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

Fourteen

Endarion

Dujaro, Kalduran-Tharghest border

17th of Satimus

Though the usual nightmares didn't plague him, Endarion's sleep was disturbed and fitful. He rose an hour before dawn and, arming sword in hand, stalked down to the stronghold's central hall, where he'd once duelled Estrid.

He moved through a handful of stances, sweeping his sword at nothing. It reminded him of the early days of his training, when Novissa, his mentor and aunt, had commanded him to stand in an empty, exposed courtyard and hold a position for hours on end. She'd claimed the exercise was to discipline him, mind and body, but, like all her teaching methods, it served only to be needlessly cruel. That was how she'd fashioned him into a bloodthirsty tyrant.

His imagined opponent took on the form of his aunt as he'd last seen her alive, a stern, grey-haired woman with the heavy Boratorren brows and imposing height. He gripped his sword and slashed at her, the blade whipping through her characteristic grimace. Anger blazing a trail through his muscles, he spun and struck again, lashing across her neck to behead her.

Not good enough. Loosen your posture, boy. You fight like a spasming drunkard.

Her spectre stood before him, arms folded across her chest, head tilted down as she regarded him. She'd always had the gift of looking down on him, despite him being more than a head taller than her when he'd reached his full size.

His next strike jolted his arm with its speed. He aimed for a disembowelling blow, but Novissa remained intact, head canted.

You're worthless, boy. I could have picked any other soldier as my heir and they would've been the better option.

He breezed in close and punched his sword through her, only realising as he pulled away that this was how he'd killed his mother, twenty-four years ago. Novissa had never known the details of her sister's demise, yet this conjured wraith seemed to. Her mouth split into a morbid smile as she slapped a hand against the wound in her stomach.

Hmm, perhaps I trained you well after all. What a perfect monster you have become.

He backed away as she advanced, her injury now spilling ghostly lifeblood. It vanished as soon as it dripped to the floor, proving her a figment of his imagination. Not that he was in a fit enough state to recognise this, tired and hungry and distracted as he was.

He gripped his sword two-handed and levered it above his head, then flung the blade at Novissa with as much force as he could muster. An animalistic growl escaped him as the sword sailed across the hall, shattering the image of his aunt as it passed through her and clattering noisily to the floor.

"Father?"

With a start he pivoted around, forcing his posture from battle-readiness into something less tense. Daria, dwarfed by the immense open door she stood before, watched him with a frown.

"Got carried away," he explained with a half-shrug. "I didn't wake you, did I?"

Any lingering traces of Novissa's influence faded in his daughter's presence, and he found himself wondering how addled his mind was to have so easily manifested his taunting, tyrannical aunt.

"I was awake anyway," Daria admitted as she padded towards him. Her own arming sword hung belted at her side, and she wore a leather vest over a plain shirt, for sparring.

"I'll leave you the room," he said as he paced over to his fallen sword and reclaimed it.

Daria brandished her blade with a flourish and aimed the tip at him. "Actually, I was hoping we could train. If that's okay?"

He nodded and mirrored her stance. "Of course."

They met in the middle, trading a series of casual, opening parries meant only to awaken unused muscles and shock the mind to alertness. She danced around him with a youthful vitality he'd lost years ago, a smile crowding her features and reminding him of her childhood years.

Unlike Novissa's mentoring methods, he'd taken a gentler approach with his daughter. When she'd been introduced to sword-fighting and gifted her first training blade at the age of twelve, he'd made it into a game. If she could land a blow on him, he'd let her name one of the new stonehound puppies which, in her childish joy, had been her greatest obsession at the time. When she'd first beaten him outright in a duel, about six years ago now, he'd let her name Basirius, who'd since become the leader of his personal pack.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything last night. I should've stood up for you," she said between strikes. "I think Ricardus is worried for his brother."

"Not your place to stand up for me," he replied. "Besides, he's right, isn't he?"

Daria raised a brow but said nothing. She'd been by his side when he'd received word from Sephara regarding her discoveries in the capital. She'd also been with him when he'd been commanded to overwhelm Estrid's army and secure her as a prisoner, to be returned to the capital and publicly executed. His daughter knew, better than anyone else, which of the two events had prompted him to trigger the insurrection when he did.

Eventually, she sighed and said, "The way I see it, we would've rebelled after what Sephara found. Maybe not right then, but imminently. If you did it for Estrid in that moment, so what?"

"It will make a big difference in how our allies and enemies view me."

They traded another round, culminating in Daria dodging beneath his guard and slapping his flank with the flat of her sword. She grinned as she skipped back, and he returned her smile.

