by Adam Browne
Josef could but shrug. “Perhaps you’re right. Still, Rafe may not last long enough to shape Lupa’s destiny, as you hope.”
“Is there anything else you can try?”
“Other than being frugal with his abilities? Well, there is my shock imperium therapy.”
“That torture? No!”
“It might be your only option in a pinch. Even Rafe can metabolise only so many stings in any day. It’s not torture if he accedes to it. You can only ask.”
Nodding and taking her leave, Janoah lingered at Josef’s door long enough to pat the frame and chuckle, “Well, let’s see what the seaside air does for an Eisenwolf.”
Chapter 28
The Scarab Gang had no trouble fulfilling their quota today thanks to Rufus’s imperious senses and the combined muscle power of Madou, Helmut and Tomek. Zozizou pitched in, but it was a struggle for the little hyena.
A paw clapped on his bare shoulder. “You all right, Zozizou?” Rufus asked amiably.
“Yes, yes,” he rasped – his Lupan was even poorer than Tomek’s.
“Take a break if you’re tired-”
“No. Fine, fine.”
“All right,” Rufus hummed, breaking out an ember and smouldering away. He offered a stick to Zozizou and the hyena gratefully accepted, as did everyone else.
Only Tomek refused. “Is not good for you,” he puffed, shovelling ore Helmut and Madou were cutting from the wall with picks into the cart.
“I know,” Rufus chuckled, removing his ember and looking at it. “I can’t go five minutes without one usually, but lately I’ve cut down. You know, I think my stint down here has been beneficial for my health!”
Tomek laughed, but knew that couldn’t be true. Rufus was looking more ragged with each passing week. His red and grey coat, once so shiny and groomed, was scruffy and dirty. He’d lost a lot of weight too. Tomek supposed he himself looked terrible. The dearth of mirrors around here was a blessing.
Bzzzzzzzzt!
The announcement from the speakers strung throughout the subterranean complex was so distorted by the meandering caves and poor speaker quality that nobody directly understood a word, but the mangled syllables made up the familiar pattern of, ‘Time up, return to base, or else.’
The Scarabs downed tools and started back, their mine cart safely within quota, though Rufus hadn’t found any imperium crystals today. Tomek felt ambivalent about that as donned his tatty stripy shirt. On the one paw no crystals meant no extra food or venom, but on the other paw there was no danger that Rufus was going to get in trouble at the checkpoint for smuggling.
“The crystals haven’t had time to grow back,” Rufus was saying to Helmut, himself an ex-miner of some skill. “This shaft needs a few months to recover.”
“Recover?” Tomek chirped.
Rufus looked at him, “Yes. Gelb’s an imperium plume, dear boy.”
Tomek frowned, “Plume? What is plume?”
“By Ulf, what’re they teaching you youngsters in school these days?” Helmut snorted, pushing the cart. “What’s a plume indeed.”
“I leave school when I was ten to work fields,” Tomek defended. “Then I get rot and that’s it, off to Howler Academy.”
Rufus tutted gently and shook his head.
Helmet educated the young wolf. “Imperium wells up from the Erde, lad,” he said. “It’s dissolved in molten rock and boiling water. Places where that happens are called plumes, and Gelb is smack bang in the middle of a whopping one.”
“The hot springs are laden with imperium,” Rufus elaborated. “As the water cools and percolates through the rock, the imperium precipitates out, forming ore and crystals.”
“Prez… Prezipitate?” Tomek struggled.
“It’s left behind, like salt in a saucepan of water if you boil the water away.”
“Oh! Yes, yes.”
Rufus rambled on, enjoying the pleasure of educating young Usenko. “Beasts have come to these parts looking for imperium for centuries. In fact, sick old Howlers pop down to nearby Everdor to bathe in their famous hot springs. It supposedly heals their aching bodies. Does a beast no good, in my opinion. Too much imperium kills most things stone dead, hence the lack of any greenery around here. Gelb was a desolate place long before the Republic of Lupa mined it, and likely will remain so long after.”
“After Lupa?” Tomek scoffed with amusement. “What you mean after?”
“The world will outlast beast and his squabbles, Tomek.”
