Imperium Lupi

by Adam Browne

  The Watchers released the prisoners and exited the carriage, save the Captain. “In case you scumbags don’t know, those collars ain’t just pretty necklaces,” he said. “They’re negative imperium coils. Any release of imperious energy will make them, well… I’ll show you.”

  The Watcher Captain stepped over to the kneeling Rufus and raised a paw at him, fingers gnarled.

  “There’s really no need to demonstrate,” Rufus insisted.

  In response, perhaps, the Watcher spread his paw at the hyena instead. The big, spotty beast immediately gagged and fell about the floor, his back arched and legs kicking.

  “Gaaaagh!”

  “Stop it!” Rufus barked. “Have you no shame?”

  The Watcher lowered his paw and allowed the hyena to collapse panting on the floor, only to whirl round and smack Rufus across the muzzle, knocking him on his side.

  “Filthy hyena-lover!” the Watcher Captain spat. Stepping from the carriage he said to Tomek, “Lock ‘em up, lad. We’re done here.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Once his captain had departed, Tomek climbed aboard and went straight to Rufus.

  “You all right?” he asked, crouching before him.

  Rufus spat some blood from his mouth, “Never better, young wolf.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You saved my life back there.”

  Tomek shook his helmeted head, “No. I call ALPHA on phone. I ask for Janoah. She said it none of her business that some criminal being executed, whoever it is. She tell me not to waste her time again, or else.”

  Rufus chuckled, “I knew I could depend on her.”

  “But-”

  “You’d best get out of here. Go on, now.”

  Tomek hesitated a moment, then crouched behind Rufus and began untwisting his wire bonds.

  “What’re you doing?” Rufus seethed.

  “Is long way to Gelb,” Tomek explained, unwinding the cruel wire. “I cannot help with collar, but at least you can scratch itchy nose now.”

  Once he was free, Rufus instinctively reached for the broad collar clutching his throat. “Foolish chap… you could get in big trouble,” he chided, sliding a finger under the smooth metal in a vain attempt to loosen it. “But… thank you, Tomek.”

  Standing up and throwing the wire away, Tomek shrugged it off, “Is all right.”

  Sitting with his back to the wall, Rufus looked Tomek over and said, “Could I ask one last favour before you go?”

  The Watcher evaded committal with another shrug.

  Rufus dared regardless, “Take your helmet off for me.”

  “My helmet? Why?”

  “I like to remember the faces of my friends. Besides, it’s just good manners, isn’t it?”

  “Is true,” Tomek eventually admitted.

  Checking over his shoulder, the Watcher unbuckled his helmet and deftly slipped it off, revealing a grey and white wolfen face capped by hefty, black brows that were knitted over what Rufus swore were a brilliant set of aquamarine eyes – quite a jumble, but somehow it worked.

  Tomek spread his paws subtly, as if to say, ‘Well?’

  “I’ll remember you, Tomek Usenko,” Rufus assured.

  With a retiring guffaw, Tomek donned his helmet and took his leave. Stepping out of the carriage he slowly ground the hefty metallic door shut, peering in at Rufus all the way, until the last crack of daylight was extinguished.

  Rufus immediately collapsed on his back, paws to his face, and thanked Ulf he was still alive.

  That had been too close.

  *

  Rocked to and fro by the swaying carriage, Madou drifted on the precipice of sleep despite the cold, hard floor and countless other discomforts. He was brought back from the brink of dreams by the pain of someone tugging at the wire bonds about his sore wrists.

  The red wolf, Rufus?

  Madou thought better than to question him. Let the fool untie me if he wishes.

  As the wire fell away, Madou rolled over and scrabbled clear of his fellow prisoner with a defensive snarl.

  Rufus remained kneeling, paws on thighs, like a sage.

  “Sorry, you looked uncomfortable,” he said, in a sandpapery tone acquired from years of smouldering. “It’s a long way to Gelb.”

  Rubbing his bloodied wrists, Madou scoffed, “Why do you care, wolf?”

  “You heard the Watchers; I’m a filthy ‘hyena-lover’.”

  Madou said nothing as he crouched in the corner.

