Imperium Lupi Read online

  IMPERIUM LUPI

  Adam Browne

  Copyright © Adam Browne 2017

  Published by Dayfly Publications 2017

  Adam Browne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the prior permission of the author, except as agreed by the terms and conditions under which it was originally purchased.

  Cover illustration by Mike Nash.

  www.mike-nash.com

  Interior illustrations by Adam Browne.

  Dedication

  For Mum, Dad and the long-suffering Scott

  Special thanks to Michael

  Giacomo Valerio M-12 “Springtail”

  Author’s Note

  Dear reader. This edition of Imperium Lupi contains a lexicon for your convenience. You may turn to it at your leisure, as every effort has been made to omit any plot particulars that might spoil your enjoyment of the narrative.

  Live your time as the dayfly that dared, not the nymph who hid in the pond forever.

  Giacomo Valerio

  Contents

  IMPERIUM LUPI

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  MAPS

  Prologue: Twelve years Ago

  Part I: INDUCTION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Codex: Bloodfang

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part II: EISENWOLF

  Diary Excerpt 1

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  ~Blick~

  Chapter 20

  Codex: Eisbrand

  Chapter 21

  ~Blick ii~

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  ~Blick iii~

  Chapter 24

  Part III: GELB

  Diary Excerpt 2

  Chapter 25

  ~Blick iv~

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ~Blick v~

  Chapter 28

  Codex: Greystone

  Chapter 29

  ~Blick vi~

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  ~Blick vii~

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  ~Blick viii~

  Part IV: LUPICIDE

  Diary Excerpt 3

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Codex: Hummel

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Codex: ALPHA

  Chapter 45

  Part V: BLACK RAIN

  Codex: The Jua-mata

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue: Diary Excerpt 4

  LEXICON

  Contact Us

  About the Author

  MAPS

  ELDER CHAMBER NOW IN SESSION

  Prologue: Twelve years Ago

  Rain lashed the cobbles and tumbled off the twisted, smouldering ruins of a devastated street, washing ash and paper into Lupa’s clogged drains. Another shell roared overhead, slamming into a row of abandoned terraced houses and rending them to dust.

  “Schmutz!” a big hog snorted, enveloped in mid-stride by the rolling pall of pulverised brick and mortar. “Casimir!” he coughed, blinded and confused. “Casimir, where you at? Cas!”

  “Here, Werner!”

  A young white rabbit emerged from the cloud, grabbed the hog’s huge, muscled arm and guided him through the choking chaos to the clear.

  “You all right?” Casimir asked, setting his helmet straight.

  “Yeah,” Werner replied, wiping his beady eyes. “You?”

  “Aye, fine. I reckon that was the last volley. Come on; the Howlers are gonna be all over the district any minute now they’ve softened us up.”

  “Don’t need to tell me twice.”

  Armour and weapons clattering about their frames, hog and rabbit trotted and bounded through the heaps of what was once a happy Lupan street. Bricks, wood, steel and glass, lately ordered into shops, houses and pubs, now lay crushed and jumbled beyond recognition. Occasionally a rotting body broke through the monotonous grey mountains like a strange weed, a rat’s tail here, a gaping, eyeless hog face there – Werner tried not to look.

  He and Casimir clambered up a mound of unremarkable ruins; whatever it was, it was no more. Upon descending the other side, Werner noticed Casimir’s sudden absence. He looked back, sodden chin straps slapping on his jowls, and spied Casimir standing atop the devastation, his face all-a-frown.

  “What is it?”

  “I can feel something.”

  Werner cowered, pistol drawn. “Howler?” he seethed.

  “Not sure… I….”

  Wordlessly, Casimir removed his helmet, sliding it over his long white ears. Taking a sharp breath, the athletic rabbit turned and hopped down the ruins with definite purpose, disappearing from Werner’s view.

  “Cas!” the hog called. “Cas, what’re you doin’?”

  “It’s down here!”

  “What?”

  “Just help me!”

  Against his better instincts, Werner scrambled over the horrific results of war’s recipe book and slid down to where Casimir worked, furiously throwing bricks aside.

  “Come on!” the rabbit panted. “He’s under here.”

  Werner eventually joined in, the mighty hog excavating huge chunks of mortar with ease. “He?”

  “He, she, I dunno, but its got a corona.”

  Werner stopped dead. “Then it’s gotta be a Howler.”

  “No. It’s too weak, mate, too weak by half.”

  “We ain’t got time, Cas. We gotta go-”

  “Keep digging!” the rabbit snapped, rain dripping off his chin.

  At length, the grumbling Werner cast aside a broad chunk of plaster, revealing a small hole. Casimir called in, “Hello? Anybody in there? Say something if you can hear me!”

  He listened with his sensitive ears.

  “Well?” Werner urged.

  “Shh shhh!” Casimir hushed.

  At considerable length, the rabbit stripped off his backpack and scrabbled head-first into the hole.

