Imperium Lupi

by Adam Browne

  Themba growled for his chief, “What’s wrong now, wolf?”

  Looking between the young hyenas, Rufus explained quietly, “If you kill one it’ll set the whole lot off. Dozens will pour out after us. We’ll be swamped!”

  “Then what do we do?” Nurka asked.

  “Don’t panic. Just keep going. They won’t notice us.”

  Staring at the mound’s rim and the ants lurking just beyond like soldiers cowering in a watchtower, Nurka growled, “I’m not afraid of these creatures, Howler.”

  “Well I am,” Rufus snorted honestly. “Whilst the inside of an ant nest is likely a wonder to behold, I don’t want to be dismembered at the end of the tour by the hungry homeowners. Do you?”

  At length, Nurka lowered his mighty imperium bow and Rufus could breathe easy again.

  Wrapping his cloak about his body and securing it again in a somehow huffy manner, Nurka led the way. The hyena conspicuously carried his bow and quiver in his paws from then on, even as the group left the giant ant mounds far behind. Over-the-shoulder glances confirmed the insects atop the largest mound remained unaware of the tasty morsels that had passed right under their noses.

  The ants were merely standing guard at the entrance to their nest, Rufus explained confidently; it was still too cold for the scouts to emerge and begin foraging.

  Perhaps with the intention of provoking Rufus a little (the Howler couldn’t be sure) Nurka observed, “Your knowledge of nature’s ways must be useless in Lupa.”

  “I’m wasted there,” Rufus chuckled freely, parrying any intended insult at once.

  “Is that why you want to change things?”

  “Change things?”

  Nurka climbed up a row of wind-cut boulders. “Amael’s new order,” he clarified, standing atop the rocks and offering a paw to Rufus.

  Looking at Nurka’s paw before taking it, Rufus said, “Amael can do what he wants, as long as I get my expedition.”

  “To the Dead Cities?”

  “One of them.”

  “They’re just a legend, Howler.”

  “Oh they’re quite real, I assure you,” Rufus said, as Nurka helped him onto the rocks. “Lost in the wilds they may be, but they’re there, and perhaps great knowledge, even a cure.”

  Nurka waited a moment. “Then… you don’t care for Amael’s plans for Lupa?”

  “I’ll have a care for whoever funds my expedition,” Rufus claimed. “Beasts may die in Amael’s coup, but that’s nothing compared to the scourge of the rot. We must try and find a cure. Besides, I don’t see how Amael could do a worse job than the current regime.”

  “Amael told us you were like a brother to him.”

  “Pff! And you believed him? He thinks I’m a fool! It’s my wife who’s got him on my side.”

  “Wife?”

  “Janoah; perhaps you’ve heard of her.”

  Nurka shook his head a little.

  “Well, she’s put in a good word, I know it. She and Amael are together now, you see. You know how it is. I don’t mind a bit of course; good on her.”

  “Of course,” Nurka replied, despite his utter bafflement.

  Smiling, Rufus turned and offered Themba a paw, but the big hyena vaulted up onto the boulders without wolfen aid and towered imposingly beside Rufus – his size was no impediment to his athleticism, clearly.

  “Well, whatever your aims,” Nurka said to Rufus, perhaps only for the pugnacious Themba’s benefit, “you’ve always spoken up for our people, Red-mist, that can’t be denied. Our prince always spoke well of you, so I’m inclined to trust you, even over Amael.”

  “And I you after getting me out of that pickle,” Rufus said amiably, slapping the hyena’s massive, spotty arm. “I suppose I owe you chaps a drink.”

  Nurka forced a polite chuckle.

  Themba was already walking across the boulder field, as if eager to be away from the wolf he doubtless thought obnoxious.

  Nurka however lingered. “There’s… something I need to ask you, Red-mist,” he hazarded.

  “Can’t it wait?” Rufus replied, glancing around the wilderness. “We’re not clear of Gelb yet; someone might come looking for us, and I don’t mean ants.”

  Nurka grunted, “I’d rather Themba not hear what I have to ask you. Your answer might upset him.”

