Imperium Lupi

by Adam Browne

  “Pfff!” Tristan scoffed.

  “But it will come at a well-defined pace, with debate and law guiding citizen and Howler alike, not anarchy!”

  “The hyenas can’t wait!” Tristan growled. “They are being massacred. Whole camps pitched into mass graves and at least some of the Den Fathers must know of it.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I’ve seen evidence.”

  Reaching into his black cloak Silvermane unfolded a crumpled sheet of paper. “Like this pamphlet?” he snorted, waving it about. “Hyena propaganda, produced by THORN to gain sympathy. It does not convince.”

  Tristan turned his cheek, “I know beasts who have seen it with their own eyes. I believe them-”

  “So you believe our race so vile we could do such things? Is that the state of your faith in wolfkind? What a disillusioned and sad individual you are. You disgust me.”

  Silvermane raised his paw at the ‘doctor’ in a lab coat standing over the same control panel where Josef usually worked the dials. He looked for all the world like Josef, except wolfen. He was even wearing the same tinted glasses – it helped to protect the eyes from the glare of the rack, apparently.

  “Doctor Maher’s new here,” Silvermane claimed. “He’s not as proficient with the rack as Josef. There’s no telling what might go wrong. Isn’t that right Doctor?”

  Maher cleared his throat, “Well I’m actually-”

  “Your eyes could explode out of your head!” Silvermane interrupted, leaning close to Tristan’s ears. “Oh, I’ve seen it happen. I know I’m not much older than you, but I’ve seen many things you wouldn’t believe, Donskoy.”

  Tristan closed his eyes and laughed darkly, “If it means I won’t have to look up your nostrils for another two hours then by all means throw the switch and boil out my eyes!”

  Silvermane huffed, then stood up straight. “For the last time, tell us what you know of Amael’s plot. Name the conspirators. Testify against them. Save innocent lives, Tristan. You know it’s the right thing to do!”

  “I… know… nothing.”

  “You must. You admitted it to Janoah.”

  “That poisonous wolfess will say whatever she needs to garner her career.”

  “You tried to shoot yourself to avoid capture. Rafe stopped you. He corroborated Janoah’s version of events-”

  “You think Janoah can’t school that slobbering monster into saying whatever she wants? He’s her slave. Besides, getting rid of me has been on her to-do list for years. She hates me, always has, and Ivan too. Anyone who turns her husband’s eye away from her for a second she can’t stand.”

  Silvermane was surprised. “Rufus? You mean… you were one of his betas?”

  Tristan’s grey and white muzzle twisted and wrinkled in disgust. “Briefly.”

  “Goodness me. Quite the accolade.”

  “I was a foolish cub, but even I had the sense to know he was just using me. Rufus takes what he wants and moves on, he thinks only of himself! My cousin’s a fool for putting up with him. Still he lingers on at Riddle District, begging for a wink of approval or a pat on the back from his ‘alpha’ when Rufus has no more interest in him these days than he would a dusty vase on his mantelpiece. Perhaps now Rufus is down in Gelb, Ivan will finally wake up and come home to Eisbrand, where he belongs.”

  Silvermane smacked his lips, “Rufus Valerio is no longer down in Gelb, but up in Ulf’s Kingdom.”

  After a moment, Tristan frowned, “What?”

  “He was executed. What’s more your cousin has been implicated in the assassination of Vito Bloodfang and the murder of several Den Guards just this morning. Did you know that was to occur?”

  Silvermane’s news took some time to sink in. “No!” Tristan seethed. “Why in the world would Ivan....” He couldn’t even finish his sentence, starting another instead, “That’s impossible. This can’t be right! You’re lying! You have to be lying-”

  “I do not appreciate being called a liar!” Silvermane interrupted, as loudly as his silky voice could. “Nor do I appreciate the slander of my fellow Prefects. Janoah is an exemplary Prefect and I will take her word over yours any day. She knows you have a spy in the Bloodfangs, she knows they work for THORN. Tell us who they are.”

  “Go cry at the moon, you ALPHA maggot! I’ve nothing to say to lying scum like you!”

  Huffing, Silvermane nodded at Maher.