  “It’s not true, of course,” Rufus defended, red paw to dark grey chest. “There’s as many crooked hyenas as wolves or any other. I’ve just learnt to reserve judgement.”

  Again, Madou had nothing to say.

  “I’m Rufus,” his wolfen inmate said. “You’re Madou, the hyena who got bitten by the centipede in the refinery a few weeks ago, right?”

  Now Madou scowled, “What if I am?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Well, I am Madou. You’d better remember it.”

  Rufus nodded. “I have rode the wind, seen forests far below, met great beasts and small,” he said.

  “What?” Madou snorted.

  “I have rode the wind, seen forests far below, met great beasts and small,” Rufus repeated, rolling a paw.

  At length, the baffled Madou narrowed one violet, imperium-laden eye. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Letting his paw flop down, Rufus dipped his chin and actually chuckled, “Never mind.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “It’s nothing. Really.”

  It didn’t sound like nothing to Madou, but he decided not to pursue the matter for fear of being mocked, favouring the plumping up of his injured pride instead. “You know, I should kill you for blasting me in the back,” he spat, rubbing the metal band around his throat; it felt suddenly tighter. “I should snap your neck like a twig.”

  Rufus hummed, “How charming.”

  “I would be dead if not for you! I would be walking with my ancestors, with my family. Instead, you’ve doomed me to the mines!”

  “Yes, well, sorry about all that, but I wasn’t going to let you kill that cub.”

  Madou snorted, “What cub?”

  “Tomek,” Rufus replied. “He can only have been sixteen.”

  “That’s no cub!”

  “To my sensibilities it is. Now if I were you I’d watch that nasty temper or things will get uncomfortable.”

  “You’re threatening me?” Madou laughed, flashing his mighty teeth in the darkness, “I could… could throttle you to death with one paw…. puny wolf!”

  Madou was barely able to squeeze his words through his bobbing throat. This collar feels tighter than ever! What’s happening to me?

  “Grrrfgh!” he growled, grasping uselessly at the invisibly, yet perceptibly contracting band, his fingers unable to find a purchase beneath the metal pressed flush against his coarse hide. “Gaaagh!”

  Rufus watched Madou gag. “Your collar will be the only thing doing any throttling, I suspect,” he huffed.

  “Stop it!” Madou rasped back. “Please!”

  “It’s not me, it’s you, you daft beast!” Rufus explained sternly, yet maintaining impeccable calm, paws on knees. “The collar is sensitive to your imperious field. Don’t panic. Just stay still and keep your fires dampened and it’ll loosen its grip. Trust me, I know from experience.”

  Slowly, and whether he dampened his fires or not, Madou felt the collar widen a fraction. “Wolfen… barbarity,” he gasped, sitting back, chest heaving.

  “You’re half right,” Rufus observed. “Collars are used beyond the Republic, there’s nothing wolfen about it, though it is a barbaric practice, I’ll give you that.”

  Madou cleared his throat, but nothing more.

  Disturbed only by the carriage wheels thumping over joins in the rails with clockwork regularity, Rufus and Madou stared at one another, took each other all in. The hyena had thirty pounds on the wolf, but there was no denying
Rufus’s strength, least of all on the inside.

  “You hit hard… for a wolf,” Madou admitted, allowing a smirk. “I’ve heard you’re a very powerful Howler. They call you Red-mist.”

  “Yes. My apologies if I hurt you.”

  “It’s good. It let’s me know I’m still alive.”

  “Oh? And I thought you wanted to die.”

  “In battle,” Madou clarified, looking down. “Not here… or down some hole,” he added, with a gulp. “Are the mines as bad as they say?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Rufus said simply.

  Madou nodded, then began afresh, “You knew Prince Noss of the Four Winds, didn’t you? He was your friend.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nur….” Madou began, before cutting himself short.

  “Nurka?” Rufus guessed.

  Madou dipped his chin. “By the Wind,” he groaned, cupping his face in his paws. “That bastard Vladimir. He and the Bloodfangs… they… they spent days torturing me, trying to make me talk. I… I didn’t even acknowledge Nurka’s name for days, yet you’ve teased it out of me already.”

  “Honey attracts more bees than vinegar,” Rufus said, “I’m much sweeter than wily old Vladimir; handsomer too.”