  Rufus watched Nurka’s partner in crime pick his way across the field of smooth, yet regularly-cut, cobble-like boulders, stepping over the deep, dark cracks between them like a cub playing amongst rock pools at the beach, his hammer reminding Rufus of a net for catching tiddlers as oppose to a deadly imperium-laced weapon for cracking heads. Perhaps even my head, Rufus thought, knowing a wrong answer to Nurka’s question might end this charade, and that he had no chance against these chaps in his weakened state.

  “All right,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

  Nurka glanced across at Themba as he leapt over an especially wide crevice, then dipped his chin at Rufus. “I don’t dare believe this true,” he said, “but… I’ve heard that-”

  “Gaaaagh!”

  Themba’s scream cut through the valley and whatever Nurka had in mind.

  Some giant, hairy, many-legged spider-like creature had snatched one of Themba’s feet with its twin sets of black pincers and was dragging him backwards into the last crevice he’d leapt over!

  Before Nurka’s mind could fathom the situation his legs were already carrying him across the rocks to his comrade hyena’s aid.

  Throwing his pesky collar chain over one shoulder again, Rufus followed suit. “It’s a sun-spider!” he declared, not that Nurka cared to know.

  As he was dragged along on his front, big Themba desperately swung his kristahl hammer backwards at the giant bug’s shiny, armoured, hair-flecked face – a hit, but to no avail. The sandy-coloured sun-spider backed up, reversing leg over leg into the deep, dark fissure between two boulders and taking the flailing Themba foot-first with it.

  “Yaaagh!”

  Just when the helpless hyena should have disappeared into the crevice his sturdy hammer accidentally lodged against the opposing rock faces, forming a holdfast. Clutching the shaft with both paws like a gymnast about to perform on the high bar, Themba stayed his descent, hanging on for grim death as the sun-spider pulled on his snared leg.

  “Grrrrrfgh!” he snarled in twisting pain. “Nurkaaa!”

  Nurka arrived, and throwing himself on his belly reached down into the crevice, the terrifying serrated jaws and bead-like black eyes of the sun-spider lurking within no impediment to his courage.

  Realising at once it was hopeless to try and pull Themba up, Nurka stood and notched an arrow to his bow. The gleaming missile had a flight made of iridescent blue insect wings. Pulling back, the chief sent a bolt of plasma down his spotty arm, charging the arrow and making its head shine white-hot.

  Nurka aimed down, past Themba, and let loose just as Rufus arrived to witness the shimmering, plasmatic projectile ping uselessly off the armoured face of the sun-spider, before spiralling into the crevice, its point glowing in the darkness.

  “Ragh!” Nurka cursed. “How? That was blue kristahl!”

  He notched a second arrow, tipped with yellow-imperium this time, and pulled the bow string back to breaking point. The loosed arrow whipped by inches from the struggling Themba and bounced off the sun-spider’s carapace yet again. This time, however, as the arrow tumbled into the crevice, the tip began to fizzle and burn, before exploding in a hail of glowing crystalline shards as yellow-imperium ever did.

  “By the Wind, what’s that thing made of?” Nurka asked rhetorically.

  “Hit it in the abdomen,” Rufus suggested, adding, “the backside, that is.”

  “Nurkaaa!” Themba cried, as the sun-spider’s mandibles chewed on his leg. “Gaaaagh!”

  “Hang on!” Nurka replied shakily. He strafed along the edge of the crevice with his bow taught, looking for an angle to hit the creature in its rear, but the rock faces twisted and contrived
in such ways as to make a clean shot impossible. Nurka tried anyway – the arrow clipped off the rocks and exploded uselessly.

  With a hurried assessment of the crevice and seeing no other way down, Rufus said, “Lower me down, Nurka.”

  “What?”

  “I’m lighter than you. You can hold me.”

  Winging the situation, Rufus unravelled the chain by which he had been fastened to the stake not half hour ago and gave the end to Nurka.

  “Here, use this.”

  Somewhat baffled, Nurka did as bidden and held the chain firm as Rufus, against his better judgement, lowered himself over the edge of the crevice with the chain in his paws. He had about four feet of chain to play with – not much. It was still attached to his collar, of course, and Rufus supposed if he slipped and fell the force of the collar being jolted against his neck might break it.

  With Themba’s cries in his ears, Rufus lowered himself down, paw over bloodied, sore paw, with hazardous haste, until he had no more chain at his disposal.

  Looking down into the pit, the Howler judged the floor to be some eight feet away.

  “All right, let go!” he seethed, with great misgivings.

