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

Twenty-Eight

Estrid

Erodas, Tharghest

13th of Otanus

With no alternative but to strike onwards, the Kaldurani-Boratorren forces marched forever south, halting only to resupply at the towns and villages they encountered on the way. Though Tharghest had been messily conquered more than a decade ago, evidence of the destruction of the former kingdom's way of life remained evident in the diminished populations of native Dontili and the ruined state of many of the settlements. That buildings were still sprawled in the streets and entire villages were crumpled as if freshly razed proved the Imperium's cruel lack of care for its youngest province.

An estimated three-quarters of those Tharghestians—defeated soldiers and non-combatants alike—left alive in the conquest's wake had fled west to the Borrian Princedoms, a nation more willing to accept them. Estrid had never heard anything more on the matter, because Borria was notoriously unreceptive of communication from its neighbours. The natural mountainous borders between the nations only helped nurture this mutual silence.

They left behind small garrisons wherever they could, to provide the locals with protection from roving wild animals, as well as to strengthen their supply line. Aladar had made it a condition of his alliance with Endarion that Tharghest would be assisted as soon as a Boratorren sat upon the Invictum Throne, but it seemed he meant to gain a head start on his humanitarian efforts. Not that Estrid could see their half-hearted efforts making much difference, Tharghest being as abandoned and forgotten as it was. Sixteen years had been more than enough time for farmland to succumb to overgrowth and neglect, for trade to wholly disintegrate, for entire towns to fall irretrievably into disrepair.

Though their armies proved enough of a deterrent—the Denjini doglords most effective of all—Estrid had at first been shocked by the prevalence of wild dogs and big plainland cats prowling dangerously close to settled areas. Devoid even of permanent town guardsmen, the citizens of Tharghest were victimised as much by wild predation as they were by things like food shortage and general Imperium bullying.

Most of the soldiers left in their scattered garrisons were plucked from Elek's half of Kaldurani Prime. She knew the Baltanos checked Elek's power by diminishing his numbers and likely viewed him as a threat after their public argument following the execution of the six Prime deserters. Estrid might've spoken to Aladar in private about Elek had she not been afraid to be alone in his presence. He hadn't approached her after threatening her in his pavilion, and she was of the mind he'd been possessed. By what, she didn't know, but something clearly ailed her old friend. Not least because of his intimate knowledge of the destruction of a planet she'd never heard of.

As they marched, she sent out her scouts knowing they'd find nothing. She was almost certain the Imperial armies had already retreated to the Sentinel and wouldn't trouble themselves harrying Aladar's advance. They had Endarion as their captive, or else had already taken him directly to Empyria to be butchered.

No, she couldn't think like that. Not just for her own sake, but for the sake of the entire campaign. If Endarion had been killed, Valerian would be dead too, and Kalduran's continued involvement in a rebellion now lacking its masterminds would be pointless. Whatever else she did, she had to believe her support of Endarion wasn't pointless.

Now that the Sentinel loomed ever closer, the five armies composing their united forces started to spread out, to cover more ground on their approach to their ultimate destination, and to make themselves smaller targets. When the order was given for camp to be erected for the night, Aladar and Elek's Kaldurani Prime lagged several miles behind Estrid and her Dasjurans, and Kavan and Ricardus had pulled back a few miles behind them. It would lessen the toll on land already stripped bare by Imperial conquest if they weren't all clustered together, and Estrid chose a swathe of flat grassland around the small town of Erodas as the location for tonight's base.

The town, like many others scattered throughout Tharghest, echoed ghost-like in its emptiness, its confines boasting less than half the population expected of a settlement its size. It lurked at the edge of Estrid's vision, a spectre yanking at her guilty conscience. She slumped at her field desk, her mind a whirlwind. She felt like she had a limb roped to four horses, the pressure slowly sundering her.

Aladar's most recent fit weighed heavy on her mind, of course, but it was more than that. She might've been able to ignore the omens of it had she not already been exposed to immortal forces. The discovery that at least one Arisen—potentially more—had played a large part in the most recent war between Kalduran and the Imperium, for example. How could she and her allies have any hope of prevailing in this conflict if there were powerful mages many thousands of years old arrayed against them? Were there more like Dexion Mendacium embedded in their own ranks, prepared to either aid them or move against them? Were any of their actions their own, or was everything they did orchestrated by individuals who'd once been worshipped as gods?

Borso's harsh voice on the other side of the tent flaps interrupted her thoughts. When he entered, limned by the bright moonlight, his hands were clasped behind his back in military formality. He wore a deep frown that didn't sit well on his usually confident features.

"There's a matter that requires your attention," he said.

