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

Nineteen

Endarion

Aukruna, Tharghest

23rd of Satimus

Even before his words had finished echoing, the Warmaster sprang forward and dedicated himself to a series of blazing strikes meant to crack Endarion's defences open for the killing blow. Endarion parried the first, dodged beyond the second, leapt to the side of the third, and twisted the fourth along the flat of his blade. He caught the handle of Khian's sword with his own and punched out at it, sending his opponent jarring sideways.

The entire exchange lasted no more than five seconds, yet his leg already flared with pain. Khian came on again, unrelenting, sweeping in a wide but controlled arc, giving Endarion no choice but to twist himself into a hasty dodge. His knee barked in protest at the awkward angle, and he stumbled, barely managing to catch himself. He came up in a blind surge and managed to half-turn his body in time to raise his sword and block the attempt Khian made to split his skull. As the Warmaster finished his two-handed downward strike, Endarion moved aside, pulled his blade away, and let Khian stumble forward.

As he rose, Endarion felt the cost of his manoeuvre. Half-falling and turning had strained his shattered kneecap beyond its limits, and his vision blackened with sharp agony. He lifted his left leg, transitioned his weight back over to his right side, and locked himself into a lopsided guard. Khian flew at him again, varying each blow and feinting in between, forcing Endarion to weave about in a brutal and exhausting dance.

Khian possessed little finesse, though his youthful vigour and rabid speed compensated. Every time a strong-armed swing opened up the Warmaster's defences and afforded Endarion the slim chance of a bout-ending strike to his opponent's chest or stomach, Endarion found the path of his sword blocked by Khian's, who'd moved faster than Endarion would've credited. All Endarion could do was rip himself from the bind before Khian could utilise their closeness and sweep around to reaffirm himself in preparation of the next barrage.

Tiredness and cresting frustration devoured his extensive training, turning him into a sloppy underdog striving not for victory, but for simple survival.

Eventually, inevitably, his leg buckled.

He started to topple, caught himself, almost cried out as his knee seemed to tear and shatter all over again. Khian aimed a final slash at his head but found himself blocked at the final moment. The clang as their swords connected drowned out all else and the Warmaster dropped his blade before it could scrape against Endarion's. Khian smashed his fist into Endarion's face, and Endarion heard his nose crunch long before he felt the impact of the breakage. Already insensate from the detonation of his kneecap, Endarion couldn't defend himself. His opponent lifted a foot and planted it square in Endarion's midriff, and he fell backwards heavily, blind from the punch, deaf from the brittle crack of cartilage, winded by the vicious kick.

What vision hadn't been obscured by the pain in his knee was lost to the spreading inferno blossoming on his face and filling his head with lightning strikes. A dull throb started at the base of his skull and branched like rot, seeping into every inch of a mind empty of everything but hurt.

Khian stood over him now, Endarion's own sword aimed at his face. Endarion opened his mouth to spout a curse, but found it muffled by the blood that leaked into his mouth and coated his tongue. The younger man drew back his arm, and Endarion kept his eyes locked on Khian's even as every broken inch of him tried to cringe away in fear.

The sword descended, aimed for his neck. A flash of light erupted behind his eyes, and he imagined his severed head slapping against the stones before him. He imagined Khian from this perspective, outlined by the sun like a vengeful god, blood-drenched sword held casually over one shoulder as he admired his handiwork. He imagined his life fading in a slow ebb, his headless body spasming the way he'd seen beheaded criminals spasm after death.

None of that happened, though.

Khian reeled back, clutching one hand to his chest, Endarion's sword flung harmlessly away. His head remained attached to his body, and the ache in his face and knee assured him he still lived.

"You dishonourable dog!" Khian cried as he flexed his hand. The fingers were smoking and burnt. "You used magic!"

Estrid's second-in-command, the thundermancer Borso, stood with his palms still splayed around the lightning he'd used to disarm the Warmaster.

"Sorry, that's my fault," Estrid said, putting a hand on her second's shoulder and moving him back. "I told him to do that if it looked like you'd win." She shrugged and donned an innocent half-smile. "You know me; I just can't play fair."

