Imperium Lupi

by Adam Browne

  “Wait!” he barked, slipping through the pipes and into the foggy refinery after the stranger. He found him visually checking the bodies of the fallen THORN members.

  Before Ivan could ask who he was, the metal-clad wolf turned to him and said, “WHERE’S THE LEADERS?”

  Between casting his eyes over that helmet, with its big filter and metallic ears, and that mighty armoured body, Ivan found his tongue. “The sewers,” he said, pointing, “I think.”

  A look, an incongruous and metallic, “TA.” Then the stranger clomped over to the sewer.

  Ivan followed, demanding, “Who are you?”

  “RAFE,” the iron wolf replied, “I’M WITH ALPHA.”

  “A Prefect?”

  “SORT OF, YEAH.”

  On that cryptic note, this Rafe lowered his legs into the pitch black hole and swung down, clinging onto the lip with his paws long enough to add, “STAY HERE, MATE.”

  He let go.

  Rafe fell quickly at first, but then defied the laws of nature by slowing in mid air. He landed gently, yet with an almighty splash, blasting a perfectly spherical cascade of water against the cylindrical brick walls – he had used the power of his imperious corona to soften his landing. Glancing around, he waved a paw over his brooch. The white-imperium ‘A’ motif began to shine, lighting up the sewer with a cold, pure light.

  Satisfied, the ‘sort of’ Prefect sprinted down the passage at unnatural speed, his spherical corona pushing aside a torrent of water like a motorboat.

  Ivan looked on, astonished.

  Torn between curiosity and sympathy, he hurried over to Uther, who lay on his front amidst the smog. With trepidation Blade-dancer rolled him over.

  “Urrgh!”

  “Still alive?” Ivan said, with a hint of relief.

  “Kinda… wish… I wasn’t,” was Uther’s seething reply.

  Reinforcements were approaching; Ivan could hear Vladimir shouting orders. The Bloodfangs would soon have the refinery under control.

  “Help’s on the way,” Ivan assured Uther.

  “Go get the bastards, sir,” Uther growled, laughing through his bloodied teeth, “Some birthday... eh?”

  “You’ll have many more yet. Tell Vladimir I’m on their tail.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Without time to search for his sword, Ivan grabbed the one Uther had taken from Themba and lowered his legs into the dark, dank sewer. It was a long way down. Clinging onto the lip, Ivan hung for a moment, then dropped.

  He landed, stumbled on the mangled ladder hidden in the water and fell on his rump. Rancid water sloshed inside his leg armour and soaked his breeches.

  Nice.

  Blade-dancer could’ve spectacularly softened his landing like Rafe, but the cost didn’t outweigh damp breeches.

  Standing up and waving his paw over his red brooch, Ivan dispelled the gloom like Rafe had, albeit less effectively. Red-imperium was the very worst for lighting, but it was at least subtle, and the Bloodfangs were all about subtle.

  Ivan could see well-enough and sloshed down the sewer in pursuit of both THORN and this ‘Rafe’, whoever, or whatever he was.

  *

  Nurka stepped into the curtain of rain; night was falling, hastened by the thickening fog. Before him the polluted River Lupa lapped at the city’s flood defences; behind him the gaping maw of the industrial sewer and storm drain, not to mention his comrades, all of them smeared with the ash and filth of Lupa’s secret bowels.

  One of the downtrodden hyenas slipped in the growing torrent of sewer water. With a yelp of alarm he was nearly washed clean into the river, but Nurka grabbed his paw and set him back on his feet.

  “I’ve lost enough brothers today,” Nurka replied, tossing his imperium lamp in the brown water. It bobbed about in the growing waves, before sinking into oblivion.

  Under the cover of encroaching darkness, Nurka led his defeated band across to a slimy wooden jetty where a rusty barge piled high with imperium ash waited.

  Several slick-looking figures were already aboard – otters, their dark, muscular outlines barely discernable against the grey piles of poisonous ash. Masters of the waterways, otters could be relied upon to smuggle anything in or out of Lupa, provided the price was right.

  Arriving at the barge, Nurka nodded at the oldest of the sailors, a tough, salty sea dog with a patch and several scars flecking his greying fur.

  “Yah be late, Nurka,” the otter said in his people’s laid-back patois.

  Nurka replied, in his own rasping tone. “We faced some difficulties.”

