Dagger 2 - Blood Brothers - A Dark Fantasy Adventure (Born to Be Free series)

by Walt Popester

  At that point, Heathen was in a passion and his futile efforts not to show it were useless. He was one of those guys upon whose face you could read every single feeling. “No!” he said. “That night I didn’t agree with my brother to let you—!”

  “You shouldn’t talk so much. We don’t want prying ears to listen more than they have to, right?”

  Varg’s son kept silent, looking furtively at Dagger as if noticing his presence only then. “You want to take my place in the…group I’ve recreated after so long,” he said. “Everybody understood that, but that’s my creature. I got back in there for the first time, I found those books, those rites, those—”

  “You keep talking too much, kid. There’s a time when how you feel has got to be kept to yourself. The sooner you’ll learn it, the sooner you’ll become as cool as me. Now go play somewhere else.”

  “You’re a double agent born, a huckster like Marduk. It’s those like you who have brought the order to shambles! Show in the battlefield to be the strongest, to be the worthy son of a Warrior King.”

  “Oh, how I would like to do it. But I’m a huckster, right?”

  “You’d run away at the sole gleam of my hammer!”

  “Trust me, Heathen, your hammers don’t shine. They smash, break and destroy, but they don’t shine. Anyway, if you’re really crazy enough to challenge me, tell me when and where. Discuss it with your brother, too, who will confirm my theory that you’re just a jerk. Unlike you, Evoken can reason, this is why he welcomed me with open arms, once I revealed to know the way in which you and your…group used to spend a few serene hours. What’s that face? Do you really want to challenge me to a duel, little, defenseless dickhead?”

  “No one would run the risk of shedding white blood, even if worms like you don’t have any blood.”

  “Oh, Ktisis blessed. What an intolerable accusation.”

  “Try to steal my place and I’ll kill you with these same hands.”

  Dagger stood up. “Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  Only then Warren opened his eyes. “Dagger Nightfall! You stay out of it.”

  “Mind your own business!” Heathen shouted, staring at him with his black eyes.

  Dagger shrugged. After having dealt with Olem, there was really little that guy thin as a rake could do, even though Heathen was a little taller than him. And even though Dagger knew he had intruded again into a matter that didn’t concern him. Yet a Hotankar always defends another Hotankar.

  “I know your story. Everybody knows it!” Heathen continued.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Really! We know how that coward bitch of your mother ran away from Candehel-mas when no one could defend her. Here’s the son of the last Warrior King: the son of a whore.”

  Dagger punched him without thinking.

  Heathen took it with the sluggish reflexes of a boy who had never really struggled. He splashed back in the water and brought his hands to his bleeding nose, looking at Dagger with hatred and fear.

  “My nose!” he said. “You broke my—”

  “Get out of here.”

  Blood left scarlet trails in the water. The Hammer novice made no reply, save with his eyes, then pulled himself out of the pool and grabbed his clothes.

  “It doesn’t end here!” he yelled.

  When he was gone, Dagger turned to Warren.

  The white blood was watching him skeptically.

  “Do you really think I need…your help?”

  “I couldn’t listen to his voice anymore. I’m here for a break.”

  “Uhm. Seems legitimate, but you’re no more in that pigsty in Melekesh, Dag. You can’t just pummel anyone you want. There are rules, you know? Heathen is untouchable for you: he’s still the son of a Pendracon, while you’re nothing. You’re not like me.”

  “We’re both children of a dead Pendracon.”

  Warren thought about it. “I understand your point. What I really mean is, you’re not someone who controls every single hidden corner of the Nest as well as being so damn cool as I am. This is my world, my spiderweb, and when a fly bangs against it I know exactly where to go and get it. Tak! Easy.”

  “That’s why you don’t want to become a Guardian, right?” Dagger said. “Just to hang on to the power you’ve built day after day in this pool of stagnant water.”

