The darkness of Wildhearth was alive with shadow figures.

Shapes prowled stealthily through the gloom of the disused industrial district on the city's northern edge, moving between massive cooling stacks, crumbling warehouses and dormant factories. Some small pockets of the district still bubbled with life, but for the most part it was a ghost town, abandoned until some staffer in the Conclave decided it would be worth revisiting.

That made it a very good place to hide.

Beneath the looming mass of Wildhearth's outer wall, a big, dirty cube of a building came into view, nestled in the middle of abandoned den stacks, a rusted tram rail cutting a mournful trail from a loading entrance on the east wall to disappear into the surrounding buildings. Sickly lights could be seen seeping from some of the lower windows, indicating that the place was not as abandoned as it might have appeared.

All around it, the wolfkin enforcers of Wildhearth moved in.

These were no gutter-dwelling gangs or half-trained security guards. Their bodies moved with predatory grace in spite of their heavy armour and weapons. Like oil through pipes they flowed through the streets, closing on their quarry. These were the sanctioned killers of the city, a force that could – and would – do what others couldn't. Sometimes a problem needed a permanent solution.

Sometimes talking was a fool's game.

Approaching from a narrow alley to the south, the leader of the wolfkin moved with a speed that belayed his bulky frame, hugging the dark, almost invisible against the lightless, cracked buildings of the abandoned district.

Although no giant by enforcer standards, Illando was big, and powerfully built along with it. His coat was ash-grey, mostly concealed by the bulky sheathe of the enforcer body-armour that covered him from throat to ankle, and he sported a short, unruly tangle of black headfur between his sharp-pointed ears. A heavy armbow was wrapped around one thick wrist, while a gleaming metal gauntlet encased his other paw, its claws longer, keener and stronger than anything nature could provide.

He gently clashed the blades together as he prowled forward, his hunting pack spread out in a straggled line in the dark behind him. At the motion they closed up, their footpaws touching the ground with a whisper of skin against cracked ceramic and hardmud. He led them up to the corner of the alley, lingering in the shadow of the building on his left – a crumbling conical stack that might once have been a bar or a halfway decent warrenary.

Opposite him on the narrow street a towering, black-furred enforcer named Gensher sank into a feral crouch at the head of the second column of wolfkin. Out in the buildings to the east and west more enforcers closed in, along with two full packs from the city's watchguards.

The vulkin guards were a less violent offshoot from Illando's ancient ancestors, more suited to law enforcement than the surgical brutality that the enforcers specialised in. He suspected the vulkin had been deployed alongside them to the keep the bloodshed to a palatable level. His hackles rose at the thought, but there was nothing to be done about it now. At least for the moment, he and the watchguards shared a common foe. Illando contented himself by grinding his teeth together.

"Hold," he whispered harshly, feeling the pack straining to be unleashed. They wanted blood tonight; he hardly blamed them. Low growls of assent filtered through the wolves in his wake – twenty hardened enforcers out here with him to clean up someone else's mess.

Illando sank into a crouch, ready to spring as he waited for the signals from the other prongs of their hunting party. It took a couple of minutes, each second piling more and more pent up aggression into the wolfkin gathered near him. Paws began to shuffle against the cracked earth; he could feel heartbeats quickening.

The wolves weren't very good at standing still.

Then a light flickered from a window to the east of the warehouse. Once. Twice. Three times.

Then it stopped.

"Farler's in position," Illando murmured. "Not long now. You all know the plan. Move fast; stick to your targets."

Gensher let out a low growl. "And kill 'em all?"

"If they surrender, you keep them alive," he replied. "If they don't, do what you have to do. I'll shed no tears for traitors."

He already knew from bitter experience no-one would be surrendering today. This was not the first hunt he'd been forced to go on thanks to the machinations of the former enforcer commander, Hera. The fool had been meddling in dark sciences, things no self-respecting wolfkin should have gone near, and the whole bloody mess had collapsed around her.

Hera was dead now, but her toxic legacy clung on among her acolytes, a handful of devoted, demented wolfkin who still believed in what their leader had tried to do, and were determined to carry on her work.