"What is it?"

Borso rocked on his heels. "A couple of your scouts have a prisoner," he said. "I can't say who in case anyone overhears. But you need to come and talk to him. He let himself be caught by your scouts specifically to meet with you."

"Him?" Estrid echoed. The list of enemies within the Imperial opposition who would allow themselves to be captured just for an audience with her was non-existent.

"We've got him secured in Erodas," Borso continued. "The scouts didn't know what else to do until you'd been alerted."

She shook her head as she rose from her seat. "This reeks of a trap," she said.

"You think I'd lure you into a trap?" her second said, one of his usual smiles alighting his face.

"I'd like to think my masantra wasn't so stupid to craft so obvious a ruse." She grabbed her coat from where she'd flung it and shrugged into it. "But fine, I'll take the fucking bait."

Borso held the tent flap open with his arm and ushered her out. "Trust me, you'll want to hear what he has to say."

The short journey from the fringes of her camp to the outskirts of Erodas was a tense one, a thousand and one scenarios circling her mind in a vicious succession of unfortunate outcomes. For a scant moment, she convinced herself the prisoner was Endarion, freed from his captivity to be delivered to her. She understood the absurdity of the fantasy: Endarion wouldn't be kept prisoner in a ramshackle town by her own men but rather conveyed straight back to his own army. The thought gave her comfort, if only for a few heartbeats. It was far preferable to the increasingly likely reality he'd already been executed.

Erodas had been built over the narrow snake of a river; its main trade was the fish found in extravagant quantities in the lake from which the river ran. It lacked walls and possessed only a token town guard, kept intact purely to fend off wild animals. As a result, when the Imperium had swept across the kingdom in an apocalyptic tsunami more than a decade ago, Erodas had, like so many other Tharghestian settlements, been unable to put up even the most desperate of fights. It had fallen to Imperial soldiers who'd then sated their bloodlust upon it in one of many depraved sackings. Estrid might've been able to look upon the results with disgust had her own soldiers not been involved in the large-scale rape, murder, and pillaging of an otherwise peaceful town of innocents.

One thing she'd learned back in those dark, gory days was that, when the world fell to death and fighting, even the most restrained and disciplined soldier would become a ravenous beast whose appetite could only be satisfied with suffering.

Thankfully, her scouts had chosen a townhouse on the edge of Erodas in which to stow their prisoner, so Estrid only had to traverse a handful of broken streets before Borso halted her outside the crooked doors of an equally crooked one-storey building.

"We paid the inhabitants to borrow their house for the night," Borso clarified as he rapped the coded knock against the splintered wood. "Enough to buy themselves a new house all over again, if they want."

It was a huge gesture for so poor a family, but in the grand scheme of things, it meant nothing. She'd felt similarly hopeless on the few occasions she'd been near the Slates, back in Empyria. The slums of the Imperium's capital had been expansive, and in places were as destitute as people could become without turning feral. She'd known even then there wasn't much any single person could do to resolve the predicament of those trapped by poverty. Give money to one family and you saved them. But what of those left behind? What of the other thousands of families with nothing? A similar story here: pay a Tharghestian family and you offered them salvation, but what of all the others? Did they not deserve the same chance at a better life?

She shook her head as the door creaked open to reveal the shadowy visage of one of her scouts. He snapped a sharp Drasken salute—palm flattened to breastbone, then forefinger touched to forehead—then stepped aside and granted them entrance. The door blotted out the moonlight behind them when it shut, plunging the cramped main hallway into near darkness. Dim candlelight flickered at the far end, spilling from the crack of a door propped ajar.

She didn't know who to expect beyond the door. An Imperial officer newly defected, perhaps? A face she wouldn't recognise but who would no doubt know her? One of the Caetoran's worldstriders, managed to flee their abusive overlord to escape into Tharghest?

Of all the people she might've expected, Dobran Tyrannus sat low on the list. No, Estrid amended with wide eyes and a slackened jaw, he's not even on that fucking list.

The Caetoran's brother had been expertly bound to a chair by arms and legs and planted in the middle of the room. Three other scouts were arrayed around him, the bows they carried held tightly in their hands with arrows nocked and aimed in his direction. Sparse illumination from a dozen flickering candles cast the man himself into darkened ominousness, and at her arrival he snapped his head up and showed glinting teeth in what she assumed was a smile. She noticed, with not a small amount of disappointment, that her scouts hadn't thought to beat or torture him. Maybe they were leaving her that privilege?

"Estrid Elerius," Dobran said in his smooth baritone, his stare latching onto hers. The smile never left his mouth, though it didn't bleed into his eyes. "I thought it was about time we had a thorough conversation, just the two of us. It has been years."