  Warren looked at him, nodding sarcastically. “Check out the big brain on you! You’re smart, motherfucker, very smart for someone who comes from the world Beyond. Yes, yes, I’m really impressed. You can come over to my house and fuck my sister.” The smile slowly faded from his face. “So, since you’re so keen, let’s take the story of your disappearance and your miraculous return to the Fortress: it doesn’t hold water, don’t you agree? Aniah was crazy? The fuck…she was one of the brightest people I’ve ever met, like all Deltas. I know, I met her. As a kid, I used to train with Olem before he went completely mad. But okay, let’s say she went crazy and her brain started to tweet, and she ran away to hide you beyond the portal and all that. Now, three Dracons disappear in the world Beyond, looking for you for a year, leaving my father alone against those of the Hammer, with all the…consequences.” Warren raised his hand and whistled as he let it descend. “Splash! I’m the son of a deceased Pendracon too, but I assure you: neither Olem, nor Marduk, nor the cursed Araya in person—or in lizard, or whatever the fuck he is—would abandon these walls just to come looking for me. Let alone all three…let alone on another world! Who cares about the son of a deceased Pendracon?”

  Dagger found the reasoning impeccable and grasped the real message—he had to ask fewer questions if he didn’t want others to ask theirs. The satisfied grin on Warren told him that the only things he could hope to learn from him were those Warren would enjoy making him understand, challenging his wits.

  Challenge accepted.

  “No. You’re not as smart as they say,” the white blood continued. “I can read on your face all the troubles you’ve had, along with what you’re thinking even now. Just like that asshole you punched. There will be serious consequences: the black half of the Nest won’t make your life any easier.”

  Dag shrugged. “I’ve never known the meaning of the word easy.”

  “Oh, how cute. I can see that you’re being trained by Olem, letting your knuckles guide you instead of your brain. I had decided to let go—and maybe there was a reason—but you didn’t care and BAM! You beat the son of the Pendracon, the man who holds the power of life and death over everything and everyone. Delicious! You act like a dog barking at the moon. You’re not rational.” Seeing him there in silence with his anger rising, Warren laughed. “Woof! Woof! Rrrrrrr…woof!”

  Dagger shook his head, but the white-eyed boy had managed to make him smile. “Why was he angry with you?”

  Warren plunged into the water and pushed his feet against the rock, emerging in the middle of the pool. “Bah…he wasn’t angry with me or with you or with the big, big world. That guy is angry with himself.” He floated on his back to observe the ceiling. “Just like every poor soul crushed by a sense of inadequacy toward existence, who finds refuge in certain substances and certain night situations. His father, Varg Belhaven, is different. He never asks his subordinates to make sacrifices he doesn’t impose on himself as well. He knows the importance of the three Ss: sacrifice, service, silence. From his cursed black tower he controls the sprawling ruins of Adramelech and crushes the Tankars under his boot everyday. Unfortunately, he’s damn right about one thing: the Hammer Guardians still know what it means to fight—the brutal butchery at the heart of the sacred art of war. Many Guardians of the remaining orders have forgotten it…and will find themselves unprepared when the Tankars strike.”

  “It almost seems like you hold him in high regard,” said Dagger. Even though you think he killed your father, he wanted to add.

  “I spent my first two years as a novice with them, on the border. I know what kind of life they live. I assure you that in comparison even the stre
ets of Melekesh look like the land of the cocks in your ass. Do you know the Tankars’ favorite hobby? They rearrange their enemies, alive or dead, in an elaborate, unusual form of artistic expression. I must admit that at times the result had an aesthetic sense too, if it wasn’t for the fact that the resulting piece of art had once been one of our comrades—someone’s father, or the brother of someone else.”

  Warren closed his eyes and every trace of sarcasm vanished from his face.