  “‘Owlers, yah?”

  “Amongst other things.”

  “We is taking a big risk fer you, Chakaa! If dem ‘Owlers discover who we are, our lives be over.”

  Nurka knew where this was going. “You’ll be compensated double-pay, otter,” he assured. “Just get us clear of Lupa.”

  Satisfied, the otter nodded at some of his better-built, rougher-looking crew. They climbed on the ash pile and dug out some ropes hidden amongst the spent imperium. They heaved on the ropes and the ash bulged aside as a trapdoor broke the surface, revealing a secret hiding space built beneath the poisonous piles. Some ash tumbled down inside the hole, but not much – the rain was making it cake together with the consistency of fine, damp sand.

  Someone popped up through the hole, a rabbit in a gas-mask, his long white ears discoloured by ash. He beckoned Nurka with a grubby white paw, doubtless he was eager to be away – rabbits will be rabbits.

  The otters, meanwhile, set down a box of grim-looking gas masks cut for hyena dimensions and the members of THORN each took one in passing, Nurka climbed on the ash and passed his extraordinary bow and quiver to the rabbit in the hole; the little beast passed it along the line to some hyenas already hiding within the barge. Nurka tossed the rabbit his skull helmet too, which he caught and passed along as well.

  “What happened?” the rabbit asked, his voice heavily muffled by his gas mask. He took a disappointing head-count of the hyenas, “Where is everyone?”

  “Sewer centipede,” Nurka replied. “Madou and the others didn’t stand a chance.”

  The white rabbit let out a strained grunt, but no words of any meaning.

  Nurka looked on the positive side, “They died well. Besides, it’ll take some Howlers with it.”

  “Aye. All the same, I’m sorry, Nurka.”

  “We are all ready to die, Casimir.”

  The hyena chief donned his suffocating gas mask, but didn’t climb in with Casimir just yet. He stayed outside, ushering his comrades into the trapdoor one by one.

  Themba was last up. He exchanged a sad, violet-tinged glance with Nurka from beneath his own gas mask. They tapped their grille-clad snouts together in camaraderie, in memory of Madou and the others.

  The chug of an imperium engine vibrated through the barge’s iron hull as the otters hurriedly cast off, putting water between them and the jetty.

  The fog rolled in and the shore disappeared but for the tip of the jetty, lolling like a great tongue.

  “Get below, Nurka,” the otter captain said.

  Nurka nodded and ushered Themba down the hole, passing him his kristahl hammer as he did so.

  “HALT IN THE NAME OF THE REPUBLIC!”

  All ears, eyes and noses, otter, rabbit and hyena, pricked, searched and sniffed for the source of that iron-clad voice. It came from a white light on the foggy jetty. It bobbed about like a firefly a moment, before revealing itself to be a brooch pinned to the cloaked chest of a giant, grey, armoured wolf!

  The beast thundered down the jetty and leapt towards the barge with obvious imperious strength. Sailing cleanly across the dark, oily gap, the iron wolf landed heavily on the barge amidst a shockwave of coronal energy that blew ash away in a bubble of choking clouds.

  Whilst the otters coughed and spluttered, blinded by bitter ash, Nurka remained unaffected beneath his gas mask, yet stunned all the same. He was met with an all-metal monster, as tall as Th
emba and doubtless as strong. It had a Howler mantle draped about its mighty shoulders, secured by that shining white brooch. At its back, Nurka saw an exhaust puffing noxious clouds of ash, like a machine!

  A machine shaped like a beast? What blasphemous wolfen contraption is this?

  That was the last lucid thought Nurka enjoyed before the wolf raised a paw and blasted him in the chest with a blinding bolt of imperious plasma.

  “Oof!”

  The thunderous blow hit Nurka like a runaway train, pressing him backwards into the piles ash, which tumbled down over his spotty shoulders.

  Unable to breathe and blinking stars from his eyes, Nurka saw one of the otters come up behind the approaching monstrous wolf and hit him over the back with a wrench. There was aloud clang and slight stumble. The wolf turned and simply shoved otter aside, knocking him harmlessly overboard.

  “TELL YOUR CREW TO SURRENDER” the wolfen machine said to the nearby otter captain. “I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANY LITTLE BEASTS.”