Not on my watch, Illando thought grimly. He'd bury them all before allowing that ugly ideology to rear its head again in his city.

A short, sharp bark echoed out across the quiet streets from the west and he stiffened, waiting for confirmation. A second bark followed on the heels of the first, confirming that the watchguard contingent were now in position on the opposite side of the warehouse, covering the north-west exits. He felt the swell of anticipation from his troops. They'd heard the barks and knew what they meant. He could leash them no longer.

"Go," he grated.

It was like an explosion of shadows. Illando shot forward, his powerful hind legs propelling him out of the alley with fearsome speed. Behind him the wolfkin fanned out; he could just see Gensher's massive bulk in the corner of his eye, the big wolfkin racing to the right flank. The patter of footpaws filled the air and he readied his armbow, seeing the flicker of silhouettes in the lower windows. To the east he could see the small, dark shapes of Farler's pack pelting across a stretch of open ground, spread in a long skirmish line to avoid giving any easy targets.

Their caution was proved warranted when the whooshing thunk of armbows began to fill the air. Bolts hissed out of upper windows from dark figures and Illando immediately began jinking left and right. Begrudgingly he had to applaud the traitors for their composure in the face of certain death bearing down on them.

One enforcer behind him went down with a snarl of pain, a bolt sticking out of his shoulder and sending him scrambling for cover. Gritting his teeth, Illando jerked to a sudden halt and swung his armbow up to aim at an open window on the second level. He took a precious instant to exhale, then fired.

The armbow's cord thrummed; a bolt leapt off into the night and scythed upwards until it hit something solid in the window. The figure spun and a scream echoed down into the streets. Illando's lip curled in satisfaction, exposing the gleaming white of his canines.

More bolts whizzed back and forth. Windows shattered and more blood was traded, but it would take more than this feeble salvo to stop Illando and his comrades. He hurtled across the empty space until he reached the wall of the warehouse, too close an angle for their foes to aim down at him. Just ahead of him lay a small locked door; a maintenance entrance. With a short growl of command, he nodded to Gensher.

The big wolfkin bared his teeth and hurled himself at the door in a single powerful bound, lowering one massive shoulder into the metal. His armour took the brunt of the impact and there was a shriek of grinding metal before the door tore clean off its hinges, caving in and crashing back into the corridor beyond.

Gensher stayed low and Illando swung in behind him, armbow already aimed and loaded. The wolfkin on the other side of the entrance was startled for a fatal instant by the sudden incursion, and Illando put a bolt into the traitor's throat.

"Clean this rat's nest out," Illando spat as the wolfkin collapsed in a gurgling heap, stepping over the threshold with his gauntlet raised. Corridors opened out ahead of him and he made chopping motions left and right, directing columns of his enforcers to flush their foes out.

With Gensher and four other wolves close behind, he darted forward. His ears picked at the clash and clamour of combat from somewhere deeper in the structure; either Farler or the watchguards were running into stiffer resistance.

Adrenaline pulsed through Illando's powerful frame when a group of dark shapes came clattering around the corner towards them. He didn't hesitate – not even for an instant. Letting out a bellowing snarl he lunged forward, right into the enemy ranks.

Mayhem erupted in the narrow corridor as the two sides clashed. The lead wolfkin lurched towards him, but Illando turned the traitor aside with a deft twist and shove, sending the unfortunate individual tumbling into Gensher's waiting arms. There was a crunch of buckling armour as Gensher ran their foe through with a single punch of his gauntlet, before tossing the body aside like a ragdoll.

Another wolfkin lunged at him with a snarl. Illando twisted, turning aside the thrust of a longclaw dagger with his vambrance and swinging his own clawed gauntlet around savagely in his free paw. The blades ripped the left side of his attacker's throat open, carrying on to cut across the traitor's face. Blood sprayed across the wall.

As his foe toppled screaming, Illando took a deft step back to avoid a wild kick, then lunged back in. Before the wolfkin could scramble away he caught her by the scruff of her armour, wrenching her back into a powerful thrust of his gauntlet. With the blades bunched into a point, he rammed them clean through the chest plate, and into the heart beyond.