The Warmaster swung his gaze between the two Kaldurani, then to Endarion, who still sat where he'd fallen, then to the soldiers behind him. "Seize them," he commanded. "I want them all alive."

As the Tyrannus soldiers surged forward in one practised swoop, Khian wove between their ranks and disappeared back towards Aukruna and its ajar front gate. Rather than spare a moment to consider his decision, Endarion climbed painfully to his feet, bent over to retrieve his discarded sword, and barrelled in Khian's wake. A small part of him, drowned out by the bulk baying for Khian's blood, noted that the Tyrannus soldiers let him pass unhindered, as if they knew he floundered into a trap. He turned to face his companions, who'd already engaged with Khian's men. Daria caught his gaze and shook her head, having already divined his intent.

He needed Khian in his custody. Not only because of what he'd done to Daria and how eager Endarion was to make him suffer, but because the Caetoran's nephew proved the best bargaining chip he could secure. He might be able to trade for his brother, if Valerian was even still alive. He might even be able to force Janus and Dobran's hands, make them desperate enough to retrieve the young man who was their dynasty's only heir that they made a mistake.

But then Daria was distracted by an overhead slash from an enemy soldier, and the sight of his daughter at another's mercy banished all thoughts of Khian Tyrannus and what he chafed to do to the bastard.

He limped back away from the gates, which had certainly been left slit open in the hope he'd blunder blindly after Khian, as he'd been in the process of doing. His crippled knee was loose and smarting, but he pushed the sensation aside in favour of hefting his sword and stabbing into the rearmost of Khian's soldiers who had a moment before let him pass.

Steel sliced cleanly through unprotected flesh. Endarion ripped his blade clear of his first victim's neck and surged into the melee. He ploughed towards his daughter, who'd deflected her original opponent and forced their blades into a bind. Estrid, blade a whirlwind, battled behind her.

Borso's lightning, limited by the close quarters of the brawl, snapped out around Endarion as he aimed his sword for the gap above the enemy soldier's chest-plate. His arm wrenched as he skewered the man, the force of his charge sending them both sideways.

A grunt of pain escaped clamped jaws as his victim's plate cut into Endarion's unarmoured body. He landed atop the man, his knee glancing the ground, his head striking something hard enough to dazzle.

By the time his vision cleared and the figure pinned beneath him had choked to death on his own blood, the fight had already staggered to a close. Khian hadn't sent many soldiers after Endarion's small party, likely because he'd believed Endarion would pursue him into Aukruna and be snatched as easily as a lost child.

Only now, in the clarity after the fight, did Endarion realise how fatally stupid he'd almost been.

Their party wasted no time enjoying their scant victory, nor did they bother to check their kills; between them Estrid and Daria wrestled Endarion to his feet and steered him back towards where they'd left their mounts. Borso hovered at their rear, eyes locked on Aukruna and any defenders he feared would surge out the still-ajar front gate.

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"I thought you were going to go after him," Daria murmured. Blood flecked her face, but she didn't seem to notice.

Endarion considered telling her he almost had but instead settled for a half-lie. "I wouldn't stand a chance against him and his soldiers in my pitiful condition."

They made it back to their horses unchallenged. When Endarion glanced back at the city, it was as still and quiet as if unoccupied, and no figures bustled atop the walls. No guards, no sentries, not even the barest flicker of human habitation. It occurred to him that Khian didn't have half an army behind those walls, but instead a token force. Not enough to harry Endarion beyond Aukruna's safety. But enough to entrap Endarion, had he made the mistake Khian had been counting on and pursued him into the city.

"What now?" Estrid asked as they approached their horses at a stagger, Endarion limping heavily and strung between Estrid and Daria.

He propped himself against his horse and took his weight from his ruined leg, hissing a curse that flecked blood from his smashed nose against the mount's pristine flank. As Daria and Borso mounted their own horses, Estrid hovered by his side, before finally grasping his shoulder to swivel him around. She pressed gently at his face, reaping a wince from him. Her expression dipped down into lopsided exasperation.