  “One day—I still remember it clearly—they sent one of them as emissary to negotiate the truce; I mean, one of our men taken prisoner. I don’t know what they had done with his arms and penis, but they had sewn the heads of two other Guardians on his shoulders, deprived of their skullcaps and emptied of their brains. He knelt in front of the Hammer’s Dracon, naked and hideous as he was, and recited with discipline the conditions of the clan leaders. With the two dead heads dancing at every jolt, dripping blood and remnants of gray matter.” He kept silent for an interminable time, staring into space. Then Dagger was sure he saw a tear on his face. “Once he had finished speaking, he died there in front of us. A true Hammer Guardian, faithful to his duty until the end. Now, everyone just says you have to be proud of your father, and yet no one ever mentions why. Well, I’ll tell you why: even your father was like that. He died fighting to the end, beyond the struggles for power and the internal disputes. No compromises, no pacts. And now that the winds of war blow new dust in our eyes, everybody regrets the valor of a Warrior King who led us to victory, fighting to the end also—and especially—when everything seemed lost. My father spent most of his life closed within the four walls of the Fortress, keeping far anything that might threaten his power. This made him weaker and the danger stronger, until in a moment of weakness the danger had struck. And the first strike was deadly.” He looked at him through the steam. Then he splashed some water toward him, watching the little waves generated. “Power is nothing but a circle in the water, Dag. Angra’s right. There are those who have power and those who want it, those who seek it and those who take it, but power is not a gift of nature. You have to fight for it against those who possess it, and once obtained, you must continue to fight against all those who would tear it from your hands, in an endless struggle that’s handed down from father to son, from the cradle to the grave, surviving to the death of the pawns that thought to be its masters. And now here’s the result: war rides toward us with its load of destruction. War is here—and it is now! However, only the Guardians of Sabbath know how to win it. Because those mangy dogs are right about one thing: peace has never existed for them.”

  “And blindly obeying to their Pendracon was no longer enough,” Dagger ventured. “They wanted that power all for themselves.”

  “And what does wanting that power mean, in your opinion?”

  “To kill your father and put their Dracon on the Warrior King’s throne…just like your own father did with mine.”

  Instead of being indignant, Warren smirked at those words. “You’re running a bit too fast. You risk to fall and hurt yourself.”

  “Someone was with Crowley when he was abducted by the Gorgors. Someone came back from the desert with his mission accomplished.”

  “Yes. Someone actually did.”

  “And Hammoth was repaid in the same coin. This is why you cannot sleep at night.”

  Warren said no more for a while. Then an impenetrable grin radiated off his face. “Every now and then you take the wrong turn, like all those who run when they should just walk. Why would Hammoth kill your father? To become Pendracon in his stead, something that he hated with all his heart? Nay…this is the Fortress, Dag. No one here ever tells the truth, especially to you. Oh, take that look off your face. I said that sometimes you take the wrong turn, but you guessed, let’s say, a good half of what I didn’t say. You think fast for someone who’s never taken a sword in hand.”

  “I’m taking lessons, don’t worry about me.”

  The white blood raised his hands, laughing. “Hey, I’m your friend, don’t hit me!”

  What a dickhead! Dagger thought.

  Warren stopped laughing and frowned almost suddenly, as if a dark thought had crossed his mind. “The Hammer Guardians want that power, and I’m not just talking about the Fortress. Their great mother war gives birth to”—he threw some more drops, producing new circles in the water—“power, all sorts of power, and in the midst of chaos who can say which one of these will briefly return to light, and who will grab it? Knowledge is the greatest one and is also the most dangerous, if placed in the hands of those who don’t know how to handle it.”

  Dagger shivered. There was a sharp mind beyond that cynical bark, he thought. He wouldn’t expect it, after seeing him follow Heathen that night.

  “When the Guardians decided to find a new leader in Varg, they signed their sentence,” the white blood continued. “The Black Dracon may even be brave, but when it comes to war he’s a visionary madman, with no inhibitions. He could be so mad as to rush against Gorgors with the Sword of Angra in his hands, if no one stopped him. It would have been preferable to elect his son Evoken; he’s more charismatic and he has studied a lot. He’s not a head-smasher like all the Hammer Guardians.”

  “So why is he at the head of those jerks playing at the Disciples?” Dag asked point-blank.

  Warren stared at him with icy eyes. “I know you followed me that night. Don’t look so triumphant.”

