by Adam Browne
“Noss, now listen to me-”
The Prince grabbed Vladimir and lifting him physically by his cloak, slammed him against the side of the car. “I said go! Go before I kill you! You who tortured me, who used me!”
The Den Guard jumped to Vladimir’s defence, rapier drawn.
“No!” Vladimir snapped, raising his paw. “Stand down! Stand down. It’s all right.”
The Den Guard backed off.
Noss waited, chest heaving, lips curling; fighting tears, expletives and the urge to kill Oromov.
Vladimir gulped, “I’ve come to tell you, no to thank you, and to-”
“Keep your empty words. I have nothing left. Nothing!”
“And to return these to you,” Vladimir finished, tapping on the window.
Noss looked down. Two hyena cubs were staring up at him through the tinted glass, a boy and a girl.
The Prince dropped Vladimir like a poker and staggered backwards. Paw to mouth he glanced at the wolf, then back at the cubs, unwilling to believe his eyes.
“I was able to locate them,” Vladimir explained, tugging his mantle back into shape. “Taking them from Arjana was not my doing. I thought they were safe in the re-education camps. I thought they were the best accommodation available. By the time I found out the camps had been razed, the cubs had disappeared and Arjana had escaped.”
Hardly listening, Noss went for the car door and almost pulled it off its hinges.
He knelt. “Children, it’s me, your father,” he said.
The male cub slid out and embraced Noss, rasping and crying in his rough little hyena voice, “Father!”
“Zuma! My boy!”
The hyeness slipped out with such grace and dignity, standing before Noss with her chin held high. “I am glad to see you again, my noble father.”
“Anjali,” Noss marvelled, shaking his head, tears pouring from his eyes, “my proud little queen. How like your mother you already are! You have her noble bearing.”
The hyenas at the tent flaps and within sight of the goings-on all bowed low before Princess Anjali, and even Prince Noss dipped his head before this most regal cub. Then he embraced his daughter as a father and together all three rocked to and fro, weeping with grief and joy. They had lost much, but gained one another.
Vladimir silently walked around to the car’s opposite side, the Den Guard following and opening the door.
Hearing the car start, Noss shot up and looked across the top of its shiny roof, catching Vladimir just before he slipped inside.
“Thank you, Vladimir.”
“Our business is concluded,” Elder Vladimir sniffed. Sliding across the smooth back seat he reached for the opposite door and winding down its window a little, said, “Keep the tribes quiet for five minutes and you might be surprised by what can be achieved back in Lupa. There’s talk of dissolving the Reservations and all sorts. Have patience, Noss.”
The prince nodded once.
“Oh, and Rufus sends his regards.”
With that, Vladimir shut the window and his car U-turned, heading back towards the grey blotch on the already blasted landscape that was Lupa.
The mighty Noss beamed toothily down at his cubs, “Come children; let’s go surprise your Uncle Madou!”
*
The sun was ducking behind the smoke stacks of Lupa, casting long, sinister shadows across the lavender-filled courtyard. Janoah’s shadow looked especially monstrous, with crutches making her silhouette resemble some many legged mechanical spider.
Minding the fractured leg she’d picked up in the train crash, she eased onto the bench beside Rafe. “You should be in bed resting, Stenton,” she scolded, casting her eyes over him. “You look tired.”
Rafe looked Janoah over, with her crutches, bandages and unflattering bed gown. “Yeah? Well you’re a right state.”
“Mind your trap! I’m a Grand Prefect now.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“How? Nobody knows yet!”
Rafe spread a big paw over his huge cloaked chest, “The Alpha and I had a chat.”
“I see! Looks like we’re both moving up in the world.”
After a moment’s mirth, Rafe’s face sank. “Whatcha you lie for, Jan?”
“Lie?”
“About what happened on the train.”
Blinking once, Janoah explained gently, “I had to; you can’t be seen to have killed all those Elders, let alone a Den Father, however corrupt.”
“But you-”
“It’s bad enough you’re an Eisenwolf at all! Let’s not frighten the Den Fathers into closing our operation down.”
Rafe dipped his chin. “Aye, Meryl said as much.”