She didn't merit him with a response, instead looking over her shoulder to Borso. "Wait outside for me," she said. She indicated to the scouts that they should join her second.

"Is that a good idea?" Borso questioned. "You said only ten minutes ago how this smacked of a trap."

Dobran watched their exchange, somehow managing to seem like the most powerful person in the room despite being helplessly roped down. She mustered enough anger to hawk up a mouthful of spit and fire it at the bastard's boots, then turned to Borso. "I don't want yours or my scouts' uniforms to be ruined by the poisonous blood I'll spill tonight."

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Borso wavered, as if contemplating arguing further, then lowered his head in a subtle nod and waved to the three scouts. They, along with the fourth scout still in the hallway, melted back into the darkness. Estrid shut the door, then waited until she heard the teeth-grinding racket of the front door easing closed behind her soldiers before she pressed her back to the wall and focused on her prisoner.

Dobran started talking. "I understand your anger—."

Estrid's fist crunched the rest of his words back into his bastard mouth. His head flung back, his shoulders and torso following straight after. The rest of him rocked backwards and, with an embarrassing squeal of surprise, he spilled onto the floor with the chair still fastened beneath him, his head striking the stone with a crack.

Before he could try to manoeuvre himself up, Estrid set a boot on his chest and leaned her weight into him. She wondered, briefly, how hard she'd have to stomp on him to crush his ribcage, whether her foot would sink right into him. She didn't want to get his innards all over the fine leather of her boots, but the thought of him ruptured beneath her strength inspired a spark of heady bloodlust.

A pained wheeze escaped Dobran's flapping mouth. "I'm here… to talk… please…"

Had she let her savagery hijack her control, she would've raised her leg and brought her heel down onto his treacherous cunt face. She would've kept kicking and stomping his skull until nothing remained but a smear of blood and brains. She would've hauled his butchered corpse out into the streets and made a spectacle of displaying his body, perhaps dragging it behind her horse the whole way back to the Sentinel to show his wife and son and brother what she'd done to him.

It was the least she owed him.

Her joints crackled with unspent violence as she remembered the pitiful state of Erodas. That was the reward her bloodlust reaped when she opened the cage and let it run rampant. If she murdered Dobran here, defenceless as he was, she'd be no better than Endarion when the Iron Wolf dominated him. It would be an atrocity on a much smaller scale than Dykumas or Vadonis, but it would still be an atrocity.

She took her foot off him and leaned down to grasp his coat's collar. It took an almighty effort to wrench him and his seat upright, tall and powerfully built as the royal arsehole was.

"Thank you," he said after hacking a cough. "Now, I came here to—."

His words slithered back down his throat at the sight of the dagger she ripped from an inner pocket of her padded coat. She enjoyed his flash of bright fear as she loomed over him and let him believe she meant to slit his throat for a few luxurious seconds before she sliced through the bonds around his arms. She bent down and cut through the ropes around his ankles, then rose to her feet and stepped back, waiting to see how the man would react to his newfound freedom.

"Could have done that sooner. I was starting to lose the feeling in my hands and feet," he said, affronted.

"Don't tempt me," she growled in retort. "There's still time to relieve you of some of your anatomy."

Dobran rubbed at his chafed wrists and shifted himself in his seat until he affected a casual pose. "Estrid, my dear, be content with the fact that I am utterly terrified of you." A troubled look came over his face and he worked his jaw for a moment before spitting out a tooth she'd managed to knock loose when she'd punched him. "There, does that satisfy your anatomical quota for today's torture session?"

It was an intense effort to resist the urge to punch in the rest of his bastard teeth, but by bunching her hands into fists and digging her nails into her palms she was just about able to do it. "That depends entirely on what you're here to tell me. Please don't imagine this little trip of yours is anything but one-way."

She snatched another splintered chair, pushed to the far side of the room, and slammed it down opposite him. As she settled into it, bracing her hands against her thighs, she realised she'd been in this situation before. Not with Dobran, but with his cousin, back in Zaljuras. She'd sat opposite Endarion in similar circumstances, with him a hated enemy in her custody and only alive at her pleasure. It felt wrong to compare Endarion with Dobran, but were the two men really so different? They looked starkly alike, for one, though Dobran was shorter and not quite as weathered. They were both monsters in their own way, both Imperial servants for one reason or another, both men whose actions had helped steer the course of her life from one tragedy to the next.

But, as with Endarion weeks before at Zaljuras, she had the power here.

"Tell me why you're here. The less time I must spend looking at you, the better."

