, he stood firm. "Everything that isn't to you, apparently."

He clenched his jaw, wondering how much of the old Iron Wolf Avelyn still saw in him. That gore-smeared version of himself had once been what she'd label 'fun'. The same spectre that had torn Dykumas asunder and murdered his own senior officer in cold blood. The same spectre that had killed indiscriminately and reaped great joy in the doing. The same spectre that evoked his dead father, with all Asterion Boratorren's accompanying casual cruelties.

Avelyn's second shoulder knock rocked him from his thoughts. "Didn't mean to prick at a sore spot."

He forced a thin smile onto his face. "I'm one big sore spot. You know that."

She reached up and patted his scarred cheek, the gesture more companionable than affectionate. It had been a long time since they'd been anything but commander and subordinate, but he read a small degree of the dormant affection they'd once shared for each other in the touch.

Avelyn flashed her teeth in her trademark wolfish smile. "As soon as we get back to Empyria, and the bastard city's ours, I'm buying you enough drinks to loosen you up a bit."

"Be prepared to empty your coin purse, then."

She smirked. "I will once you actually pay me."

He nodded behind them, to where the stonehounds waited. "I pay you in fond memories and terrifying dogs."

She turned away with a bark of a laugh, hustling through the ranks of dogs and soldiers to select those best equipped for the difficult mountain terrain. Within ten minutes, four squads—two for either flank—had peeled away from the main body and set about threading their way up the Sidians in zigzagging trails. Endarion's eyes tracked Avelyn and their pack, Basirius a huge blot of soft grey against the harsher palate of the rockface, the other three only marginally smaller. Had his knee not still ached like a bastard, he would've happily joined his Doglord on this foray.

His attention lifted to the summit overhead; he squinted against the stark blue brilliance of the cloudless sky, searching for the unmistakeable flicker of silhouettes he was certain perched somewhere within the Sidians, waiting to spring their trap. Dobran couldn't have left Dujaro untouched on his way through, because Endarion would certainly have devised traps, and his cousin was no less brutal.

The strain on his eyes proved yet another nagging marker of his increasing age. Lest he torture himself trying to bring the mountainous higher reaches into sharper focus, he instead lowered his gaze and monitored the dogs Avelyn had decided to leave behind. The stonehounds shifted restlessly, too well trained to do anything more than whimper their frustrations. The soldiers, for their part, remained stoic. A few dared covert glances his way, and he reminded himself how lax he'd been of late when it came to his rank-and-file. Easy enough, as a beleaguered commander, to forget the smallest cogs in his machine of war, but that seemed little excuse.

After sending a messenger back to the rest of his forces to inform them of the delay, he spent the time waiting for Avelyn and her teams pacing between the neat, tight lines his doglords had fallen into, accepting salutes and sharing greetings. To his discredit, he knew no names; the dogs themselves were more familiar to him than their human masters, all of them having passed through the kennels at the Howling Tower.

One of the last soldiers he interacted with, a grizzled veteran, thumped out a crisp salute and answered his arch-general's friendly words with grunts and monosyllables. Having already noticed how the younger soldiers around this veteran seemed to watch him for cues, Endarion had tagged the man as a revered favourite among his cohorts. Every group of soldiers boasted one by necessity, because the newer recruits needed someone to steer them, someone closer to them in the hierarchy than the far removed commanders. Back in his early days as a soldier, Endarion had tried to be this favourite, though couldn't recall now his level of success.

"How do you feel about this campaign, soldier?" he asked the veteran, who stiffened. "Don't just tell me what you think I want to hear. What I really want is the truth as my men see it."

The veteran's jaw bunched as he chewed on his answer. For a moment, Endarion expected to hear a rote opinion fed back to him, but he'd chosen this man as the stage for this conversation deliberately; only someone respected by their colleagues would feel brave enough to voice their authentic feelings on matters that consumed them all.

"Some of us wonder why we're doing it. We wonder why we didn't just take Varanos like we were told we would be doing." Freed of its monosyllables, the veteran's voice took on a gruff but steady edge. "The Kaldurani were our enemy, and now they march with us to destroy our homeland."

"Not destroy," Endarion replied. "Liberate."

Someone snorted behind him. Before he could turn and pick out the guilty party, their fellows hissed at them, highlighting them clearer than the initial snort.