“Then she’s a wise wolfess.”
Silence, but for distant traffic.
Breaking out an ember, Janoah looked across the grim ALPHA HQ and puffed, “Nikita’s snuffed it, by the way.”
Rafe sat up, big ears pricked in alarm.
“Meryl’s not sure why,” Janoah huffed. “Some kind of fit or heart attack. He might’ve taken poison. Josef was going to do an autopsy, but the Alpha doesn’t seem bothered. So that’s that.”
“Well I didn’t do anything, I just-”
Janoah waved a paw; “It’s a kindness. He would’ve been executed anyway. He and Amael have both escaped the noose. Nurka too, it seems.”
Rafe took a deep, shaky breath, “Jan I….”
“Mm?” Janoah sat forward, leant on a crutch and patted her champion’s knee. “What?”
“Is it over?”
“Over?”
“Is Lupa safe now? I mean, THORN and all that. That’s all gone, ‘en it?”
“I don’t know,” Janoah shrugged. “Besides, there’s always someone out to cause trouble-”
“Then I’ll stay,” Rafe blurted.
After working out what her Eisenwolf was referring to, Janoah licked her lips, “You don’t have to on my account.”
“I want to. I want to make Lupa safe… for Meryl.”
“She won’t thank you for it.”
“She’ll understand. I can’t go sit on the Graumeer coast and stare at the sea like an old wolf yet. I’m not even twenny! Maybe when the rot really starts to bite, but not yet. I have to use what Ulf gave me whilst I still have it.”
Nodding, Janoah asked, “But are you happy here, Rafe?”
“Happy?”
“Yes. I’m sure Meryl only wants you to be happy. It’s what Rufus wants too.”
Frowning, Rafe glanced across the HQ and caught Meryl’s sweet face. She was standing at the door to the courtyard, watching, waiting.
“Yeah,” Rafe said, waving at her until she waved back, “I’m happy, Jan.”
Janoah shrugged, “Then it’s settled.”
Looking into the trembling sun, she took Rafe’s paw in hers. She could feel his fire, the imperium burning in his blood, the blessed curse.
“We’ve proven ourselves to the Alpha,” Janoah said. “He’s seen us. Now we must help him forge Lupa anew, not just for wolfkind, but for everyone who depends on us to sleep soundly in their beds.”
“Yeah? Sounds like a plan, Jan.”
“Amael had the right idea; to reform. He just had the grace of a hyena with a sledgehammer. ALPHA can do better. We can all do better. We must.”
Epilogue: Diary Excerpt 4
It has been two months since the strange events at Hummelton and I am back in Riddle at last. As you can see I have dug out my diary from its hiding place, though of course I have made small entries on paper in Hummelton Hospital in the interim – I must remember to paste those in here.
After much rest and recuperation my right arm feels as good as new, but my left leg remains weak at the knee. Riddle’s staff surgeon says the Hummel doctors did an excellent job patching me up, though when it comes to pellets shattering bones and tendons Rufus says things are never quite the same again, however talented one’s surgeon. He would know; that wolf is peppered with shrapnel. I hope he’s wrong
on this occasion and my leg improves. Regardless, I am able to perform my duties again, albeit the duties of a Howler Captain since my promotion. I am not sure what the rank entails, but Rufus says I’ll get the hang of it. I will try my best to meet his and Elder Vladimir’s expectations.
I am staring at the Imperium Heart the Den Fathers awarded me. I feel a fraud, for Uther was the wolf who carried me that day, urging me on, as always. He deserves this more than me. It’s enough, I am reliably told by Elder Vladimir, that Vito’s assassination was quietly put down to ‘unknown agents hired by Amael’ and Uther allowed to go shot-free. Well, almost. He has been dishonourably discharged from the Bloodfangs and joined ALPHA; Grand Prefect Janoah collected him herself just yesterday. He has nowhere else to go. I hate to say it, but I think Uther will fit in well; taking errant Howlers to task sounds right up his street. Though, Rufus reckons he will have great difficulty saying ‘my Alpha’.