  The switch was thrown, dials turned, the rack did its terrible work. Tristan twisted and screamed as the imperium in his blood burned.

  “Grrrrrfgh!”

  Silvermane waved a paw, the torture stopped as quickly as it’d begun.

  So soon. Why?

  As the panting Tristan came back down to Erde from his paroxysm of pain he saw someone standing in the doorway to the torture chamber.

  It was Grand Prefect Nikita!

  “Silvermane,” he said, “there is phone call for you.”

  “I’m too busy-”

  “For Adal even?” Nikita insisted in his broken dialect. “He has important news. Go; I take over here.”

  After some time, as if unduly reluctant to leave Tristan in the middle of the interrogation, Silvermane told Doctor Maher to, “Stay here and assist the Grand Prefect, I’ll be back momentarily.”

  Maher nodded.

  Walking briskly past Nikita into the stark ALPHA HQ corridors beyond, Silvermane happened across Nurse Meryl, who was going about her duties in the other direction.

  The demure nurse proffered a lacklustre salute, “Grand Prefect Silver-!”

  Silvermane took her to one side and whispered, “Watch them, Miss Stroud.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ll be as fast as I can. Just keep an eye on Nikita, make sure he doesn’t do anything… strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Please. I trust you.”

  Reading Silvermane’s desperate eyes through his helmet, Meryl nodded, “I understand.”

  The Grand Prefect left her, striding down the hall and out of sight, rushing to his office as fast as dignity allowed.

  The interrogation room door creaked shut. Mind and heart racing, Meryl crept along to the window and peered in on Nikita, Doctor Maher, and the helpless Tristan who was bound to the terrible rack. The glass was mirrored their side so nobody could see the little nurse as she spied on events, unable to hear much, but quite able to see everything.

  What did Silvermane expect might happen?

  Inside, Nikita walked over to Tristan and patted the young wolf’s head – fondly if Meryl didn’t know better. He then glided swiftly to the control panel.

  “You are new here?” he asked Maher. “Doctor Josef send for you, no?”

  “Yes, sir,” Maher replied, tugging proudly at his coat lapels. “I was one of his star pupils at the Ark. We’ve been in close contact for years, ever since-”

  “You know how to rack a beast?” Nikita interrupted.

  “I’ve some experience yes. That’s why Josef sent for me. He doesn’t trust many beasts with his machinery. This new rack is marvellous. It’s far more efficient than the old ones and much less dangerous for the, uhm… ‘patient’.”

  Maher chuckled.

  Nikita didn’t. He shooed the doctor aside and immediately twiddled some dials. “It work the same way, yes?”

  “More or less,” Maher said, adding, “Careful now.”

  Nikita explained himself. “Silvermane has been too long interrogating this traitor. The Summit begins tomorrow. We do not have time to be gentle anymore. I will extract the information where he’s failed.”

  Maher watched the Grand Prefect crank the dials all the way up into the red.

  “Uh, you mustn’t go that high, sir,” Maher advised nervously.

  “No?”

  “That’ll kill him. Immediately.”

  “Good. I do not want him to suffer long.”

  “What?”

  The panting Tristan lifted his head from the rack and twisted to
see and hear better what was happening. “Nikita?” he grunted, eyes darting to and fro. “Nikita? What’re doing?”

  “Goodbye, Tristan. I thank you.”

  “What? No… no wait, you can’t! I… I haven’t said anything. They’ve nothing on me. I swear!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nikita! Please! I-Ahhhaaaaghaaaaaagh!”

  The switch was thrown, the rack burst into light, streaks of cruel purple plasma erupted from the rack and struck at Tristan’s writhing body. So fierce were the bolts that they carved burning paths of shrivelled, smouldering fur wherever they struck.

  “Are you insane?” Maher shouted over the cracks and pops of the rack. He barged Nikita aside and went for the dials. “Get away from there-agh!”

  In a flash, Nikita cupped a big paw to the side of Maher’s face and blasted the wolf across the room with a good old-fashioned discharge of natural imperious plasma.

  The doctor slid to a stop by the door, which someone immediately opened, pushing Maher’s quivering carcass aside with shuddering effort.

  Nurse Meryl.

  “Get out, wolfess!” Nikita commanded her.