  “Little beasts?” the captain spluttered, brandishing a huge imperium pistol. “There be no little beasts here, ‘Owler! We otters be a proud warrior race. Take this, yah arrogant Lupan!”

  Ka-crack!

  The otter’s pistol round pinged off the wolf’s chest, leaving but a tiny scratch.

  The otter’s beady eyes gawked in amazement.

  With a grunt and a single paw, the wolf shoved the otter captain overboard and advanced on Nurka.

  “SURRENDER, THORN SCUM.”

  Before Nurka could get up, Themba leapt out of the ship’s hold where he had been waiting for the right moment and swung his hammer down, hard and fast at the wolf’s head. The metal Howler turned to meet the blow with one armoured paw held high. Amidst a blinding, deafening spark of plasma, paw and hammerhead met. The hammer rebounded, as if Themba had struck a trampoline! The weighty weapon tugged him off-balance and dragged him tumbling down the ashen piles.

  The metal wolf shook his paw a few times, perhaps injured by the incredible force Themba’s hammer had applied, but still standing.

  He turned to Nurka with those sad, yellow eyelets. “GIVE UP. YOU CAN’T BEAT ME.”

  His breath laden with fear and adrenaline, Nurka scrambled to his feet and lunged at the enemy, trying to stick him with his sword. In defiance of his dimensions, the huge wolf weaved aside with a boxer’s reflexes, slapped Nurka’s sword down, and jabbed the disarmed hyena in the ribs, the resulting plasmatic blast throwing him hard against the secret entrance to the hold.

  “Gaagh!”

  “HAD ENOUGH, MATE?”

  Coughing beneath his stifling gas mask, Nurka looked up and asked, “What… w-www-what are you?”

  “Eisenwolf!” someone shouted from below.

  The metal wolf looked past Nurka, to the hold. A white rabbit in a gas mask slowly, tentatively emerged from the piles of poisonous ash, paws behind his head.

  “All right, mate,” he said. “You win.”

  “Casimir!” Nurka spat.

  “He’s an Eisenwolf, Nurka,” the rabbit said. “We can’t beat the likes of him. Trust me, I know from the war.”

  “Eisenwolf?”

  The ‘Eisenwolf’ stared at Casimir with his unblinking glazed eyes, metallic ears twitching, following the rabbit’s every move as he stepped nervously sideways across the barge, out into the open.

  “HALT!” the Eisenwolf warned.

  “Easy, lad,” Casimir replied, nursing the imperium pistol tucked behind his head, the barrel glowing with an eerie green light. “We’ll come quietly.”

  The Eisenwolf cocked his head to one side and stared for an age. “TAKE YOUR MASK OFF,” he demanded.

  “What?”

  “YOUR MASK; TAKE IT OFF. DO IT!”

  Baffled, but nodding in compliance, Casimir slowly unbuckled his mask and pulled it over his long ears, away from his white face.

  Suddenly, he threw the mask at his feet and raised his pistol at the Eisenwolf.

  “Everyone, get down!”

  Even before Nurka, Themba and the watching otters threw themselves down in the ash, Casimir pulled the trigger.

  “Try an imperium pearl on for size, you monster!”

  Crack!

  A gleaming, ethereal arrow of green light sped from the pistol barrel and into the Eisenwolf’s massive chest. The metal wolf looked down at himself, paws raised to where the pearl had struck, then up at Casimir, his inert helmet somehow betraying such melancholy.

  “DAD?”

  The pearl exploded and a blinding blast of imperious energy ripped across the deck, bowling Casimir head over tail and sending ash swirling from the polluted barge in great clouds.

  Time passed. All was silent, save for waves slapping against the hull of the boat as it rocked to and fro in the aftermath. Coughing and spluttering, Casimir and the others looked all around them.

  The Eisenwolf had gone.

  Casimir scrabbled across the deck on all fours and grasping the rails peered overboard, into the inky, fog-bound blackness of the River Lupa. There was no sign of life, no sign of anything, not even a shred of cloak floating on the waters.

  A big, weighty paw clapped on the rabbit’s shoulder, startling him. Half-expecting to be met with the terrifying Eisenwolf, he was instead greeted by Themba, only slightly less terrifying in that gas mask.

  “Nice work, long-ears,” he acknowledged, his profound voice muffled.

  “Thanks, spotty-bum,” Casimir replied.

  Themba frowned, then cackled, as hyenas ever did.

