The Tankar Dawn

by Walt Popester

  “Those fine shapes! Joy and love shine through his every single brushstroke.”

  For a moment, Dag doubted they were Tankars. He walked back, sat on the marble bed and waited.

  When they turned the key in the hole, the young one was still talking, “Yet I think there must be a keyword to understand his works.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “And I fear this is lost by now. How can we know the intent hidden behind some gestures, the need for the depicted characters to recall each other like—”

  “Shhh. There’s the prisoner.”

  The two thugs appeared in the bow of the door, all the difficulties of the desert impressed on their bestial faces.

  “What kind of role are you playing?” Dag asked. “You should say things like Ahr, we Tankar rape your mothers’ asses using their blood as lubricant.”

  The young one looked at him, puzzled, and didn’t seem to understand.

  “I hate stereotypes,” the older one said.

  “Stereo what?”

  The Tankar rolled the key ring around his forefinger. “It’s a word that indicates an erroneous conceptual model that we stick on our neighbor, when trying to understand him requires too much effort.”

  “So what’s the story?” Dagger asked. “While you were digging in the desert searching for ancient Gorgor treasures, you found a stack of books and read them?”

  “The temple that we’re destroying hides many—”

  The old Tankar barked, putting the young one in silence. He turned to Dagger again, clasping the boy’s wrists. “I don’t like your tone, and I find your words a bit racist. Our order is to take you to our Nomad Emperor and you’ll come with us in silence.”

  “Why does he want to see me only now? It’s been days that—”

  The old Tankar grabbed his clothes and lifted him. “Listen, asshole. There were more important issues the Emperor had to solve first. Do you have any idea of what it takes to carry on such a war?” He let him down. “You have time to eat. And nothing else.”

  Meat, Dagger noticed. He kicked the plate they had placed at his feet and preceded them outside with chained wrists, his stomach murmuring in protest.

  The treatment he had received in those days was probably not the same reserved to the other guests of the prisons, some of whom had to be human judging by their screams. The corridor was damp and dark, and everywhere there was a stale smell of shit and infected meat.

  “What kind of torture is fashionable this year?” he asked.

  The young Nehama turned to him. “Who knows, maybe you will experience it in a short time. The Emperor will decide. I still wonder why he didn’t leave you in that cage. How can he trust you after what you did?”

  The old Tankar growled, tugging the chains. They walked out of the catacombs, climbing a long staircase and walking through several massive, black doors, emerging in the square at the top of the fortress in the dunes. Too many guards, Dagger thought judging from the little the sun allowed him to see. Too many guards to do anything…

  He turned to the Gorgor face sculpted on the facade of the building at the foot of the high tower, and realized they were directed toward the straight, narrow split opened under the chin. No doors, no bars. Only two old Nehamas sat on the right and left of the threshold. When they saw Dagger, they nodded once and stretched their arms toward the dark, indicating he proceed.

  Inside, the walls were so high they made it impossible to see the ceiling. They flanked a steep staircase, so narrow that two men couldn’t climb it shoulder to shoulder, and much less two Tankars. “This was all but a fortress,” Dag said, giving voice to his thoughts. “So why is it called so?”

  “Ask yourself what immense value it once kept safe, as you ascend toward the father of the Dawn.”

  Dag turned around. “You’re not following me?”

  “If the Nomad Emperor needed to be defended, then he wouldn’t be the Nomad Emperor.”

  Dagger focused on the staircase and climbed. The steps here had been worn smooth. The light almost disappeared, and around the hundredth step he decided he was out of training. He had stopped counting them, when the faint light of one or two torches brightened the way. Climbing the last tract, he looked forward, and the distant figure of Baikal appeared. The Emperor sat on a throne of bones, the inseparable wooden mask on his face. His right hand lay loosely on the armrest beside a little bronze bell, while the other held an empty glass cup.

  Only when he stepped on the threshold of the vast room, did Dagger see it was made up of skulls, arranged in symmetrical columns. They went up to the dome ceiling, hidden in the dark. On his left there was a mutilated statue. It represented Sep-hul, missing her head and some limbs. On her vilified belly someone had incised Dirty cocksucker!

  The statue on his right was of a completely different nature. It represented a standing woman with both body and face veiled. She offered the spectator the naked body of a little boy, his arm abandoned to gravity, mute, dead.

  Dag looked at the base of the sculpture, where the most elementary message was engraved: Here is war.

  There was no other ornament in the room except for three niches above, at the right, and left of the throne. The one on the left was occupied by a massive Tankar skull, with a candle inside it. Light crossed its wide open mouth and the broken orbits, projecting three long bright cones.

  “Why the statues?” Dag asked.

  “To brighten up the place.” In the dim light, Baikal gave him a thorough look. “I don’t trust those who don’t make a noise climbing up the stairs. Someone who has nothing to hide is always announced by his footsteps.”

  Dag stopped at a safe distance. “Before judging people, usually I introduce myself.”