Uther did not act alone, Ivan and an unknown Greystone took part in Vito’s murder. I was the only witness and I will not contest the findings of the inquiry. I owe Uther that, especially since Elder Vladimir further informs me, though cautions me to keep it quiet, that Uther was abused as a cub by the late Vito. He was just one of many street cubs swept up in the Bloodfang Den Father’s mad indulgences. I realise now that Uther tried to tell me this, even to warn me against such wolves as Vito. I’m sure he wanted me to guess, saving him the agony of telling me, but I was too dense to grasp his pain. This goes some way, in my mind, towards excusing his actions. As for Ivan, nobody knows where he’s gone. He was not in the wreckage of the Elder Train, though the driver of the train claims a white wolf of Ivan’s stature threw him from the engine’s cabin and set the train to crash into Hummelton Station. It could be Ivan was amongst the unidentifiable corpses in the contaminated lounge car, but Janoah insists otherwise and Rufus is inclined to believe her. Olivia Blake has also disappeared, albeit into the paws of ALPHA. If she has gone by choice, as Janoah claims, then there is nothing more to be said. Sara’s efforts were not for nought; she may have lost one friend, but she saved another, and perhaps through him all of Lupa.
Is Lupa worth saving? Yes, but she must adapt. Den Father Vito was a symptom of our diseased and corrupt social structure, which allows abuses to go unchallenged and unpunished, since a Den Father is above scrutiny. Amael saw himself as the cure, but a cure that kills the patient is no cure at all.
Whilst most of the conspirators have been rounded up, Den Father Flaid of the Greystones has not been confronted. Janoah says he colluded in Amael’s plan, but there is little evidence. The Den Fathers all say he did not even attempt to leave the Summit as the dirigible passed over, when surely a guilty wolf would have. Perhaps Amael did not reveal to Flaid his full intentions; certainly Tristan Eisbrand was unaware of the full extent of Amael’s lupicidal ambitions. I understand from Sara he has been pardoned by Thorvald Strom, albeit severely chastised and sent to police some lesser district than Arkady as penance.
Perhaps we can afford to forgive; the white-imperium shortage is over and tensions are easing. Not only had Amael been siphoning off shipments for his cache (as yet still missing), but the Warden had closed the richest Gelb caves upon Grand Prefect Nikita’s secret instructions, choking Lupa and seeding unrest for years. According to Silvermane, who interrogated Nikita shortly before his strange death, Gelb was to enter full commercial production again once Nikita was in control of Lupa, so that he would be seen as the hero who brought stability, whilst Amael was to be blamed for the atrocity at Hummelton and executed. Each conspirator was only out for themselves, it seems. It makes me sick.
However, there is a ray of hope. Since the revelations of maltreatment and outright murder in the hyena camps there is an appetite for change sweeping Lupa that cannot be sated, not least since our powerful feline neighbours across the Teich in Felicia have launched a formal complaint, delivered from their Lupan embassy in a speech that could not be silenced. The bold action was taken thanks in no small part to Penny Buttle having a word with her cousin the Queen, or so rumour has it.
The Den Fathers are making noises towards easing restrictions on the tribes. From what they hear, Vladimir and Rufus believe the current Reservations located cruelly on the Ashfall will be entirely dissolved and the hyenas allowed to move south to a new, healthier territory. A likely candidate for resettlement is South Rostsonne, beyond the canyons, where I myself was born. It’s a hard country, dry and cruel, with few inhabitants, but paradise compared to the deadly Ashfall. The hyenas may even be allowed to create a nation of sorts, which is all The Hyena Organisation for the Recognition of Nationhood, and Nurka, wanted.
I still wonder what would have happened had Nurka followed through with the conspiracy and dropped black-imperium on Hummelton, instead of mere photographs. Some have tried to dismiss THORN’s evidence, but few believe they would have gone to such length as to commandeer a dirigible to deliver false propaganda. Indeed they did not; Nurka had the opportunity to go down in infamy as a mass murderer. He stepped back from the abyss, and for that alone shares this Imperium Heart with me, for all beastkind. The same cannot be said of Queen Arjana, but if I had been treated as abominably as she, perhaps I would have sanctioned the slaughter of thousands too. I cannot condemn her; I have no right.