  The otters that had been thrown overboard swam neatly back to the boat. “What was dat explosion?” the captain demanded. “Looked like a pearl.”

  Nurka tramped over, clutching his ribs. “How did you do that, Casimir?” he marvelled. “You’re just a little beast.”

  Indignant, Casimir hopped to his feet and his full diminutive height, his long ears barely reaching Nurka’s masked nose, or, in Themba’s case, his chest. “Oi! Little beasts can shoot straight too, you know. I was in the war when you were still on milk, boy!”

  “I only meant, Casimir, that you little beasts cannot wield imperium or charge pearls,” Nurka explained gingerly.

  “Oh yeah?” the ‘little beast’ scoffed. “Says who?”

  His hyena comrade blinked a few times, “Then, you’re a rabbit Chakaa?”

  “Sort of.”

  “How can that be?”

  Casimir dipped his chin, “During the war I was… I was captured and… experimented on.” He whirled away, “These mad doctors and imperiologists. They exposed little beast prisoners to imperium, injected us with stings, racked us, just to see if we could be made into… Howlers, or whatever you call a rabbit like me. Most of us died, but I came through it. I used my power to escape ‘em. Been looking over my shoulder ever since, even before I found Bruno.” Casimir chuckled fondly, “That’s how I found him, how I knew what he was. I was one too. He never knew. Never knew anything.”

  After a brief, almost respectful silence, Themba said, “Where’s your corona?”

  “It’s weak,” Casimir dismissed. “And I’ve learnt to repress it, that and so many things. No more, though. Now I’m standing up and being counted, for Bruno.”

  “Well said, Chakaa Casimir,” Nurka praised.

  “Heh! Chakaa. Yeah, right.”

  With a last glance at the waters, Themba said, “We should get below, Chief.”

  Once everyone had regained their wherewithal and otters had sounded the ship, Nurka’s party went below. The chief stepped back from the trapdoor, which slammed shut over him, plunging him into blackness. He could hear the otters shovelling ash over the door, burying him and his comrades alive. It was unnerving, even for the stoic Nurka.

  Nurka’s eyes adjusted to the light of a single swaying lantern and his comrades slowly came into focus, hyenas one and all, except Casimir. They stood and sat nervously amidst the dozen spherical canisters of black-imperium. The tiniest leak would kill every
one in minutes, even Nurka and Themba, though as powerful Chakaa they would agonise the longest. The air was already laden with poisonous fumes from the heaps of decaying imperium all around and without masks everyone would choke regardless. That was the beauty of hiding under a deadly heap of ash; nobody was going to look too hard.

  Hanging onto an overhead beam as the boat swayed, Nurka cast his eyes over his dejected brethren, especially Themba, who slumped in a corner, arms crossed over his armoured knees, a mighty warrior, laid low by his own perceived failure and the loss of Madou. The three of them had suffered together for so long. It seemed impossible he was gone.

  “We will make their sacrifices count,” Nurka said quietly, as if he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, before shouting, “By the Wind, we’ll make them all count!”

  Everyone looked to him, so he continued.

  “The time to strike is nearly upon us. You will have your revenge, Themba, for your slain family; and you Casimir, for your son, Bruno – a wolf no less! How low they scrape, these Howlers, they kill even their own kind in their greedy pursuit of power! Not for much longer. We will tear down their oppressive banners and free all the races!”

  Breathing heavily under his stifling mask, Nurka suddenly clutched at his right arm and fell sideways against the flaking hull. Everyone jumped to help, none quicker than Themba, who shot to his feet and hurried over to support his chief.

  “Nurka!”

  “It’s nothing,” Nurka seethed, nursing his sword-arm.

  “Did the iron wolf wound you?”

  “No, it’s just the ash in my blood. I… I had to use the imperious fire to fend off… Blade-dancer.”

  “Blade-dancer?” Themba repeated, holding the weakened Nurka up. “What do you mean?”

  “The white wolf,” Nurka explained.

  “He was the Blade-dancer? Our Prince’s old friend?”

  “So he claimed; I believe him.”

  Casimir’s ears pricked, but nothing more.

  Themba blinked a few times, “You killed him?”

  “Hahahahaaaa!” the reserved Nurka laughed, giving a personally rare display of his people’s hysterics, “No, the hundred-legs interrupted our... meeting.”