  Nurka, thinking fast, and displaying great strength and poise, risked straddling the crevice, one armoured foot pressed to each lip. Like a living well’s windlass, he allowed the chain to slide slowly and doubtless painfully through his powerful paws, right to the very last link, before letting it, and Rufus, fall into the blackness below.

  Rufus’s back slammed into the far wall and he slid to the floor, the chain raining down upon him. With the adrenaline pumping he felt nothing of his tumble and leapt to his feet like a wolf half his age. He found he was but a few feet from the sun-spider’s nearest enormous hairy leg.

  If it turns on me now, Rufus knew, I’ll be minced between its jaws in seconds.

  “The bow!” he called up to Nurka.

  Down it came, the quiver too, clacking against the rock faces to the ground.

  “Hurry!” Nurka begged.

  Rufus needn’t be solicited. Notching an arrow he took aim at the sun-spider’s segmented, pulsing posterior and drew back, overcoming his bruises and hunger long enough to give the arrow the energy it needed to fly.

  Thwip!

  The shot was clear and true. The yellow-imperium arrowhead embedded itself in the sun-spider’s relatively soft, leathery abdomen, fizzled and exploded, ejecting shards of burning imperium in all directions like a spectacular firework.

  The sun spider released Themba with a terrible stridulating din that sounded like the clicking of a thousand tongues against the roofs of a thousand mouths. Scrabbling into an adjoining crevice to escape, the beast left behind its dinner and a trail of white blood.

  It was over.

  Nurka helped Themba to safety, pulling him over the side of the crevice and onto the rock, leaving his hammer lodged where it was for now. Expecting the worst, Nurka was overjoyed to find Themba’s leg intact; the labyrinthine armour design scratched and pitted, yes, but in no way crushed or broken. There was no blood leaking through the rivets, nothing at all to indicate injury.

  “Are you hurt?” Nurka asked.

  Taking a moment to lie on his back with his paws to his masked face in abject relief, Themba suddenly sat up and experimentally rolled his aching ankle. “I’m fine,” he panted, whilst opening and closing his quivering paws – every tendon in his forearms ached from the strain of hanging on. “I thought… I was going to come apart at the waist,” he admitted, adding humorously, “I must be a little taller.”

  Nurka snorted, “You’re tall enough already,” and held Themba tight, patting and rubbing his vast back. “By the Wind, I thought you were taken from me.”

  Peeling his chief aside, Themba scolded gently, “Not in front of the wolf, chief.”

  Nodding and composing himself, Nurka went to the crevice and looked for ‘the wolf’.

  “Well done, Rufus!” he called, paws resting on zigzag knees. “He’s all right!”

  No reply.

  Not hearing or seeing Rufus, Nurka looked along the crevice. “There must be a way up!” he said aloud.

  Still nothing.

  “Red-mist! Where are you?”

  Time passed down in the crevice; Rufus knew not how much as lay on his side in the darkness, writhing like an abandoned infant, awash in the agony and confusion of rot pains.

  “Stop… please make it stop!” the red wolf moaned, nuzzling into the cold, sandy erde, his flaring nostrils blowing aside sprays of sand as he snorted and panted. He grasped uselessly at his thighs, pressing at the layers of fur and flesh in a vain attempt to reach the dying bones deep within and somehow stem the creeping agony of the rot. “By Ulf’s fangs, not now. Not now!”

  Cast by sheer pain to the very edge of consciousness, the last Rufus comprehended before giving in were two dazzling black and white cloaked figures pushing their way along the narrow passage towards him.

  *

  Vladimir busied himself with paperwork, signing this, amending that, or so he would have Josef believe. The bespectacled grey cat couldn’t help but suspect, as he waited in the chair opposite with two ALPHA Prefects hovering behind him, that Vladimir was merely scribbling on scrap paper just to look important. He claimed to be very busy running Riddle District by himself since Rufus’s downfall.

  “But surely Amael has installed another Grand Howler by now?” Josef had purred in a needling kind of tone.

  “Not officially,” Vladimir had replied, not looking up from his work. “Boris is acting as my fellow Grand Howler, but of course he has better things to do as Amael’s adjutant, so I’m left to pick up the slack.”

  “Slack? You mean Rufus actually did some work?”

  “He was a consummate Grand Howler,” Vladimir defended.