Ending on that prophecy, Rufus flicked his half-spent ember away into the gloom before any lingering guards caught him smouldering. Embers and other contraband were overlooked in the camp, within reason, but not down here. Rufus wasn’t sure why, but pigs were notoriously petty. It amused the bullies amongst them to keep the prisoners guessing as to how to best avoid pain. In the morning they could be nice, turning the other cheek, even giving advice on what shaft to mine; come the afternoon they might hit you over the neck for no reason, or turn the dreaded dial on their correction boxes and watch you writhe.
Rufus had a mind to correct them, but knew that would end his mission, and his life.
Passing the guards without incident this time, Rufus and his gang entered the massive gaping cave that served as the base camp for every shaft, with all its checkpoints and rails converging ahead. The other teams filed out and lined up with today’s offerings, until the cave was packed with hot bodies and stifled by the dank smell of wet fur – the mines literally ran with the imperium-rich water Rufus had been talking to Tomek about, and nobody emerged dry.
The mining teams shuffled resignedly forth with their carts and tokens were distributed accordingly. As Scarab neared their turn for inspection, Rufus felt a powerful imperious presence mingling with his own and sensed long before the Warden emerged onto the watchtower that he would do so. Out of the corner of his eyes, Rufus spied the cloaked wolf grasping the watchtower railing, looking down upon the stripy masses like some emperor, most especially Rufus’s gang.
What does he want? Is he protecting us?
Rufus privately entertained the notion that the Warden was in on ALPHA’s plan to thwart Amael’s conspiracy. Yes, it was just possible Janoah or Silvermane had gotten to him, despite the risks. After all, there was no telling who was part of Amael’s plot. One wrong move, one wrong word, to one wrong beast, could spell disaster for ALPHA’s carefully-laid trap. If Amael’s conspirators went to ground, ALPHA’s chance to catch them would pass, and with it the safety and security of Lupa for years to come.
Rufus and company stepped up to the checkpoint, eyes down, caps straight – except Tomek’s. The hogs rifled through the ore in the cart and then everyone’s pockets, Madou, Zozizou, Helmut and Tomek, turning up nothing.
As usual, Rufus went conspicuously unmolested.
Theories as to why jostling for position in his mind, Rufus led the way through the checkpoint to collect the tokens owed him. Lost in thought he failed to notice the Warden raise a paw at the hogs below and make a cutting motion to his throat. One of the hogs nodded and tipped his cap in tacit understanding. He disappeared inside the checkpoint booth. Moments later, as Helmut and Madou were pushing the cart through the barrier, a buzzing alarm sounded within the booth.
Bzzzzzzzt!
“Halt!” the hog inside bellowed.
Rufus was so surprised by the clamour that he fumbled the tokens, spilling some on the floor.
Half a dozen hogs gathered at the buzzing booth. One of them immediately kicked Rufus on his back as he tried to gather the tokens he had dropped, making him drop the rest. He sat in the mud looking up at the offending hog, his face aghast and indignant.
The hogs pulled the dumbstruck Rufus to his feet by the back of his shirt and pushed him against the mine cart. They gathered Tomek and the others and made them look into the ore as well, like naughty children.
“So,” one hog snorted with glee, patting his truncheon into a palm, “filled your cart with rocks instead of
ore, did we Scarab?”
“What?” Tomek growled. “Who says so?”
“We didn’t, sir,” Rufus countered calmly, glaring at Tomek in an effort to keep him quiet and out of trouble. “There must be some mistake.”
“Our imperium sensors don’t make mistakes!” the lead hog snarled, grabbing Rufus by the scruff of the neck and shaking him. “Working for the terrorists, is that it, hyena-lover?” he accused, glaring next at Madou, “Filling our carts with useless krap to slow down production, is that your game? Don’t you hyenas ever give up? You should all be rounded up and shot!”
Madou said nothing. He knew it was useless to protest. The hogs were going to have their fun. The best anyone could do was shut up and let things run their course and hopefully nobody would get beaten senseless.
“Do you know what the maximum punishment is for trying to deceive us?” the lead hog said, relishing every word. “Dismemberment by ant.”