  Knowing she had no hope of reaching the controls, Meryl ran across to the pipes connecting the rack to the imperium gas mains and simply twisted a big, red lever-shaped valve.

  Within seconds the machinery hissed and shut down, the lights winking out and dials returning to zero. Tristan collapsed about the rack, a quivering mass of smouldering fur.

  Meryl stood protectively by the valve. Nikita held the controls – a standoff.

  Footsteps thundered down the hallway outside.

  “You care about your young Eisenwolf,” the Grand Prefect said – it wasn’t a question.

  Meryl remained stock-still, grey ears pricked.

  “If you want him surviving the coming change you will corroborate my story, Miss Stroud,” Nikita threatened.

  Meryl said nothing for a time. Words formed on her dry tongue but before they could come to anything of meaning several Prefects scrabbled into the interrogation room, boots squeaking on the floor, swords and pistols at the ready.

  “Grand Prefect?” one gasped, glancing between all concerned – Nikita, Meryl and the downed Maher.

  Nikita raised a paw. “Is all right,” he said calmly. “Doctor Maher went mad.”

  “Mad, sir?”

  “We were interrogating suspect when Maher try to kill him with rack. Perhaps he is in league with conspirators and was trying to silence him.” Nikita looked to Meryl. “Nurse Stroud shut down rack just in time.”

  The Prefects believed Nikita regardless of Meryl, who in the end needn’t nod or corroborate a thing. One of the wolves checked Maher’s pulse.

  “He’s dead, sir!”

  Nikita sighed, “Ulf’s fangs. I did not mean to. I just had to stop him as fast as I could.”

  Sensing it was safe to do so, Meryl moved to the trembling Tristan and peeled open the Howler’s eyelids, revealing first his green and then his blue eye; both were dilated.

  “Tristan?” Meryl said. “Howler Tristan, stay with me!”

  No reply. Foam began to form on his lips as his powerful body tensed fitted, tugging at the restraints.

  Looking first at Nikita, then the Prefects, Meryl said, “We have to get him to the infirmary; he’s having a seizure.”

  Silvermane returned to the corridor just as Meryl and the Prefects wheeled Tristan out on a stretcher. The nurse looked meaningfully at Silver in passing but revealed nothing verbally, for Nikita appeared in the doorway behind, watching, listening.

  Silvermane kept walking, until he was beside his fellow Grand Prefect.

  “What happened here?” he asked Nikita.

  “Maher; he try to kill the prisoner,” Nikita replied calmly, pointing at the doctor’s curled-up body.

  To which Silvermane scoffed, “What?”

  “I am unfamiliar with this machinery, Silver. I did not realise Maher was turning up dials too high. Nurse Stroud, she come by just in time. She tried to stop Maher, but he kept on going. So I had to stop him… permanently.”

  “I see. He’s dead, then?”

  A simple nod and shrug – only a war-hardened wolf like Nikita could be so blasé about killing. “He must have been sent by Amael Balbus and the conspirators,” he claimed.

  Silvermane sighed, “We’ll never know now.”

  “Unfortunate, but I had no choice.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Nikita moved on with shocking speed, “What did Adal want?”

  Silvermane’s mind still reeled like a ship tossed by a hurricane. I need to talk to Miss Stroud. What exactly happened; was it Nikita doing? “He wants us to let Howler Tristan go,” Silver said, with no hint of the turmoil within.

  Another nod, as if Nikita were wholly unsurprised. “I thought he was your prime suspect?”

  “That’s neither here nor there; the Alpha’s managed to strike a deal with Thorvald Strom.”

  “Deal?”

  Silvermane explained, “Tristan’s freedom for a lift to the Summit; they want it done tonight.”

  “That might be difficult, he’s in bad way.”

  “Then Meryl had better be allowed to give him some white-imperium. I’ll make the arrangements immediately.”

  Another nod, and a question, “What are our chances of stopping this conspiracy, Silver?”

  Silvermane looked Nikita in the eye, “Oh, we’re not finished yet. Not by a long shot.”