"I'm also sorry for being childish and not talking to you, after Varanos," she said, her grin tempered. "I know you're protecting me, but this is my fight too."

He feinted, trying to coax her to relinquish her own guard. "Daria, you're the only child I haven't completely failed. As dangerous as this life is, I'll always try and protect you. I won't apologise for that."

And he felt he owed her for when he'd been tied up and whipped and Khian had beaten her in front of him. However helpless he'd been then, he should've done something to stop her torment. He should have, after recovering, sought out the young Warmaster and murdered him where he stood, and cut down anyone who dared take umbrage.

"I understand," she said. "Thank you."

She straightened, letting her sword hang limp at her side. Something flickered as she did, a darkness coalescing behind her.

"Father? What's wrong?"

At first, he thought it was a shadowmancer assassin, but the shadows cloaking it fell away and revealed his own face staring back at him over the top of Daria's head. His eyes were black stones in his skull, and oily tendrils snaked out across his face, tracing the veins in in the same way he thought he'd seen on his hands when he'd awoken from his most recent nightmare. When the lips parted in a malevolent smile, he saw sharpened teeth spotted with blood. The hand that reached out to his oblivious daughter was twisted and clawed, similarly wreathed in darkness.

The world held him still as this other version of him, this warped version, grabbed the back of his daughter's skull with both hands and pressed corrupted fingertips into her scalp. Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream, her eyes rolling up into her head, the edges of her seeming to fragment. As he watched, rooted and insensate, his daughter came apart in the monsters' grip.

No, not came apart. Not like a victim beneath a mortal blade, or even a body savaged by a pack of war dogs.

She disintegrated, as ethereal as ash on the wind, her outline drifting into nothingness as if she'd never existed. When it was over, not even a smear of dust marked where she'd once stood, so effectively had she been wiped away.

The monstrous Endarion lifted its offending hands and held them open, almost in surrender. A sickly taint emanated from its palms, like poisonous smog. It enveloped them both, pulled them together, his frozen self and this otherworldly, unreal shadow he'd become.

Was this the thing that stalked his nightmares? Was this the monster he was afraid of becoming? An unconscious manifestation of the Iron Wolf he'd always been?

All at once, Dujaro fell apart around them, leaving them alone on an exposed courtyard in the middle of an empty valley.

You are almost made whole.

Not-Endarion spoke without moving its mouth, the words penetrating straight into the deepest recesses of his real self's mind.

Do not deny us.

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The mountains flanking the deep trough of Dujaro's valley wilted and sank like decomposing corpses until they too were swiped from existence. The completeness of the attack contrasted the silence of it, the tenderness of reality drifting quietly away.

We can unmake it all.

His malicious mirror image stepped in and drew him into a deathly embrace. With a feeling like being submerged in icy water, the two versions of him merged, the destructive power infusing his limbs and swelling his brain.

And then, as suddenly as the vision had raped his mind, he was back in Dujaro's intact hall, and the sensation of power was gone.

He lay on his back on the floor, pressed down by an irresistible weight, his arms held firm and unmoving at his sides.

"Are you done?" As quickly as the world had faded into non-existence, Estrid's face ghosted into reality above him, her brows drawn down in concern, her crooked jaw set at a grim slant. She straddled him, her legs holding him in place, her hands locked around his shoulders to restrain him. She looked tense and strained, as if she'd struggled to keep him in place.

He nodded meekly and she shifted, letting him free his arms from where she'd pinned them against his flanks with her thighs. Daria stood a short distance behind her, her knuckles flushed white where she grasped her sword. Not dead, not disintegrated.

For an intense moment he locked eyes with Estrid, neither of them willing to move. Her weight atop him was comforting, anchoring him to a reality he'd been so convinced had just fallen apart, and her gaze, softened now his lucidity had returned, distracted him considerably from what he'd just seen. Had they found themselves in this position under less questionable circumstances, he would've reached out to her.

"What happened?" he asked, banishing the less-than-helpful thoughts that bloomed in his mind. Now was not the time to entertain unobtainable fantasies.

Estrid pushed herself to her feet and held out a hand, then levered him upright. His knee, left unbraced this morning, ached with dull pain, as if he'd been moving on it awkwardly.

"You tell me," Estrid replied.

He tried to explain, but the words were a tangled mass in his throat. What could he even say? That he'd just seen himself kill his daughter and disintegrate the stronghold and surrounding valley?

"You went unfocused," Daria answered for him. She waved a hand before her face. "Like you'd just gone. Then you ran at me with your sword out, and I thought you were trying to stab me. But you attacked something behind me, something only you could see. You went a bit…" She flushed and looked away, struggling for the right word.

"Mad?" he suggested.