Rather than anchor his stare on the young woman at the centre of the doglord arrangement who had just undermined him, he swept his eyes across the entire grid. "No, she's right to snort. I demand the truth of you, and yet in return I give you my own rehearsed dogma." He dipped his head. "'Liberation' is the word we use when we want to trick our rankers into thinking they're doing the right thing. It's fine that you're marching on your homeland and killing your countrymen, because you're 'liberating' them." His turn to snort. "The truth is, we're going home to wrest control from the Tyrannuses. Most of you probably won't care whose arse warms the Invictum Throne, because us exalt-lords and -ladies are all the same."

The soldiers watched him, as silent as any enraptured audience. He spied bright starbursts of fear in the gazes of many; they likely suspected he'd decimate them for their doubt, because that's what his earned reputation dictated.

But, he reasoned, it was well past time to move beyond that sordid reputation.

"The Tyrannuses want to scour Kalduran clean. They want to kill everyone, even the civilians. Imagine if Kalduran stormed across our borders and cut us all down simply because their own ruler had commanded it." He paused to let his words simmer. "And then they want to wage war with Drasken itself. A war we would have inevitably lost." He thought of all the prevalent details he couldn't share with these rankers—Arisen godkings, shadowmantic assassins, plots within plots—and tried to frame his argument in a way these fighters would comprehend. "Imagine now what such a war would cost us. It might take as little as a year to lose, or perhaps we'd hold on for ten or more. But how many of us would be destroyed? How much of our Imperium? Our armies would grind themselves down to nothing fighting against Drasken's mages, and our cities would be bombarded by their thunderships. And to what end?" A rough scoff scraped his throat. "Because the Caetoran's ambitions far exceed reality and logic." And because he's so feeble-minded, he can be manipulated into such ludicrous designs.

He pivoted back around to address the veteran.

"We do this because we're saving the Imperium from itself. I will not allow a Boratorren Caetoran to ruin us all for ambition the way Janus Tyrannus will, if no one stands against him."

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When he exhaled, he felt the tension leech from his listeners. His own shoulders lowered in tandem, and he sighed in relief when he saw some of his rankers nodding at him, understanding. Between them, the dogs remained blissfully ignorant of the catastrophic politics their handlers had been dragged into.

Strange thing was, he actually believed himself. When he and Valerian had first started plotting, in the years after Endarion's wife Aemilia had been executed, Endarion had thought of nothing beyond the power of having his name and legacy attached to the throne through a Boratorren monarch. Even after Valerian made it clear the brothers would be dead or retired by the time a Boratorren Caetoran arose, the Iron Wolf still yearned for dominance, for authority, for control. A part of him even once thought to snatch the throne for himself, to deny Valerian and Kaeso.

Something had changed. Maybe it was his actions at Dykumas, reminding him of the very tyranny he should be contesting, not perpetrating himself. Maybe it was fear that a change in Caetorans wouldn't heal the Imperium of its addiction to war but rather worsen it. Maybe his strange brand of madness granted him clarity, facing him with his sins and convincing him to do better, to be better. Maybe the Iron Wolf's claws didn't penetrate quite so deeply into his psyche these days, because he'd meant it: he wouldn't allow Kaeso, as Caetoran, to rule unchecked as Janus did.

It's all the torture on Shaeviren, Dobran's whipping of me, almost dying outside Varanos. It's Estrid's influence, and the hope I can make myself deserving of her again. Something in my twisted mind has been knocked back into place.

Before he could dismiss himself and return to his vigil, savage yelps erupted overhead, amplified by the valley's hollow funnel. The primordial chorus of pack predators bringing down a kill echoed down the slopes, seeming to roll with the inexorable pressure of a landslide. Every grounded stonehound raised their hackles and stiffened their lupine ears in sympathy with their embattled brethren.

Endarion selected another four squads and sent them forth with instructions to support those Avelyn had already fielded. Unable to manage the arduous climb himself by virtue of his crippled knee, Endarion gritted his teeth as he resolved himself to the gut-churning wait.

–

Dobran's plan, it transpired, had been to wait until Endarion's armies settled into Dujaro before levering free boulders that had been loosened during the brief time the Imperium's fleeing armies occupied the stronghold on their way back. A cavalcade of lethally huge rocks would've rained down on the armies, almost certainly collapsing Dujaro in the process, and causing enough of a rockfall to block the valley mouth and prevent access into Tharghest.