  *

  Under the cover of night, the hooded Ivan slipped out of the woods like an apparition and crossed the dirt road in a trice, pressing his back to the stone wall opposite. The red-imperium fangs adorning his helmet’s white cheeks had been blotted out with a little sticky mud – one could dull them by suppressing one’s corona, but Ivan hadn’t trusted his concentration to hold all evening.

  Headlights!

  With an imperious bound Ivan silently scaled the wall and vaulted over into the farm complex beyond before the vehicle’s light struck him.

  It drove by, a truck by the sounds; probably nothing more than a civilian about their business. Hummel Howlers hunting assassins would descend on smart thrumming monobikes like any other pack, not dirty great trucks.

  Relieved, Blade-dancer checked his rough map by red brooch light and took in the abandoned smallholding. This must be the place. There were several run-down wooden livestock buildings that must have once housed silkworms or the like and a stone farmhouse that had fallen into ruin, its thatched roof a collection of gaping wounds.

  No lights, no activity, no life.

  Good.

  Ivan stole across the courtyard and cautiously entered the dilapidated farmhouse. The door was stiff with sheets of web, but a quick search by brooch light turned up no obvious spiders, just wispy cobwebs flapping at the windows like ethereal curtains. What little furniture remained was either upturned or broken, save for a kitchen table that was shrouded in dust and a cosy-looking chair by the collapsed fireplace.

  Against his better judgement Ivan allowed himself a moment’s respite. Removing his helmet and setting it on the kitchen table he slumped into the soft chair to rest his aching legs – that final jump back there hadn’t helped. After months on the road, living and sleeping under the stars, come rain or shine, even this draughty ruin was a relief to behold. Yet the fresh air of the wilds had done him good too. Ivan felt somehow renewed between aches, his lungs felt bigger, his eyes and fur cleaner, free of grit and grime, as if he’d been holidaying on the Graumeer Coast. It was always supposed an afflicted beast could live a lot longer freed of the ash that clogged Lupa’s streets. The rot was rarer out here and a single sting stretched a lot further without traces of industrially-produced black-imperium constantly assaulting one’s body.

  Was it worth it? Were the trains, hot baths and other modern conveniences worth the curse of rot? Was the thrill of a Giacomo Valerio G-8 Spider thrumming to one’s corona reward enou
gh for all the suffering? Just maybe. Ivan could hear Rufus now, debating such matters over a cup of tea – debating with himself that is. He always said a cure would change everything. Oh there would still be problems, still pollution and crime and greed, but no more dreaded rot, no more fighting over white-imperium to simply live.

  Well, Ivan thought, you’ve got what you want, Amael. We did it. Now it’s up to you with your newfound powers to get Rufus out of Gelb.

  Ulf help you if you cross me.

  The crunching of gravel in the courtyard sent Ivan ducking silently for cover.

  If this was Lupa, Howlers would’ve locked down the district and combed every building for Vito’s killers, Ivan had no doubt, but Everdor was a vast, empty wilderness overseen by no more Howlers than usual for a pack. The Bloodfangs had to move on and it was unlikely the thinly-spread Hummels were going to muster an army to help a rival pack find an assassin, especially at such a busy and dangerous time.

  Still, Ivan remained hidden, just in case it wasn’t Gunnar or Uther out there.

  A cloaked wolf entered the farmhouse with a rifle in his paws and an ember smouldering at his lips, the orange glow lighting his chin. After a quick sweep of the room he moved to the table and picked up Ivan’s helmet.

  “Uther?” he guessed, looking around.

  “It’s bad luck to touch armour from another pack,” Ivan growled, emerging from the darkness and snatching his helmet from Gunnar’s paws.

  “Bad luck for who?” the Greystone replied with a cheeky smile. “Me or you?”

  Ivan didn’t clarify.

  Gunnar cast his eyes around the farmhouse. “Is the fastest wolf in Lupa here yet?”

  “No.”

  “Huh. And I thought he’d be first.”

  “So did I,” Ivan grunted worriedly, peering outside. “Did you have any trouble slipping away?”

  “Nah. You?”

  Ivan thought back to Rafe, “Not particularly.”

  Puffing on his ember, Gunnar posed the unfortunate question. “Think Uther made it out?”

  “Well if you managed it what’s to stop him?”

  That was a thinly-veiled insult if ever there was one.