He could see she wanted to agree, but for his sake didn't.

"I heard her trying to get you to calm down, and when I came in you were attacking nothing," Estrid supplied.

"So you tackled me and waited until I snapped out of it?"

She nodded. "What else was I supposed to do?" she said. She took a step back, placing distance between them, and scanned an assessing gaze along him. "Has this happened before?"

"I've been having dreams since Shaeviren," he admitted. It was only the fact both women had been with him in the direct aftermath of his torture that he felt comfortable sharing. "It's the madness. I told you."

His original bout of insanity, which had struck him down after his rescue four years ago, remained shrouded. He couldn't remember how his madness manifested, only that it had. In rare moments of snatched lucidity, glimpses of his earlier rambling and thrashing had assaulted him.

Estrid's reply was cut off by the commotion of the hall's Imperial-side door being forced open. He backed off, widening the space between them, as Palla entered, looking harried. The first-general's eyes alighted only briefly on the two other women before settling on him.

"I've just been back to Empyria, and we have a problem," she said. She pushed the door open wider, and another figure appeared, as suddenly and inexplicably as if he too was a spectre.

His imperious nephew, Kaeso, whom he'd not seen properly in some years. The young man was Valerian's echo, tall and haughty, his chin always tilted up, his eyes narrowed in condescension. He stopped and clasped his hands behind his back in arrogant mimicry of a military posture of attention, his eyes lingering only briefly on his uncle before looking away.

"What is he doing here?" Endarion asked.

Palla glanced at her unexpected passenger with an uncharacteristic grimace.

"They've taken Father," Kaeso said, raising his voice so it boomed through the hall's empty expanse. "I want to know what you intend to do about that, Uncle."

"Wait," he said, his head pounding. "Taken?"

His nephew sighed and scowled. "Was I unclear? He's been taken by the Caetoran. Seized. Arrested. Imprisoned."

"Your brother suggested most of your allies have been," Palla added. "I went back, after 'striding Kaeso here, but it was too late. I overheard the soldiers who arrested your brother talking about how anyone affiliated with your family was also being taken. Ricardus's brother, your brother, the Corajus of Quendinther, anyone known to supply or support you who was still in Empyria."

Something cold and sharp gripped his chest. "Iana and Lexia? Kesa and Bekker?"

Palla shook her head. "Not that I know of."

"And Sephara?" Asking only because everyone in this room knew that Sephara was his agent and undercover in Valerian's employ.

"She was taken with Valerian."

He tried to comprehend what Palla said. From the moment he'd turned against Dobran, back outside Varanos, he'd felt himself safe in the knowledge his brother, and by extension the rest of his family, couldn't be touched. They were simply too powerful.

Obviously, the Caetoran had decided to escalate, and there was nothing he could do.

"What's going to happen?" he asked, already knowing. There was only one way this series of arrests could end.

Estrid, who'd remained on the fringes of the conversation, spoke up. "What happens every time the Caetoran gets hold of someone he doesn't like." She let the implication hang heavy in the air, though they all knew what she left unspoken; her own family had been executed on a pretence, because the Caetoran had viewed them as a threat.

"We can't let this happen," Kaeso spat. "It is absolutely out of the question. We must rescue my father, at once." He turned his attention to Endarion, stepping up to him. As tall and unbowed as the younger man was, Endarion still had a fair height advantage over his nephew. "I'm here to take command of your army, and whoever else you have allied to our cause."

Endarion cocked his head. "Is that so?"

"My father's plan was to make me Caetoran. I have precedence. I will lead our armies into the Imperium and save my father." He held out a hand, as if control of more than a hundred thousand soldiers was a tangible thing he could physically be given. "I will take over from you now, Uncle."

"I don't think you're qualified," Endarion replied, trying to keep the scorn out of his tone. Maybe Kaeso really was this self-important, or maybe—and Endarion wanted to believe it the case—the young man allowed fear for his father to cloud his judgement.

Kaeso was slender with his tallness, not built for combat. Endarion had tried to train him in his adolescence, to instil some discipline and give him the tools to defend himself, rather than needing to rely on Sephara as bodyguard. Even as a boy, Kaeso hadn't taken to the sword, instead throwing childish tantrums and insisting his uncle was a cruel teacher and then outright refusing to learn.

As if that alone didn't render the idea of Kaeso in military command laughable, he also had no appropriate command training and had never had control over even the smallest group of soldiers. Endarion supposed his idea of a battle would be to throw his men, rank after rank, at Empyria's walls until he had nothing left, tactics be damned.

"I am to be Caetoran. I will rescue my father and win my own throne. You will listen to me."

His repeated, "Is that so?" was practically spat.