  “Who told you? Your brother?”

  “No. Your bodyguard.”

  “Nice bodyguard I found myself.”

  The white blood let out a sarcastic snort. “You don’t know what you saw that night, even the Messhuggah told you that.”

  “I surely saw you had a lot of fun in the end.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to my party. Did you see all that pussy?”

  “You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do, right?”

  “It’s a different matter, little Dagger; you don’t know who’s maneuvering you. I believe too that the traitor was in the Council Hall, when the Guardians were kicked out by Angra and the Dracons were left alone. It’s better you don’t know what’s my suspicion, and why many of us are struggling in silence, calmly, tiptoeing. I wouldn’t be surprised even if I saw a portrait, or one of the thousands of statues in this fucking place, turn their pupils to follow me, or whisper, Hey, come closer…we’re not coming back!”

  Dagger froze.

  Warren saw it and smiled again. “Just try to be careful and weigh every word you say and listen to, every step you take. This is the Fortress. Many people, who had it all, died for nothing. But death is not an issue that concerns you, right?”

  “And how do you—?”

  “—know what, my god?” Warren took his leave, respectfully bowing his head before getting out of the pool, as if there were nothing more he wanted to share with him.

  Son of a bitch, you know everything about me! Dagger realized it had been stupid trying to challenge Warren on that field. He let it go and found comfort in the hot water for the rest of the day. When the underground cave began to be populated by the other novices who had ended their training sessions, he got out.

  Outside, the light of the setting sun penetrated the Glade in an amazing arc of light. That meant time had come to head to the tree of life, the weeping willow placed on the shore near Angra’s refuge.

  He knew that someone was already waiting for him. Sheltered from prying eyes, thanks to the dense foliage of the tree, he saw her lying on the ground with hands folded behind her head, dressed only with a straw between her soft lips. Erin smiled when she saw him coming.

  * * * * *

  Dagger looked through the willow’s foliage. In a fragment of his field of view, like a constant torment, he could see the light in Kugar’s room at the top of the Poison tower.

  “Where are you, love of tonight?” Erin asked, her head pillowed on the bandage around his chest.

  “I’m he
re with you.”

  “You lie,” she said. “I always know when you’re lying, at least when I’m so close I can feel the beat of your heart.” She ran a hand through his sweaty hair, looking into his eyes. “Don’t feel guilty. I understand. A woman always understands.”

  “A woman?” Dag mocked.

  “Ha-ha. And what would these be, oranges?”

  He tried to make amends with a kiss as she laughed against his mouth.

  “You’re tickling me with those four hairs of a beard.”

  “It’s thicker than that of my comrades.”

  “Do you love her?” she asked, an inch from his lips.

  Dag didn’t answer immediately. “Do we have to talk about it?” He tried to pull away.

  She held him where he was. “No. You don’t have to. You should.”

  “You’re crushing my fe—”

  “This trick doesn’t work with me. Answer.”

  “I don’t want something bad to happen to her.”

  “You love her.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No! I just care for her.”

  Erin let him go. “Everybody cared for her.” She laid her head back on his chest. “Yet neither I, nor Ianka, and nor Ash—whom I think had a terrible crush on her—look at that damn light with the same hangdog face you make. You think about her all the time, and maybe you don’t even realize it. You must think about her even while Olem beats you up in what he calls training.”

  Dagger was silent.

  Erin said, “When something is denied to us, it becomes the only thing we want. It works like this for everyone. Do you know how many times they told me to stay away from you?”

  “You’ve got every right to hate me.”

  “I don’t think I’m actually hating you, right now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “And why?”

  Erin hugged him and closed her eyes, sighing, skin against skin. “Because when I saw you walk down the stairs of the arena, I felt that something had changed inside me,” she said. “Maybe it was broken. Maybe it was lost, or fixed, but something inside me was not like it used to be. And I felt so good and so bad just watching and talking to you, even though I knew unhappy days awaited me—I knew it, because your mind was already elsewhere, certainly not there with us. And certainly, not there with me.”