  Madou laughed falsely, “I suppose it doesn’t really matter now, not where I’m going.”

  Rufus moved on. “Since you asked, Prince Noss was sent to me to be trained as a Howler. He was a good friend,” he sighed. “That is, before he tried to murder me.”

  “That’s not true!” Madou snapped.

  “Pardon?”

  “Prince Noss didn’t try and murder you, Howler.”

  “I’ve the scars to prove it.”

  Madou squirmed, “What I meant is he was forced to do it, tricked by your own kind!”

  “If by forced you mean bribed, then yes-”

  “You don’t understand!” Madou spluttered, shaking a fist at Rufus. “The Howlers, they held my Prince’s tribe in the palm of their paws. If he didn’t comply, they’d have killed us all. It was all a filthy wolfen trick, an attempt to blacken our race and turn… turn sympathisers like you… against us!”

  Madou clenched his teeth and grasped at his collar as it tightened mercilessly.

  “Grrrrfgh!”

  “Calm down,” Rufus advised. “There’s no need to shout. I believe you.”

  The hyena nodded and gasped.

  Whilst Madou rasped for air, Rufus hummed calmly, “It hardly matters. Noss’s attempt on my life didn’t change my views in the slightest.”

  “Then you still support our cause?”

  “In as much as I believe hyenas, and all other races, should be made wolfkind’s equals, yes,” Rufus clarified guardedly.

  “All races?” Madou said.

  “Yes. That is the impartialist stance.”

  “Even… even the little beasts?”

  “And why not?”

  Madou snorted in obvious derision, but didn’t, or couldn’t, mount an argument.

  Rufus moved on. “In any case, one can’t change Lupa by planting a few bombs and causing mischief,” he dismissed. “THORN is just making the situation worse, for the hyenas and the little beasts.”

  “We’ve tried peaceful means!” Madou protested. “We are ignored!”

  “I’m not talking peace.”

  “But you just said-”

  “THORN thinks too small,” Rufus explained. “The only way to bring about real change would be to overturn the current government and set up a new regime headed by progressive beasts.”

  “Beasts like you?” Madou said, strangely expectant.

  “I’m flattered,” the Howler hummed, amused at the thought. “Ah… but it’ll never happen.”

  Madou looked sideways, then back again, “Why not?”

  “You’d have to eliminate every single Den Father in one sitting for a start.”

  A pause.

  Madou threw it out there. “What if someone were to plant a black-imperium bomb?”

  “You mean like THORN plans to?” Rufus replied wryly. “That probably won’t work, you know.”

  “Why not?” Madou growled indignantly.

  The imperiologist emerged, “Because black-imperium is very dense; it’s the densest substance known to beast.”

  “So?”

  “So, any vapour cloud from such a bomb would sink to the ground, not billow across the whole city.”

  “What about the Ashfall? That’s spread miles!”

  “The Ashfall? It’s taken centuries for that to get as bad as it has. Ash is fluffy and carries much further alright, but there’s not much black-imperium in it; if there was we’d all be dead! More than poison plants, the Ashfall physically smothers them. And when they die there’s no roots to hold the soil together, so you get soil erosion, making farming impossible. That’s the real trouble.”

  Madou sat forward, “But… but in an enclosed space, like the Pack Summit, the black-imperium would be trapped and-”

  “My dear hyena,” Rufus woofed, “the Hummel Den where the Summit’s being held this year is enormous! Enclosed indeed, it has halls loftier than opera houses. You’ll get some I dare say, but the Den Guard will have ample time to whisk the Den Fathers to safety the moment any funny cloud rolls in. Anyway, the fact THORN is stealing black-imperium makes it obvious what you’re up to and the Howlers will be ready for it. You won’t sneak anything past them, and a front-on attack will never get near the Den Fathers. It’s quite foolish.”

  Rufus was perhaps only reassuring himself.

  After a pugnacious staring match, Madou suddenly looked away and clumsily changed subject by rubbing his huge, spotty arms and complaining, “It’s cold.”

  “I didn’t mean to burst your bubble-”

  “Nurka will find a way!” Madou snapped. “He’ll find a way to change things. You’ll see, wolf! You’ll see.”