"You told me not to die, and I complied," he said. "You said nothing of fucked knees and broken noses."

Estrid yanked at the sleeve of her shirt, coaxing it out from within her coat. She swiped the spare material across his mouth, collecting blood still dribbling freely from his nose. "I'll be more specific next time, then," she sniped when her ministrations made him spit another curse. "It's not broken. The cunt didn't hit you any harder than you hit Kaeso, looks like. Please get your knee looked at when we get back, though."

"Four years too late for that," he mumbled. Then, because pain and frustration had made him unfairly abrupt; "Thank you for having Borso intervene."

Her lips twitched in a smile, prompting him to look down at the softness of her mouth and recall the feel of it pressed boldly against his. As if sensing his thoughts, she stepped back, her expression shuttering. "I had to. You're Kalduran's investment now."

Before he could respond, she held out his brace, a flimsy contraption of leather and metal now it wasn't wrapped around his leg. Unwilling to fumble back into it, he secured it to his saddle.

"Back to camp, then," he said. "We need to know what Khian's gambit is before we bypass Aukruna."

Borso gestured expansively to the city at their backs. "That was his gambit, no?"

As much as Endarion hoped Khian's plan was restrained to that one attempt to secure him, he couldn't help but think the depraved young Warmaster capable of more. It had been too obvious a trap, and too simply executed, too easily thwarted.

There was, he felt sure, more to come.

―

He was proven correct later that same afternoon.

Not only had Khian not made any attempt to capture Endarion's party before they returned to the security of their temporary camps, but Aukruna's main gate had been left tauntingly ajar. Scouts Endarion had sent back towards the city reported no signs of occupation atop the battlements, though Endarion had already convinced himself Khian hadn't garrisoned the city at all, but had rather pretended to occupy it for his earlier pretence of a duel.

Khian's offer to swap Estrid for Valerian hadn't yet been shared, because Endarion knew it would only inspire rifts between his soldiers and those of Kalduran. Somehow, though, Kaeso was of the mind his father's fate had been the subject of the meeting, and his uncle's refusal to share details beyond the lost bout seemed to have prompted a display of previously unmined levels of outrage within the young man.

Unwilling to listen to his nephew's shouted proclamations of his criminal incompetence and selfish unwillingness to save his own brother, Endarion had retreated to his command pavilion an hour ago. He'd considered fetching Basirius to be his glorified bodyguard for the evening, but Avelyn had already dedicated the entirety of the doglord battalion to bolstering the sentries, fearful of Khian's next attempt. He sat now at his field desk, tense and tight-chested, waiting for something, anything to happen. The pounding in his skull, birthed by the recent resetting of his nose by a camp medic, distracted him only somewhat.

More scouts had been sent towards Aukruna. Kaldurani combat-mages accompanied them as they wove warily closer towards the gate with the goal of eventually slipping inside and potentially springing Khian's next trap.

The attentions of the five allied armies were anchored fast to Aukruna. That was probably how Khian had planned it.

Ensconced as he was in Denjin's centre, with thousands of his soldiers milling about around him, Endarion at first failed to recognise the enemy trespass.

A soldier entered his pavilion unannounced. Initially taken aback by their sudden arrival, Endarion's jolted heart calmed at the sight of his stonehound crest decorating the Denjin-blue colours of the soldier's coat. But then his eyes flicked up to the intruder's face, and he frowned.

It was impossible for a commander to know every soldier beneath his command. The majority of them were faceless and nameless, and so he knew he had no right to wonder why this soldier's features struck him as misplaced.

And then the man surged towards him, and he knew his instincts were sound.

His instincts, but not his reactions. Stunned by this stranger as he'd been, he remained seated and unmoving as his attacker cleared the space between them and wrapped a hand around his forearm. The soldier didn't draw a blade or move to strike Endarion unconscious. He spoke no demands, uttered no insults, gave no instructions for Endarion to come with him.

Outraged now, Endarion rose. Just as he twisted to tear his arm free, the soldier firmed his grip and, with his free hand, opened a worldstriding portal.