The wolfkin went limp with a rattling breath. Exhaling heavily, Illando tugged himself loose and let her fall, staring down at the body with a mixture of dismay and righteous fury. He took no relish in killing his fellow wolfkin, but these fools had brought the wrath of the loyalists down upon themselves by following Hera's twisted teachings.

What the former enforcer commander had done made Illando feel physically sick. By the Peace and Fire, they were wolfkin, the alpha predators of Wildhearth. They did not need shadowy backroom schemes and horrific genetic experiments to stamp their authority on this city. That so many of his fellows had gone along with this madness shook Illando more than any damage that might have been done to the political standing of his kin. He felt embarrassed and enraged in equal measure.

He looked back in time to see a female enforcer under his command unlatch her jaws from the throat of another traitor, letting the body thump to the ground. Corpses of the rest of the enemy pack littered the hallway and Illando let out a snort of satisfaction.

"Follow me," he growled, leaving the dead wolfkin without a backward glance. He squared his shoulders, lowering his stance as he jogged through the passage, twisting and turning towards the centre of the building. Two more skirmishes delayed them only briefly, as Illando drove forward with furious purpose, the towering Gensher close on his heels as they carved their way to the main warehouse.

When he burst through the flimsy door that led into the yawning, open space, he discovered that Farler's pack had already reached the traitors' inner sanctum. Once this place might have held innocent crates of freight goods, but now the big cube had been repurposed to hide the remnants of Hera's experiments. There were several standing, cylindrical tanks – thankfully empty – where test subjects could be interred and pumped full of heinous drugs. Operating tables, crates of test tubes and surgical equipment, and scattered piles of weapons filled empty shelves.

On the far side of the equipment at least twenty wolfkin were engaged in a vicious brawl to the death. He picked out the veteran Farler, his patchy coat of grey black easy to spot in the melee, and the friendly enforcers bore blue flashes on their shoulder guards to stop them being mistaken for the traitors. A major problem with hunting their own – they all had the same gear.

"Kill them," Illando grunted simply, motioning his pack forward. They didn't need much convincing.

"Louker!" one wolfkin yelped, his voice rising in panic. "Behind us!"

From among the traitors, a grizzled, black-furred individual twisted around to see Illando and his pack thundering across the space towards them, and his brow rose in horror. Then he bared his teeth, bringing a heavy spiked club around in both paws. Illando locked eyes with this 'Louker', his predatory instinct roaring to the front of his mind.

"The leader's mine," he barked.

"Let's finish it then!" Louker bellowed his challenge, stepping forward and giving the club a twirl of anticipation. "Come, little toy wolf!"

If the fool was trying to provoke him, it was working, Illando thought. His footpaws hammered the ground as he sprinted straight at Louker, lowering his shoulders in preparation. He didn't break stride, not until the last instant when the traitor finally swung his club.

At that instant, Illando dropped flat, his forward momentum carrying him forward into a flying dive. Louker's club swiped through empty air, and Illando slammed a shoulder into his opponent's shin.

There was a crunch as the other wolfkin's ankle buckled under the force, before his leg gave out and he fell to the ground with a crash and a scream of pain. Illando rolled, bounding to his feet and diving back towards his foe. Louker pushed up onto one knee and contorted his body to swing the club around, but Illando simply stepped into the blow.

The club thudded against his flank, but he ignored the pain, his battle-blood pounding in his ears as he clamped his right arm down against the weapon, locking it in place. Baring his teeth at Louker, he raised one footpaw and slammed it into the traitor's chest, at the same time twisting his body back to rip the club from Louker's grasp.

The wolfkin went one way, his weapon the other. He crashed to the ground, rolling tail over snout until he came to rest face down on the grubby warehouse floor.

"Get up," Illando hissed, tossing the club aside in disgust. "You might be a traitor, but try and die like a wolf."