  “Stay here.”

  Werner gnarled his thick fingers in frustration. “Casimir, get out of there, it could come down on yer!” He worriedly scanned the ruins. “If I see a Howler I’m leaving you here, I swear. Stupid, thumping, son of a maggot, thinks he’s all that with his-”

  “Werner!”

  “Cas? Cas, where are yer?”

  Casimir’s white face appeared at the hole. “Here, take him,” he said, before shuffling back somewhat and speaking to someone else in a kind, encouraging tone, “Climb out the hole, lad.
Go on. Uncle Werner won’t hurt yer.”

  “Uncle?” big Werner snorted, scratching his snout.

  A small, quivering, dishevelled beast crawled blinking to the precipice of Lupa’s cloudy, wet firmament. His fur and clothes were matted with blood and caked with dust, but his blinking eyes shone even in the overcast daylight like twin embers – a wolf cub and no mistake, perhaps three or four.

  “Go on, lad,” Casimir urged, hissing at his comrade, “Werner, help him up!”

  “Cas… if you can feel him, then-”

  “Just take him!”

  Rolling his shoulders, Werner reached down and plucked the silent cub from the wreckage, before setting him to once side and standing back, as if he were a ticking bomb.

  Casimir extricated himself from the hole, popping forth like a cork from a keg. A moment later and the ground rumbled to a distant explosion. The ruins collapsed further, dust and mortar issuing fourth in jets, choking everyone.

  Once the air had cleared, Casimir knelt down and spoke to the cub, “What’s yer name, lad?”

  The parched cub croaked politely, “Bruno, sir.”

  “Bruno? I’m Casimir, that’s Werner.” Casimir doused a hanky with a flask of water and mopped Bruno’s face, revealing him to be a rich, chocolaty brown. Smiling for a moment, the rabbit offered the stoical cub his flask. “Where’s yer parents, Bruno?”

  Wetting his little throat, the cub slowly pointed at the heaps and said simply, “Mummy’s not moving anymore.”

  Casimir dipped his chin, “Aye.” Standing up, he took Bruno’s tiny paw. “Come on, lad.”

  Werner’s big nostrils flared, “Oi, what’re you doing? Just leave him here; the Howlers’ll find him.”

  “Aye, and make him into another one of our oppressors someday!” Casimir scoffed. He spread a paw, “Come on, Werner. He must be from an impartialist family to be living here. We’ll take him to HQ and see what can be done.”

  “But he’s afflicted, and bad if you can feel him already!”

  “So what’re you gonna do, shoot him?”

  Silence. Werner looked down at the tiny wolf. “‘Course not,” he exhaled at last, defeated by those blameless eyes.

  “Then we take him,” Casimir declared, hefting his backpack and leading Bruno across the grey wastes. “Come on, lad. Don’t be scared. Uncle Werner and I will see you right.”

  Part I: INDUCTION

  Chapter 1

  Lupa was a bleak, garbled lattice of bricks and squalor even on the best of days, and positively rancid on such a miserably overcast morning. Streets of decaying houses and towering, ash-belching smokestacks rippled by the drizzle-licked windows as the train trundled through a particularly rough district. The radiant red and white banners marking the border of Bloodfang territory barely stirred Rufus’s wolfen heart as they swung into view, for his mind was elsewhere.

  Oh for the wilds, the fresh air and open spaces, to study the plants and bugs beyond the confines of Lupa and further wolfkind’s knowledge.

  One day Rufus, the red-furred wolf convinced himself, as he nursed the file resting on his armoured legs.

  “Ticket please.”

  Hardly hearing for his daydreams, Rufus slowly turned and looked up at the conductor – and kept on looking up, for he was a huge, tusked pig in a blue uniform, complete with cloak and hat. The portly beast was armed with an absurdly small ticket-punch and a truncheon.

  “Pardon me, citizen?” Rufus chirped pleasantly.

  “I said ticket, wolf,” the train hog snorted – he was armed with an absurd attitude too.

  Maintaining his smile, Rufus pulled the shoulder of his own black cloak round, presenting his brooch – a circular black brooch with a luminous vermillion-red triangle set within, so bright that it injected the conductor’s suddenly pale cheeks with some much-needed colour.

  “Sorry, Howler!” he excused. “I-I-I didn’t think that-”

  “You were merely doing your duty, citizen,” Howler Rufus assured him. “Though, one could endeavour to go about it with a modicum of cheer, even on such a gloomy day.”

  “Oh, yes sir. I shall endeavour to do so, sir!”

  The hog nervously tipped his hat and vacated the carriage without so much as punching another ticket.

  As the swaying train rocked him side to side, Rufus felt a tingle rise up his armoured legs.

  Not again. Not now.

  The Howler subtly grasped the folds of his waist-length cloak, bracing himself.

  Sure enough it came, the pain, rolling through his bones like an icy wave thrashing the rotten scaffold of a pier. Every muscle and sinew in Rufus’s powerful arms pressed against his ruddy hide as he suffered in silence.