  “But a criminal.”

  “So it would appear, doctor. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve a lot of work to do. I’ve sent for Howler Mills. Please be patient.”

  And thus silence reigned.

  After clawing at the arms of his chair for some time – Vladimir noting the damage done – Josef stood up and looked out the window at the passing hubbub of Riddle. Seeing Vladimir’s office plants on the windowsill before him, the cat felt their varied leaves with a, “Hmm.” When the foliage bored him the cat took to pulling out random books from Vladimir’s library and flicking through them, raising his eyebrows and sniffing on occasion, as if passing derisive judgement on the Howler’s literary taste – Vladimir kept his head down and his mind on his work to prevent himself from saying something he’d regret.

  Finally a knock at the door broke the unbearable rising tension.

  “Come in,” Vladimir woofed in relief.

  The office door opened and Linus presented himself. The stocky blonde Howler passed Josef and the Prefects a worried sideways glance, before saluting Vladimir, fist to chest and out.

  “You sent for me, Grand Howler?” he said.

  “I did,” Vladimir grunted.

  “I’m sorry I’m late back, sir,” Linus pre-emptively excused. “I got carried away last night.”

  “Indeed you did,” Vladimir seconded, flicking his golden pen at Josef and the two Prefects. “These gentlebeasts are from ALPHA, as I’m sure you can see. They’ve a warrant for your arrest, Linus.”

  “Arrest, sir?” Linus scoffed with indignation. “On what charge?”

  Josef hissed, “You know very well what charge.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “You lying little weasel. You’re under arrest-”

  “Doctor Josef!” Vladimir growled, before addressing his subordinate. “I’m told you obstructed ALPHA in their duty, Mills. Is this true?”

  “In what way obstruct, sir?”

  “By preventing the apprehension of three imperium-abusing citizens and aiding their escape.”

  “That’s not the case at all, Grand Howler; I was merely carrying out my duty to the Bloodfangs.�
��

  “Duty?” Josef spluttered. “Is it a Bloodfang’s duty to strike ALPHA Prefects?”

  Vladimir mediated calmly. “Doctor, if you please, I’ve heard your version of events twice over. Now if you would allow Howler Mills to speak,”

  “You’ve no authority to stand in our way, Vladimir,” Josef told the Grand Howler. “We have a warrant signed by a Grand Prefect, we can take action.”

  “Nonetheless, we can at least agree to discuss this misunderstanding before taking it further,” Vladimir replied with disarming charm, adding, “Unless ALPHA is more interested in its own pride than keeping the peace?”

  Josef was silenced, for now.

  “Now then, what exactly happened, Mills?” Vladimir asked Linus directly.

  “Well, sir, as you’ve likely been told, I took it upon myself to intervene in the arrest of three citizens by Doctor Josef here. Two wolfesses and a bear, sir.”

  “So I gather. Did you know they were dodgers, these citizens?”

  “I didn’t, sir.”

  “Yes you did, I told you!” Josef accused.

  Linus kept going regardless. “I only knew for certain that one of them was afflicted, sir; a Freiwolf by the name of Olivia.”

  Vladimir’s dark ears pricked, “Afflicted wolfess, you say?”

  “Yes, sir,” Linus confirmed. “I offered to take her to our Den and present her to you, as my find, sir. I could feel her corona. I thought she had great potential.”

  Josef hissed, “This is nonsense!”

  “It’s the truth, sir. There’s nothing illegal about headhunting talent.”

  “Then where’s Olivia now, eh?” the cat pressed.

  Vladimir looked to Linus, “Well, Mills?”

  Linus dipped his chin a little, “She ran away, sir.”

  Josef snorted, “Hah!”

  “She tricked me, sir. They all did.”

  “Tricked you?” Vladimir repeated.

  Linus ‘explained’. “When we got to Riddle, someone hit me over the head, sir, which as you can imagine knocked me for six. By the time I recovered my senses they were all gone. It’s a little embarrassing to say the least. Doctor Josef was right to warn me that they were criminals, but I didn’t listen on account of the opportunity to recruit a Howler. I… I wasn’t going to report the incident. I know that’s wrong in itself, but I know you’ve been horribly busy what with Rufus gone. I didn’t want to bother you or Elder Amael leading up to the Summit with my stupidity.”