Of course.

Endarion had a heartbeat to appreciate his oversight before he was tugged into the portal behind the disguised worldstrider. He tumbled headlong through the world's currents like a fish caught in a riptide, the fingers latched around his arm the only solid sensation in an abyss otherwise devoid of them. Any senses that had slowly returned to him in the aftermath of the duel were stripped away now, leaving him for the second time that day all but blind and deaf.

He tumbled free in a graceless rush, his kidnapper relinquishing him the moment solid ground rose to meet them. It was mostly by luck that Endarion managed to land on his feet and stay there.

Aukruna's empty main thoroughfare greeted him. When his vision cleared and he spared a glance up at the battlements overlooking the courtyard he'd recently duelled in, he saw no troops manning it. There was no garrison here, no trace of the half-army Khian had boasted of.

The Warmaster never intended to endure a siege. His father's army probably already marched south, where they would fortify the Sentinel against the alliance's advance.

When he looked up the thoroughfare, he saw a line of armed Tyrannus infantrymen blocking the road ahead. They levelled blades at him, and Khian stood in their centre like a proud conqueror. When Endarion spun on his heels, he found a similar line of enemy soldiers spreading out to cut off his escape. His 'strider kidnapper had already dissolved into the enemy ranks.

"All this for me?" he asked.

"What can I say?" Khian replied with an exaggerated shrug. "You're an important man. My mother wishes to speak with you. After she's done, my uncle desires your presence in the capital."

"I don't think I can spare the time, unfortunately," Endarion replied, clenching his fists. Not that it would do him any good; Khian had a company's worth of men backing him, and the worldstrider rudely hadn't given Endarion the chance to grab his sword before he'd been snatched away.

"Very unfortunate," Khian countered with a sneering curl to his lips, "because no one, not even an ex-Paramount-General, denies the Caetoran."

Endarion scoffed. "How did your 'strider get into my camp?"

Fake uniform aside, any stranger wandering through his multiple lines of sentries would've been quickly challenged and apprehended. There was no way the enemy 'strider had entered from the outside.

"Perhaps I should ask you why you didn't dispose of the stonehound painting whose double resided in poor Valerian's estate," Khian countered. The young man's chest swelled, inflated by his own cleverness.

Fuck.

In the tumult of Kaeso's arrival at Dujaro and what it suggested for Valerian and Sephara's own fates, compounded with the vision he'd suffered whilst duelling Daria, Endarion had completely forgotten about the stonehound painting and how its twin in the capital would now be in the Caetoran's possession. It was how Palla was able to skip between his camp and Empyria. Her 'striding tent sat less than a hundred paces from his own; he'd done the equivalent of leaving his front door unlocked in a neighbourhood infamous for theft.

Worse: he'd given his nemesis direct access to the heart of his camp. He only hoped Palla thought to destroy the painting herself when she realised he'd been taken.

The Warmaster raised a pointed forefinger, snagging Endarion's attention. He looked back to see a soldier looming behind him with a raised sword, the hilt positioned to crack the back of his head and knock him out. He grabbed the man's arm and twisted hard enough to yank the limb from its socket with a sickening pop. The soldier screamed as he went down, but Endarion had already taken the sword meant for his skull and moved onto his next opponent.

A handful of infantrymen converged on him. His stolen blade met the satisfying resistance of warm flesh. Blood sprayed him, droplets spattering his face and igniting in him a familiar bloodlust he was only too willing to sate.

Maybe he sold himself dearly; he was too far gone to the Iron Wolf's influence to know how many soldiers he took down with him. But Khian had erred on the side of caution with his numbers, and Endarion was soon overwhelmed. Someone tore his blade from his hand and delivered a fist to his face. His nose, already damaged by Khian's earlier punch, erupted with fresh agony, his vision lost for the few precious seconds it took his captors to snap his arms behind his back and drive him to his knees. He cried out as his crippled kneecap struck the dirt, every bone in his left leg singing with exquisite pain.

He didn't have long to appreciate that pain, because something cracked into the back of his head, and he knew no more.