Listening to this report, gleaned from the rough interrogation of several Tyrannus soldiers Avelyn had obediently delivered alive, Endarion almost shuddered at the level of destruction he and his soldiers had narrowly avoided. Her squads had found several dozen enemies positioned on either side of the valley, and after they'd butchered the majority, had spent another hour stabilising all the projectiles the Tyrannuses prepared. Avelyn judged there to be enough loosened material to trigger a rockslide; the Sidian Mountain's natural scree-like composure would've ensured such a disaster.

The captured soldiers also confirmed the lack of any further plots or traps against the invading armies, though Endarion wasn't prepared to believe them and allow his guard to relax just yet. Instead, he gave the order to execute the captives—a mercy, considering the steaming mess the stonehounds had made of some of them—and ploughed ahead with the original plan: sending the doglords into the stronghold itself.

He waited until the stonehounds and their handlers confirmed Dujaro was empty before sending word back for his army. They were the first to thread through. It was a precarious labour, made only slightly easier by the relative wideness of the valley itself. Because it snaked all the way across the border between Kalduran and Tharghest, through the Sidian Mountains, their collected armies couldn't all fit, and he'd decided a portion from each would be permitted to stay in Dujaro itself, the commanders and senior officers taking precedence, with a handpicked guard to accompany them. The armies would have to be moved through one at a time, to avoid potential ambushes. Despite the all-clear given by Avelyn and her teams, Endarion couldn't believe himself safe.

Like Dykumas before it, Dujaro sprang to life in his memories as he gazed upon it, as ominous now as his mother's estate had been in his most recent nightmare. It was strange to return to the structure at the head of an invading army of a different kind, crossing the border from the opposite side, yet with the same intent. Like heading into toppled Dykumas with his dogs to try and help salvage his mess.

Though his stonehounds had already swept through the stronghold's interior, he kept one hand on his arming sword and approached every corner and door coiled for a fight. It took him a tense two hours to make his way through Dujaro's every nook and cranny in this fashion, his paranoia forbidding him from trusting the words of his men.

But, true to the reports, Dobran really had left him the stronghold. Of course, his cousin had meant for it to entomb Endarion and whichever of his officers and allies were present in the building when the rocks came thundering down.

Unconsciously, the Kaldurani officers and their guards chose rooms on the side of the structure they'd inhabited during the failed peace negotiations. That had been barely more than two months ago now, but felt like a lifetime.

Though tempted, Endarion didn't take the room he'd had on his first pass through Dujaro, where he'd almost been assassinated. Not the fondest of memories, so he selected a small suite on the second floor, tucked away in a corner. A servant's room, from when Dujaro had been a trading station, but it suited him well enough, and ensured he didn't have too many stairs to climb.

He and his officers gathered in the largest room, an unadorned hall that might've once hosted nobility crossing the border. A battered wooden table had been dragged in, a set of chipped chairs arranged around it, and a selection of their supply train's finest military rations displayed atop. The bulk of it was a hard, woody Kaldurani bread, often set aside for the army due to its relative longevity, complemented with a fatty dipping oil. There were hunks of unattractive meat, mostly pork and mutton, and dried vegetables giving the dull affair a small splash of muted colour. As basic as the meal was, they were all hardened soldiers, used to bland rations like these, and ate without complaint.

Endarion chewed half-heartedly at a heel of bread, grimacing when a sharp edge of crust caught the ragged gap in his teeth where a molar had been torn out, and bloodied his gums. The tang of blood tainted the meal, and he pushed his food aside. Ever since the nightmarish recounting of the murder of his parents, he hadn't eaten much anyway. He knew he should relish supplies as they lasted, and that he'd regret starving himself if they couldn't replenish in Tharghest, but in truth his stomach was an iron weight and everything tasted like ash in his mouth. Ash, and now blood.

There were seven of them present tonight. Daria sat in her proper place at his side. Flanking them both were Palla and Avelyn, the former as quiet as always, the latter far more concerned with snuffling down her food in the manner of the dogs she oversaw to make conversation.

Ricardus sat opposite, having picked at his food without interest, looking strangely naked without the leather greatcoat Endarion was used to seeing him in. On either side of him was his first-general, a young man named Lucan who was also his son and heir, and his cavalry-general, a grey-haired, stern-faced woman.

Eventually, the others finished their meals, and he cleared his throat to address them. "I think we have a problem."

"We do," Avelyn replied. "There's not enough food."

Daria gave a muffled snort of amusement, but no one else reacted. Endarion gestured to the room around them and said, "Aside from that, I'm concerned about Dujaro being abandoned behind the Imperials. They haven't even left a taunting message."