“Is not fair,” Tomek growled under his breath.
The hog whirled on him, “Whatcha say, Usenko?”
“Is no such thing as ‘imperium sensors’,” Tomek replied, raising his chin and glaring at the lead hog. “I’m Watcher and if we had machine that could douse for imperium we would use it at Lupan Wall.”
“Shut up, Tomek!” Rufus seethed through his teeth.
But Tomek wouldn’t be silenced. “We use sniffer-ants and our own senses, because that all there is!” he proclaimed. “Unless you have ant in that booth, I say you lie to us. You just like beating Howlers up because outside Gelb you hogs are weaklings and pathetic-”
Whop!
Truncheon to the back of the head; down went Tomek. Three of the hogs were on him at once, kicking and stomping him as he rolled into a protective ball.
Somehow, he did not cry out.
“Stop it!” Rufus yelped. Dashed around the cart he tried to get between the guards and Tomek. “Please!” he begged, holding up his paws to them all. “He’s just a stupid cub! He’s a foreigner; he doesn’t know what he’s saying-”
One of the hogs smacked Rufus across the snout with a truncheon and pushed him away. He fell back into Madou, who picked him up and then had to hold him back as he tried to charge back into the fray.
“Don’t!” he rasped in the wolf’s ear.
Madou felt Rufus’s mighty corona grow, felt it pushing up against his own like a billowing curtain. His cruel imperium collar reacted accordingly, tightening until Madou had to let Rufus go in favour of his own collar.
Freed, Rufus stepped forth with both paws raised, purple, imperious plasma licking between his red fingers, singeing his fur and flesh. The collar pulled tight around his neck until surely he could scarce draw breath, yet the Howler felt nothing of it. The red mist had descended, clouding his mind.
“Get off him, I said!”
Rufus approached the hogs that were beating Tomek senseless and simply touched the nearest on the shoulder with his right paw. With a loud snap and a bright flash the guard was blown across the mine, tumbling into a stripy throng of on-looking prisoners. A second hog received Rufus’s left paw, clapped right to his flabby peach face as he turned to look.
“Woooagh!” he screamed.
The hog’s bloated body jolted involuntarily as the plasma coursed through him, kicking him off the ground and up into the mine cart. He fell into the ore and flailed about like a landed fish, spilling rocks over the sides before going still.
The other guards fled in panic, save the lead hog who grabbed the dial hanging around his neck and cranked it up full-blast. There was a loud hum as the imperious energy stored inside the contraption was released, creating an invisible artificial field of immense power. Invisible, but Helmut, Madou and Zozizou felt it well-enough. They each fell about choking as their collars tightened, subduing them and many other prisoners standing too close to the action.
Rufus too fell to his knees, grasping at his collar with one paw, then the other. The lead hog walked closer to him, concentrating the artificial field on the snarling Rufus.
“You’ll die for this, wolf!” he spat. “They’ll stake you out for the ants!”
The words had no sooner left the hog’s pink snout than Rufus cried out.
“Grrrraaagh!”
And with a bright flash and crack of plasma, split his collar cleanly down the middle with his bare paws!
“W-w-w-what?” the hog yelped, backing away.
Rufus threw the smouldering band at him with contempt and dived on him with equal fervour, knocking the hog to the floor and setting about him with his fists; left, right, left.
High above in the watchtower, Gelb’s Warden looked upon the chaos with outward indifference, his Howler mask betraying nothing as the famous Howler Rufus laid into the hog he had at his mercy. Without looking away, the Warden gestured at the two wolfen Watchers behind who were dressed in yellow and white.
“Alive,” he stipulated.
The wolves nodded and simply vaulted over the watchtower railing, softening their landing below with a blast of imperious energy, scattering dust in a perfect bubble around them. They hurried to the checkpoint and dived on the unruly Rufus, subduing him with their own choice blasts of energy and swiftly binding his paws and feet with bundles of Howler-proof wire.
It was all over as quickly as it had begun.
*
Though the sun’s strength was dulled by a distinctly yellow Lupan haze, it still provided warmth enough to draw record crowds to this year’s Science Exhibition. Beasts of every sort came from all across Lupa to converge on Petra Square, heart of the Eisbrand’s capital district.