"This is your fault anyway. Someone needs to curtail your power before you do any more damage." Kaeso looked over to Daria, seeking support. "You ensured my father was arrested so that you could seize sole power of our insurrection. Don't think I'm so stupid to not see this obvious ploy." His eyes snagged on Estrid. "Not to mention that bedwarmer. My father told me all about her influence over you. He warned me that you might not listen to reason."

"Boy," Endarion warned, "I would give great consideration to what you say next."

"You have practically killed my father. I think it's time to step down. Or at least accept assistance where it's given, old man." A smug grin twisted his nephew's face, reminding him for an instant of Khian's expression as the depraved Warmaster had started beating Daria.

Maybe it was the most recent expression of his madness, or maybe it was just a combination of shock and rage and panic at this unexpected development, but he'd pulled back his hand and punched Kaeso before he could think better of his actions. Unused to physical altercations as he was, Kaeso stumbled backwards, a hand clasped to his jaw. The reaction reminded Endarion of his father on the night he'd murdered him and only served to enflame his anger.

He moved in close and made to punch his useless nephew again, a wildness rising within him. At the last moment, his punch sailed wide, pushed off course by a hand directing his elbow. When he turned his wrath upon the interferer, his daughter's panic-stricken features stabbed through his mind's feral fog.

"Stop it," she said. "Please, Father."

All at once, the room solidified around him again. Palla and Estrid bearing witness to his crimes. Daria trying to pull him away. Kaeso cowering.

He spoke loud and strong to cover his lapse. "You have no power, Nephew. Without your father you are just a bumbling little boy. I am the only one who can get you your throne, so I would stop my mouth if I were you."

Kaeso rubbed at his jaw as if he could erase the punch, his other hand balling into a fist as if he meant to return the blow, his eyes flashing with barely concealed fear. Redness bloomed across the young man's cheek, but even in his anger Endarion had managed to hold back.

Shit, I shouldn't alienate him more than I already have.

A flush of unwanted guilt struck Endarion, and he found himself picturing his older brother's haughty face. Valerian's quiet stoicism would extend beyond his arrest, and the man would certainly prove unflappable. And yet here was Endarion, not even the victim of the Caetoran's apparent purge, yet pushed to violence against a relative at the slightest provocation.

He did himself and his brother a disservice. Despite his harsh feelings towards his nephew, he did Kaeso a disservice, too.

Rather than back away and diffuse the situation, he crowded back into Kaeso, hands down at his sides, jaw thrust out at his nephew, inviting the blow. Kaeso's nostrils flared as he pushed against Endarion's shoulders, forcing his uncle back a step, establishing space. He'd judged the young man correctly, because Kaeso's fist flashed out to clip a glancing blow across Endarion's chin. Either the boy similarly held back, or his martial prowess really was that lacking, because it barely rocked Endarion's head. Still, Endarion pretended at pain, recoiling sideways with a grunt and cupping his bearded chin. Let Kaeso believe he'd saved face in front of Daria and Estrid and Palla. Let him also believe the display some ploy of Endarion's, and not the result of the madness Valerian had probably already warned his son about.

"Good, that's settled," he said, flexing his jaw as if testing that Kaeso's paltry punch hadn't loosened any teeth. He raised a stiff arm towards the young man, offering this time a bridge. Daria and Estrid straightened, as if expecting him to snap like a rabid stray. "We can't do anything about this right now, Kaeso," he continued, pitching his voice low in what he hoped was paternal comfort. "But we will, I promise you."

Something in his nephew's arrogant demeanour cracked, and a glimmer of the scared young boy he concealed peeked through. "Send her back for him. And Sephara." He jabbed a finger at Palla.

"We don't know where they have been taken," Palla replied.

"Then look for them," Kaeso insisted.

"They'll have Val's house under guard. They'll pounce the moment Palla 'strides there." Endarion wrapped his hand around Kaeso's shoulder and gave him a light shake. "We can't risk losing Palla or having the Caetoran know of her powers."

"Not even for family?"

Oh, how naïve this young man was, to believe family paramount. Had Valerian not been willing to sacrifice Endarion and Daria if it meant appeasing the Caetoran for just a little longer?

Endarion shook his head. "But the Caetoran can't kill Valerian. Not yet. Not with us still a threat."

For a moment, it looked like Kaeso might have accepted the consoling words. But then his aristocratic mask snapped back into place, and he slapped Endarion's hand away with a snarl. "You only say that because it's him, not you, in enemy custody. You're a fucking coward when it counts, Uncle."

Before his darker impulses to strike his nephew could hijack control once more, Endarion turned away and stalked out of the hall.