"Were the boulders they'd prepped to welcome us not taunting enough?" Avelyn remarked. She leant back in her chair, as casually as if she were eating out with friends. No matter that less than three hours ago, she'd participated in the torture of her already bloodied captives.

"Not necessarily," Palla rebutted. When Avelyn shot her a confused look, she added, "The Imperials know we intend to invade. It would be in their best interest to hinder us and Dujaro would have been an ideal place to make a stand. The boulders were the first course of action. But why no back-up plan for when that was foiled?"

How easily their countrymen had become 'the Imperials'; they no longer numbered themselves amongst that group.

"They're luring us in," Endarion said, having mentally chewed over the matter all evening. "They're doing what Kalduran did to us when we invaded, drawing us into territory where they have the home advantage."

"If we follow them, we're playing into their hands," Ricardus noted.

Ricardus's son cleared his throat. "If they have abandoned Dujaro, they'll almost certainly fortify Aukruna and make their stand there."

"Or maybe they're heading straight for the Sentinel," Endarion mused.

It made sense; the Caetoran didn't care about Tharghest, evidenced by his wanton destruction of it and the lack of effort that had since been made to assimilate it into the Imperium. Janus would likely order Dobran to make straight for the Sentinel, more defensible than even Dujaro. If Dobran settled in for a siege, Endarion doubted there would be much he and his allies could do to break the Sentinel. There was another path into the Imperium through Tharghest, of course, but it was far to the west, towards the Reign of Asineo, and would have them deviate too far from the established route.

"They'll want to hamper us before we reach the Sentinel," Daria interjected. "We're all at least partially familiar with the place. So are Kavan and Estrid. As far as Dobran's concerned, we might know a way in."

"Remember, I left Arch-General Rom at the Sentinel. She's had plenty of time to fortify it. Dobran can afford to tarry before he commits to making his stand there," Endarion said.

In hindsight, it was self-sabotage to have left Reveka Rom, a commander who knew the stronghold, within its walls with her army for weeks, unattended. But hindsight wasn't something a general could afford, especially not when at war.

"This was a mistake," Ricardus muttered, shaking his head. "It's a hopeless endeavour."

"We planned for this, for years," Endarion reminded him.

The first signs of anger showed in the red flush on his old friend's haggard face. "But we never planned for it to happen like this," he retorted. "We're losing allies in the capital, and everyone thinks you're mad." He pounded the table with one fist, upsetting his half-empty plate, and his son Lucan jolted beside him.

"Everyone?"

Ricardus dared to meet his gaze. "Everyone," he affirmed. He folded his offending hand in his lap and huffed a breath. "Our families are in Empyria, and the Caetoran can do with them whatever he wants. With the Castrians beside him, he can repel us. We'll fail in the field, and for what? Everyone knows you turned against your cousin to spare Elerius. I empathise, but the cost of your actions, which so far remain unclear, will be devastating."

A silence sang, a long and keening note. No one said anything, their tension heating the air with crackles of energy.

"You know that's not true," Endarion said, slowly. He kept his eyes on his friend, and Ricardus did not look away. "I shared with you what my agent found. You know why this had to happen when it did."

"A convenient story," Ricardus countered.

"There's proof," Endarion said.

Before they'd been handed back to Valerian to keep safe, he'd shown his old friend and their new Kaldurani allies the documents Sephara had procured, minus the specific details he'd wanted concealed, including Dexion's identity as the Arisen. They knew what they needed to, and nothing more.

"None of us know how long you had your proof before you used it," Ricardus said. "As far as I'm concerned, you did this for Elerius, and any man who tries to topple his own empire by using the armies of another for the sake of a former lover is dangerous and reckless. And mad."

Endarion clenched his hands in his lap, his fingernails biting into his palms. He held Ricardus's stare for a long time, his tongue seeking out the bloodied gap in his teeth. "I'm glad you've made your stance clear, Arch-General Naevon."

His old friend broke their locked stare first, pushing himself back from the table and rising to his feet. "I'll follow you because I promised as much, but I hope this doesn't set a precedence for what your family's dynasty will be like."

Lacking a suitable response, Endarion dipped his head, watching with hooded eyes as the other man stalked out of the room with his son and cavalry-general at his heels. It felt worryingly like the loss of not only an ally, but a friend. The first of many, he was sure, if Ricardus told the truth and others doubted his motives.