"You call us traitors?!" the former enforcer spluttered, staggering upright. "Hera wanted to put us in charge of this city – forever – and you spat in her eye. You're a mongrel coward-,"

He got no further. Illando cleared the space between them in a single step and with a vicious, back-paw swipe of his gauntlet, slashed the traitor's throat open. The other wolfkin staggered back with a shocked gurgle, pawing at the gouts of blood but Illando wasn't finished. Another step forward brought him close enough to smash the clenched gauntlet into his foe's stomach. Anger and pride lent crushing power to the blow and his bloodied claws exploded from Louker's back.

"We don't need your schemes to run this city," he snarled to the dying wolfkin. "Think about that when you're falling through the Fire."

Then he wrenched himself loose and Louker sagged in a dead heap at his footpaws. Blood seeped out onto the warehouse floor and Illando took a step back, his face twisted with rage. A sudden quiet settled over them; with the last of the traitors dealt with the warehouse felt like a tomb. The loyalist enforcers gathered in a loose semi-circle, cleaning blood from their gauntlets; in some cases spitting blood from their mouths where the close combat had become particularly savage.

Farler detached himself from the group, a little scraped and bloodied but otherwise unharmed. He flicked gore from his claws and sighed, nodding in satisfaction. He was a little smaller than Illando all over, as though someone had just cut him out of a different-sized mould, but the myriad of faded scars on his fur spoke to decades of violent service.

"That should be the last of them," he said flatly. "A good night's work, eh?"

"Hard to believe," Illando murmured, still looking down at Louker's dead body.

"What is?"

"That so many of us went along with Hera's plans. What did she tell them, do you think? What fear pushed them to that madness?"

"Ambition's always dangerous," Farler told him. "She had her claws in deep. I'm sure the sales pitch was a good one."

Then his head twitched, his eyes narrowing to look over Illando's shoulder.

"Ah, Peace and bloody Fire," the veteran enforcer muttered. "Care, Illando. Here come the dogs."

Illando wrinkled his nose and straightened up, turning to see a pack of vulkin officers enter the inner sanctum of the rebels. In contrast to the enforcers, the watchguards wore armour slabs of deep blue, but more striking was their variance in size and build. While they bore superficial similarities to the wolves, their heritage was a more diverse genetic mess, filtering down through uncounted years from before even the Great Peace and the Savage Fire.

Some were big, some small, some brawny, some slender; they carried armbows and long, thick-hafted truncheons. Largely, Illando viewed them as a necessary, albeit pedantic branch of Wildhearth's law enforcement that he was content to dismiss.

The commander of the watchguards here, however, was a different matter.

He was a particularly massive specimen, standing easily as tall as Illando with a heavily muscled frame to match. His fur was mostly black with patches of brown, and his face bore a sharp snout fitted with a powerful set of jaws. He strode out ahead of his guards like a cumbersome statue come to life, drawing enforcer eyes with every step.

This was Bronco, a newly anointed pack leader from Palharr District. Until this operation, Illando had known the vulkin through reputation alone: one of the small cabal of admittedly resourceful citykin that had been instrumental in Hera's downfall. Illando wasn't sure if he should have been insulted by the fact, or shaking the vulkin by the paw for his part in it all.

He saw the watchguard's eyes flicker over the corpses of Hera's former followers, lingering for a moment on Louker's body. His muzzle crinkled distastefully and he looked Illando in the eye.

"No prisoners?" Bronco asked dubiously.

"What does it look like?" Illando shrugged.

The vulkin bristled. "You should have taken him alive. If there are more cells left he might know-"

"Spare me, watchguard," Illando growled back. "If it were up to me you wouldn't even be here."

"You're making this personal," Bronco persisted. "We could have used them."

Illando felt every muscle in his body tense as he stepped closer to the vulkin. "Get this through your skull, dog," he snarled, "this is personal. It's our mess and I'll decide how it's dealt with. Cowards like Louker are a disgrace and a stain on my people. They deserve to die." Letting out a snort of frustration he turned to Farler, shaking his head. "Get this cleaned up. We're done here."

And, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Illando trudged from the warehouse.

*