Dobran stretched out a kink in his back and pushed himself flat against the back of his seat. The candlelight bathed his face, and for the first time, Estrid noticed he wore a short scruffy beard and had let his hair grow out of its usual pampered precision. Though not an extreme transformation, Dobran had always been clean-shaven and neat, even in the field, and his lack of care now seemed significant.

"I've spoken with Endarion," he began. His eyebrows dipped into a frown and he huffed out a huge breath through his nose, as if testing it for damage. Blood speckled his lips as he talked, though he didn't seem too concerned about the lost tooth. "He's at the Sentinel, as I'm sure you've already guessed. He's a prisoner of my wife and son, another foregone conclusion. He's also still alive, but for how long even I cannot tell."

He paused then, to let her digest his news. He'd spoken as if word of Endarion's survival should please her, but in truth she knew it probably represented the worst-case scenario, at least for Endarion himself. Having already suffered months of prolonged debasement at the hands of the Shaeviren Dhamara, death would've been preferable for the scarred old general. Not another period of dehumanising torture, especially at the hands of those he hated most.

"They've been hurting him, of course. I can't lie to you on that count, and you deserve better than my lies. I didn't even know my son had secured him until a week into his captivity. I sought him out after that, took the chance to speak to him without Khian or Nazhira knowing.

"I have had no part in what is being done to him. I know you won't believe me, but if I'd had the means of freeing him, I would have done. I would have brought him to you for the simple reason that no one should be treated as he is being treated."

Estrid fought back a snort, failed. It turned into a hacking cough she exaggerated to grant herself a few seconds of reprieve. This cunt, speaking against the conditions his cousin suffered in, when four years ago he'd been responsible for landing Endarion in the Shaeviren torture tower? The hypocrisy stank like a week-old corpse left out in the sun, and she almost laughed at the man's unrivalled audacity.

"I never wanted to hurt him. Or you, for that matter. I always did as I was commanded by my royal brother. As did you and Endarion. The three of us are alike in this."

She surged from her seat, her dagger in her hand without her knowing how it had got there. "How dare you suggest I am like you?" she snarled. "How fucking dare you compare yourself to me and Endarion? Where the fuck do you find the sheer, unrelenting arrogance for such an insulting delusion?"

She could've sunk her blade into his eye socket. Could've wrenched it around in his brain and listened to the squelching symphony of his death throes. But she didn't.

"I am being sincere," Dobran said. His eyes strayed to the blade, but his expression remained fixed and unwavering. "Just as Endarion was threatened into committing all his past wrongs, so was I. Me abandoning him at Shaeviren, chasing you until you defected to Kalduran, ordering Endarion to raze Dykumas? All of that was because I wasn't given any more choice than he was when he was told to slaughter innocents."

There was a flicker of sincerity in the wretch's words. If he didn't speak the truth, he at least believed he did, and that had to count for something. Estrid didn't trust him as far as she could fling his defiled corpse after she was done with him, but he'd submitted himself to her, knowing how much she hated him. If for no other reason than that, she was willing to hear him out. At least for now, until her natural hatred overtook any sense.

She re-took her seat. "I don't care what the Caetoran's got over you, or why you've done the things you have, or how sad and sorry all of it makes you. I just care about why you're here. You sought me out for a reason. Now tell me."

"Firstly, you should know Valerian is dead. He was dead even before my son made the offer of swapping him for you. Khian thought it would introduce some conflict into your ranks."

Estrid tried to feel something at the passing of Endarion's brother but couldn't. Not when Endarion himself was still alive, still had a chance.

"Secondly, Endarion told me what his agent in Empyria discovered. Everything about the Caesidi and the Arisen, about how my wife and son and brother are involved with them. About how Kalduran and the Baltanos are innocent of the assassinations." He averted his gaze and folded his hands in his lap, a strangely meek gesture from so well-spoken an individual. "I had no idea how deep their plans went. I was never involved in any of them and might have tried to stop them if I'd known the extent of everything."

Again, he delivered his words with sincerity. The way he ducked his gaze beneath hers suggested shame, and shame wasn't something Dobran Tyrannus would display unless he was irreversibly convinced he had reason to be ashamed.

"Great, so you're on the same page as the rest of us." She rolled her eyes, as if to a slow child. "It took you a while to catch up, but you got there in the end. Did you want my congratulations? A nice warm hug? A pat on the back from each and every one of my soldiers?"

His jaw thrust out in indignation. A sliver of his old self, the self she was used to, emerged. "I'm not here for a fucking 'well done'. I'm here because I want to give you an edge against my family when you reach the Sentinel. The least you could do is show some gratitude that I've decided to throw myself upon your mercy when I could've stayed in the Sentinel, comfortable and safe, and watched you and your allies destroyed in the fields beneath the stronghold."