Nurka’s body was never found and officially the stolen black-imperium was never aboard the Nimbus, nor was it thrown into Lake Hummel despite Uther’s statement to ALPHA. All has been denied. Rufus has heard from Sara that Lake Hummel has been dredged on the quiet and the canisters recovered and buried deep in the belly of Gelb’s lesser-known chasms, returned, as it were to, Mother Erde. Indeed, the disposal of black-imperium, and the security of refineries and other such places, is under review across the packs. Never again can any one beast come into possession of so much dangerous material, not now there is a means of delivering it across such broad areas as to prove catastrophic. This is a new age, a more complex age, innocence and naivety are passing.
If we want to drive our cars and read by night, be whisked across continents by trains and airships, even live at all in the case of the afflicted, white-imperium, black-imperium and every grade on the spectrum in-between, remain a necessary evil. There are no easy answers to this or any other problem beasts face, even a cure for the rot itself would not banish the need for imperium fuel and the resulting ashen rain that desolates not only Lupa’s hinterlands, but that of Felicia and every great conurbation growing upon the face of the world, like so many bleeding sores. The Dead Cities that stand forgotten and overcome by sand, forest and sea in the great wild places of the world are testament to our past failures. Rufus, Heath and others, even Adal Weiss if Janoah is to be believed, theorise that great civilisations once flourished all across the world, civilisations where all beasts were equal, and none went hungry – the power of Rafe’s Eisenwolf suit only confirms how advanced these civilisations must have been, we are only just beginning to grasp their ideas. Those cities and those ideas died many millennia ago, poisoned by black-imperium, either slowly over time, or by a great war. Perhaps the ‘black rain’, as the hyenas call it in their legends, came from an army of airships, or planes, or even a thousand artillery shells. Then again, perhaps it was delivered by some contrivance of destruction as yet unimagined, something that makes even Rafe Stenton’s remarkable eisenpelz look like a plaything.
If Rufus gains the permission and funds to go on his expedition to these long-lost cities, then perhaps he will not only find the answers to our past, but to our future.
I must leave it there. Sara and Heath are due any minute and I’m not remotely groomed. Rufus is taking us down to Citizen Casimir’s newly renovated ‘Warren’ to discuss his latest expedition pitch. That young Steppes wolf, Tomek, is supposed to be there with his pet ant. Rufus is full of praises for him and Sara says he’s rather dashing, especially in a hat.
Captain Linus Bloodfang Mills
THIS MATTER IS CLOSED
ALPHA: The Agency for Lupan Peace and Howler Accountability. An organisation set up by the packs after the last Howler war to independently police the Howlers.
Alpha: In the context of a wolfen culture, a natural leader and/or dominant partner, male or female.
The Alpha: The current administrator of ALPHA. Few know the origins of the self-styled title.
Arkady University: Colloquially the ‘Ark’, the oldest and most prestigious centre of learning still standing in Lupa, located in the eponymous Arkady District of Eisbrand territory.
Ash: Waste imperium, a glittering grey powder, very soft and somewhat cohesive, it blankets Lupa and the surrounding land, smothering plant life. When Howlers use imperium to create plasma or bend their corona, ash is produced in the bloodstream, which can cause great discomfort before being excreted in sweat and urea.
Ashfall: The area immediately around Lupa rendered dead and lifeless by the pollution.
The Beehive: A famous saloon on the Common where Howlers go to relieve their woes, classier than most.
Beta: In the context of wolfen culture, a natural follower and/or subservient partner, male or female.
Black-imperium: The lowest state of imperium, yet the most fearsome. Black-imperium devours not only other states of imperium in an effort to regain energy, but also living matter. This is what causes the rot. Any creature that ingests or inhales black-imperium will either immediately die, or develop rot symptoms. Prognosis is dependent on dose; trace levels are survivable. Howlers develop the rot when the imperium in their blood decays into minute quantities of black, a phenomenon accelerated by using the imperium stored in one’s bones and blood to bend one’s corona or generate plasma. In nature, black-imperium sinks back into the Erde, where forces as yet unknown are thought to re-energise it back to white.