  It passed quickly, with only a dull ache lingering deep down in the marrow of his femurs – they said the legs were the first to go.

  The pain subsiding, Rufus leant back into his seat, chest heaving beneath his cloak. He glanced around the dilapidated carriage; his fellow passengers diverted their curious gaze or hid behind newspapers. Little beasts mostly, mice, rats, rabbits, all the lesser races, who wouldn’t dare speak to Rufus without being spoken to.

  The train slowed and the station panned into view, its fine marbled columns standing proud, each tarnished by the faintly spangled lustre of imperium ash. Rufus reached over and grabbed his helmet from the adjoining threadbare seat. He placed it over his brow; the padded metal hugging his sleek wolfen skull. It was black, save for the cheeks, which were white. Luminous red triangles were set beneath each eye-hole, like that found on Rufus’s brooch. Made of the wonder mineral imperium, they glowed even in the muted daylight, and against the helm’s white cheeks they resembled two bloodied fangs lying atop freshly fallen snow. The helm’s nose was covered by a grille punctured by a dozen round holes that enabled Rufus to breathe. Only his inquisitive green eyes and perky red ears remained visible, endowing him with menacing anonymity.

  File in paw, Rufus vacated his seat and made for the nearest exit, leg armour rattling as he walked. He stopped a moment to fasten a stray button on one of the white, knee-high gaiters covering his boots. Satisfied, he opened the carriage door before the train had stopped. The reward for such impatience was a face full of eye-watering ash as the monstrous engine up ahead vented waste imperium. Luckily the helmet’s special grille filtered out most of the ash before it got up Rufus’s nostrils, not that it would much affect a Howler like him. The induction process had hardened him against such feeble levels of poison long ago.

  Pulling the hood of his cloak over his helmet, the Howler braved the rain and strode across the platform towards the station with his usual confident gait. Seeing the trappings of a Howler – cloak, helm, armour – beasts of every sort averted their varied faces even whilst secretly watching, terrified, yet curious.

  Rufus remembered the feeling. From the gutters of Lupa he had once observed the mighty Howlers of yesteryear going about their business, taking what they wanted, whenever they wanted, never poor, cold or hungry. How Rufus had envied them, hated them, and yet wished to be one, ignorant cub that he was back then.

  Those Howlers were likely all gone now, their bodies decayed from the inside out whilst still living.

  Such was the curse of the rot.

  Sensing a second twinge brewing in his own contaminated bones, Rufus considered ducking behind the nearest pillar to save himself the indignity of becoming a spectacle. Many citizens secretly desired to see their diseased, parasitic overlords laid low by the very thing that gave them such power.

  Any passing sadists were denied their schadenfreude this morning, for the pangs grew into a warm, almost pleasant tingle, not unlike pins and needles – another Howler was near.

  Friend or foe? Even in these peaceful times, Rufus took stock. His free paw straying to the rapier slung at his hip, he allowed the ebb and flow of the imperium throbbing in his veins and crackling in his bones to guide him to one of the station’s enormous ash-streaked columns.

  “It’s no g
ood hiding!” he said, apparently challenging an inanimate marble pillar. “Out you come!”

  Perhaps reckoning the rot had rendered yet another Howler insane, a passing family of mice gave Rufus an even wider berth than was customary. Had they stayed a moment, they might have been relieved to see a wolf slip out from behind the pillar dressed exactly like Rufus; black mantle, armour, rapier at hip. He was somewhat taller, sporting white ears and piercing blue eyes that shone brightly even in the shadows of his helmet.

  “Ivan!” Rufus tutted. “I could’ve chopped your head off.”

  “And were I an assassin I could’ve shot you,” Ivan replied, in his rumbling, haughty tenor. He looked to the right, following the departing train with his eyes, then panned back to Rufus again. “You’ve a perfectly good monobike at your disposal, yet still you ride the rails with the dregs of Lupa,” he scolded. “It wouldn’t take much for someone to lie in wait for you.”

  Rufus leant forward slightly, paws and file cupped behind his back. “Next time you’re trying to make a point,” he said, “try dampening your imperium corona like a real assassin would so I don’t feel you halfway across Lupa-”

  “I wasn’t trying to do anything. Except keep dry.”

  “Really? Well, I hope you didn’t have to wait too long in this rancid drizzle.”

  “Is a minute long?” Ivan snorted brusquely. “You hop on the same train whenever you stay over at Professor Heath’s place. You’re excruciatingly predictable.”

  Rufus raised a finger, “Punctual.”

  “Just take precautions. Change your route. Take a taxi.”

  “Oh, but who’d want to do me in?”

  “There’s always someone when you’re a Howler, and you’re not just any Howler. You’re a little beast-loving impartialist who’s banged up more hard criminals than I’ve had hot meals. You infuriate authority and delinquent alike.”