  Silence.

  “Well we needn’t fall out over it,” Rufus said, settling down for the night. “Where we’re going none of this is going to matter.”

  *

  “Well?” a female barked – Janoah perhaps, Werner couldn’t be sure.

  “He’s all right,” replied a dulcet male voice – Vladimir of course, it was the phone line to his office that had been tapped after all. “Though by the time I got there,” he went on, “Rufus was tied to a stake. A minute later he’d have been shot.”

  “By Ulf’s fangs! I’ve been worried sick all night. Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

  Yes, definitely Janoah.

  Pressing the earpiece closer to his head to overcome the hiss of white noise, Werner stopped chewing on a sandwich long enough to listen carefully.

  “Sorry,” Vladimir excused, “I was invited for a drink, which escalated to dinner. I couldn’t get away. The Elder Watcher gets desperately lonely out there on the fringes of society. Pathetic really.”

  The chink of glass and bubbling liquid indicated Janoah was pouring herself a stiff drink. “Rufus only has to hold out a few months until Amael makes his move,” she said, “but I know Gelb is no picnic and he’s not getting any younger-”

  “Don’t worry. The Warden will want to keep him alive. Good miners help Gelb turn a profit.”

  “Since when can Rufus mine?”

  “Trust me, with his corona he’ll be a natural. Noss is still alive, last time I checked. Why’d you think I hid the treacherous scum there? I knew he’d thrive. We may yet need him to mould Amael to our ends after the dust settles. If we have Noss, we have the hyenas, and the tribes will do anything for him, even go to war with Amael. We can threaten him.”

  “Clever Vladimir,” Janoah purred.

  “Look, we shouldn’t talk over the phone,” Vladimir suddenly grumbled, shuffling in his seat, perhaps leaning closer to the phone or looking over his cloaked shoulder, it was hard to say. “It could be dangerous.”

  Werner chuckled.

  At length, Janoah said, “I’ll be in touch.�
��

  Click!

  Scribbling a few notes, Werner set down the earpiece and turned off the lamp. The cramped, closet-sized space was cast into utter darkness, except for a tiny pinprick of light beaming from a hole in the wall. With a peek through said hole to check his office was deserted, Werner quickly slid the wall aside and squeezed his substantial pink girth through, before sliding the bookcase on the other side into place with a firm click.

  His secret room remaining thus, the Politzi Chief grabbed his telephone and dialled a memorised number. He let it ring three times, then hung up.

  Seconds later, Werner’s phone rang.

  “What?” someone urged immediately.

  “I got news for our friends,” Werner whispered.

  “What news?”

  “Meet me in the usual place, usual cash.”

  “I thought you were with us now?” they snarled. “That’s what they said.”

  “I am, I am!”

  “And still you want payment, you greedy, fat hog-”

  “On my salary? You bet I do! You can afford it, Tristan, you Eisbrands are rolling in-”

  “Shut up! Don’t use my name, you idiot.”

  Werner went silent, but for a smack of the lips.

  “Fine, fine,” came his contact, with a growl, “but this had better be worth it.”

  Underlining ‘Noss’ on his notes, Werner said, “Oh it is, mate.”

  Hanging up the phone, the big hog grabbed his red Politzi hat and headed out. “Popping to the Common Ground, Borce,” he told the rabbit, as they passed in the Den’s corridors. “Hold the fort for me.”

  “Will do, sir,” Borce confirmed. “What’re you going there for, sir?” he asked, adding as Werner whirled on him, “In case Vladimir asks.”

  Werner beamed, “Just following a lead, lad.”

  Part III: GELB

  Diary Excerpt 2

  It’s been a while, but I should write. The trouble is not much is happening around here. Uther and Ivan have been away for nearly two months now, and Rufus remains in Gelb despite several formal protests by Thorvald. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

  Riddle’s horribly quiet without them, especially Uther, at least for me. I’ve been keeping myself to myself, mostly frequenting the gym and going to see Sara over in Arkady during my spare time. I’ve kept an eye on Lorna and Rosa too; Uther would want that. My actual rounds have been dull and uneventful. I think my run-in with that giant centipede has spoilt me! Still, I shouldn’t complain.