The Square was not very far from the prestigious Arkady University, or Heath’s modest flat, so he and the girls had taken the tram. They had seen it all before, the colourful awnings and fluttering marquees set up in the midst of Petra Square were nothing new, if still a transient novelty. It was Howler Mills who was all a wonder, head craning this way and that like an overwhelmed cub as he dodged citizens of every caste and took in the spectacle. The square was boxed in on all sides by towering luxury residences with beautiful marbled facades and blue tiled roofs, whilst the capital Howler Den of the Eisbrands overlooked it all, a glittering wedding cake of stone, metal and glass that put Riddle Den to shame. Indeed, poor old Riddle Market was a run-down slum compared to this clean, majestic space!
And just when Linus thought things couldn’t get any grander, he spied a huge fountain jutting up from amongst the hubbub like a marble mountain. He instantly recalled from various sources that the centre of Petra Square was home to a spectacular fountain.
As Linus walked closer, the six white wolfen statues standing equidistantly around the rim of the fountain’s pool took shape. They were posed as if in the midst of battle, swords, spears, shield or bow in paw, depending on the wolf. Their faces were masked by helmets that resembled that of a Howler, but these long-dead beasts harkened to a time before imperium technology, before Lupa, before the rot. Back then their helmets, greaves and bracers would’ve been made of mere bronze, not imperium-weave alloy, and their marvellously-muscled bodies would’ve been built without a monthly fix of the good stuff.
Linus comforted himself by remembering that these were idealised representations of the Six Founders, and likely bared little resemblance to reality. Still, the romantic in him liked to think otherwise.
A whiff of acrid ash brought Linus back down to Erde and reminded him that he and the citizens of Lupa had come to admire the future, not relics of the past. Many an imperium engine turned and hissed around them, belching ash up into the sky and sometimes, if the wind would have it so, into their many varied faces. One such quivering iron contraption was a generator, Linus learnt, as he joined a crowd listening to the inventor; a generator that created imperium plasma just like a Howler could, only on a much grander scale. It was used to power glass lanterns that shone without a flame, as was demonstrated.
Very impressive, Heath and the girls agreed, clapping
along with the rest. Though he clapped too, Linus found it quietly disconcerting that a machine could emulate a Howler’s unique and dangerous plasma powers. Perhaps Rufus was onto something when he said the age of the Howlers was in its autumnal years.
More modest appliances followed; imperium-powered ovens, an automatic clothes-washing machine, music machines, and even a pump that sucked up dust and dirt through a pipe and stored it in a disposable bag.
“A vacuum cleaner?” Linus read.
“Och!” Sara marvelled, having a whirl of noisy suction machine herself. “Penny would love one of these!”
Further in, near the fountain, Linus found cars to drool over; handsome, sleek beasts of the sort Grand Howlers and above were luxuriously ferried about in, though they might opt for the heftier armoured variants. The Howler absent-mindedly left Sara and the others behind to pick his way amongst the reflective maze of cars, occasionally peering in at their plush interiors and daring to dream that one day he might get to ride in one.
Disappointingly there were no ‘Valerios’ to be had, so far as the learner Linus could see. New releases from the finest monobike manufacturer in the world were few and far between, there being little serious competition. Would they ever replace the cheap and reliable, Springtail, or improve the legendary M-8 Spider?
More to the point, Linus wondered, will I ever be able to ride such a beast as Ivan’s mono, let alone afford one?
Looking across the polished roofs of the cars, Linus searched for his lost party and noticed fellow Howlers lurking amongst the crowded marquees. Heavily armoured, surcoat-clad Eisbrands one and all, here to guard their citizens and make sure everything ran smoothly, no doubt.
One locked eyes with Linus, as if recognising him.
Tristan? Linus wondered. No, too small. The eyes were wrong too. He had marvellous duotone eyes that Tristan. Handsome chap.
The anonymous Eisbrand looked away. Linus supposed the unwelcome presence of a Bloodfang had been noted, nothing more concerning.
“Linus!”
Hearing Sara’s voice, the Howler found her amongst the hubbub and waved back.