"Dobran, my dear, be content with the fact I am utterly grateful to you." She settled her dagger, still in her grip across her lap, and ran a finger across the naked blade. "Also be content with the fact that my gratitude thus far extends to not killing you. For now."

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, I'll get to the fucking point," he said. "The whole time this absurd conflict has been going on, Arch-General Reveka Rom has been stationed at the Sentinel. You can blame Endarion for that because he posted her there months ago. She's been using her free time industriously and has reopened a tunnel that once existed south-west of the Sentinel itself. One end opens up into Tharghest, the other is behind and beneath the walls of the Stronghold itself. The plan is to send one of our armies through the tunnel and surround your forces as you field yourself against the Sentinel's main entrance."

"But if I secure the tunnel first, I have direct access into the enemy's fortified position," Estrid finished for him.

He snapped his fingers, looking for a moment like a conspirator she'd tied her cause to. "Exactly. The mouth at the Tharghest side is about three miles south-west of the Sentinel. It's nestled between two small foothills. If you let me, I can mark it on a map for you. You'll need to take the tunnel before the rest of your forces arrive at the gates."

"And if this is a trap?"

He chuckled. "Estrid, my dear, do I really seem like the kind of person to risk his life for so obvious a trap?"

"You're a selfish snake, so not really."

She wondered if she could trust him. She'd be putting her army into his hands and staking the lives of her ten thousand against the sincerity she was only mostly certain she'd heard in his voice. She'd staked her army in Endarion's favour back before the battle outside Varanos, when she'd assured the other kandras and Aladar that her old lover would defect rather than destroy her. She'd been right about that, but Dobran wasn't an old lover. How far could she sensibly have faith in him?

"You are telling me the absolute truth when you say Endarion is still alive?" she asked.

He placed a hand over his heart. "My cousin is still alive. Not well, but alive." His forefinger stabbed out as if in sudden inspiration. "He told me to tell you that he was right."

"About what?"

"About it taking longer than he has left to redeem himself. Sounds like the sort of self-pitying nonsense he'd spew, but I'm assuming it's some kind of code?"

Not code, but confirmation that Dobran hadn't lied. It would take longer than I have left to redeem myself. That's what Endarion had told her amidst the ruins of murdered Dykumas, when she'd suggested he strive to keep himself alive in order to achieve redemption. Only she and Endarion had been privy to that conversation, which meant Endarion still lived.

She quelled a burst of joy and forced herself to focus on reality: he was alive, yes, but he was captive and wouldn't be allowed to live indefinitely. More than anything, she needed to retrieve him. Not just for herself, though that was a significant part of what made her decision for her. But also for his insurrection, for his army, for his surviving family, and for the cause she and the other Kaldurani had anchored themselves to in their desperation to neutralise the threat the Imperium under the Tyrannus Dynasty posed.

"Fine. I get you a map, you mark that tunnel. After, I'll have my scouts escort you out beyond the borders of our camp. I'm assuming you came on a horse?" Dobran nodded. "You'll get it back and return to the Sentinel. I trust no one suspects your absence?"

"I instructed my officers to tell anyone who asks that I'd returned to the Imperium to check on my estates. I've sent word to the staff at my estate to report that I'm there for as long as I'm not at the Sentinel."

So, he'd taken great care in his betrayal of his family, at least. That spoke well of his trustworthiness, if he'd expended time and meticulous planning to arrange his falling into her custody.

"If I offered you refuge I my army, would you accept?"

She didn't know why she made the offer, not even as the words left her mouth. She hated this man, hated him more than anyone and anything else, yet a part of her recognised the risk he'd taken in coming here, and the boon he offered with his information. As much as her anger burned as an eternal flame in the pit of her gut, she had to give him the choice she'd long been denied. Had to give him the option of safety.

She was relieved when he shook his head. "Whatever Janus, Nazhira, and Khian have done, they are still my family. All I have, all I ever will have. I have to fight for them, just as you have to fight for Endarion, and he for you. I'm sure you understand."

"I'm understanding things less and less as time goes on," she said.

There was nothing left to say, and she rose from her seat and made for the door before the situation could become awkward. Her hand was on the handle when he cleared his throat.

"I always resented how happy you and Endarion made each other, back in the day," he said, voice hushed. "If you both survive this, try and find that happiness again. Trust me, I know how empty life can be without the one you love."

A hundred venomous retorts clotted in her throat, but she swallowed them all. She didn't look back at him, instead inclining her head in a small nod she knew he saw.