  The Nehama nodded. “Seems legitimate. My name is Baikal, son of Exodus, Guardian of the river, Asmeghin of the Nehamas, and Nomad Emperor of all Tankars,” he said. “You must have heard a little bit of everything about me. I hope you didn’t got the wrong idea.”

  “Oh. Oh no. Don’t worry. I would expect at least a bit of foaming at the mouth for a Tankar surrounded by skulls and with a horrible wooden mask on his face.”

  The Emperor silently studied him. “And you. Who are you?” he asked.

  “I have been many things, for many people.”

  “Have you ever been important to someone?”

  Dag didn’t look for an answer. He sat on the ground, his legs crossed and his chin resting on his fist. “I think so.”

  “It’s a great luck.”

  “And you?”

  “The whole Tankar people is okay for an answer?”

  Dagger shook his head. “To be the salvation of the world? No, I’ve already been through that. You save the world only one person at a time. The problem is all in choosing who.”

  The Asmeghin stopped to roll the glass cup in his fingers. “With that answer, you’ve earned the right to ask me a question.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Give me the right question, Ktisis.”

  That name, the way he pronounced it…“For what Ktisisdamn reason did you reach me there?” Dagger asked.

  “Well, Jetsum told you, didn’t he? I assure you that a giant crab sweeping the Gorgor civilization away from history is a spectacle visible from…far away. Yes. Far, far away. From the lands of the Tormentor clan, for instance, which I just submitted.” He rolled his cup again, before throwing it to the ground with a hit of his forefinger. In the sound of shattered glass, he said, “I unleashed one of my Faithful ones and his gang northward to figure out what was happening, and they followed a group of Gorgor survivors slower than the others. What luck. They were carrying a metal case, guess what was inside it?”

  “Gifts for all of us by Hanoi.”

  Baikal became serious. “Apparently, Hanoi has disappeared. Now it’s just a skeleton.”

  How do you know his name? “I think he…shitted himself.”

  “In his pants?”

  “No. He exited the post
erior part of his exoskeleton and was back in march. Who knows where to.”

  “What would I know? I think I am no longer the Guardian of the river.” The Nehama looked at him with a veil of accusation in his gaze.

  “Are you insinuating something?”

  “A Tankar surrounded by skulls doesn’t trouble to insinuate anything.”

  Dagger stood up. He walked silently, aware of the eyes fixed on him. He reached the wall and touched the faces of the dead. “These skulls are old,” he said. “Some of them older than you, so this is not your work. You found this place and put your throne here—maybe you don’t even like this place—and now you use it to scare your guests. I’m sorry, but someone uses a torture chamber for that purpose and has you hanging on hooks piercing through your wrists.” Dagger turned to the Nomad Emperor. “Those hurt pretty bad.”

  Baikal’s blue eyes stared at Dagger for a long time, then the Tankar put a hand to his mask, lifted it and threw it to the ground. A horrible black hole was where his left ear should have been. This was the first detail Dagger noticed, and perhaps the mask was meant to hide this disfigurement.

  “You got close enough to the truth,” the Nehama said.

  “Really?”

  “Except for a little detail. There’s a skull that I added by my hand to the questionable collection.”

  “Don’t tell me. The one in the niche at your left.”

  “Check out the big brain on you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Baikal was no longer in a good mood now. “He was a childhood friend of mine, we grew up together,” he said. “I choked him with my own hands, and now his people follow me. At least, those that survived.”

  Dagger opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything. The death of a friend didn’t leave him indifferent. The fact that a friend could become an enemy in the blink of an eye left him even less indifferent.

  Baikal drummed his fingers on the throne before getting up and approaching the skull in question. He stroked its orbits with a claw, projecting his long shadows into the lugubrious room. “His name was Mutt, son of Karka, both Asmeghins of the Tormentor clan. His father died at Hanoi’s hand on a distant day on an island not far from here. His son only had to acknowledge me as Nomad Emperor and deny his whore of the street, like his Faithful ones did.” He turned around. “Neither I nor Mutt’s skull will bite you. Come closer.”

  “I never had doubts about the dead.” Dagger walked to his side. “As long as they remain dead.”

  Baikal was smiling now, but the scar on the left side of his face altered the equilibrium of his physiognomy in a disturbing way. “You have noticed the two other niches to fill.”

  “The two other clan leaders?”

  The Nehama nodded once. “You will help me again. This must be why Hanoi sent you to me.”

  The skull at the left of the throne grinned. The other skulls grinned too, everywhere around him, but that one seemed happier. And bigger.

  Dagger stroked it in turn. “What game are you playing?”

  “I’ve never played, not even when I was a child. Where I was born, children took everything so seriously.”

  “Don’t tell me.” Dagger tried to look into the beast’s eyes. Again he found the core of a noble and gentle soul, in contrast to everything it was enclosed with. “You and I have a score to settle, isn’t that right.”

  “Yes, Ktisis. Somehow, we have.”

  “Still that name.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Baikal turned his back to Dag and sat on the throne. “The boy in whom Skyrgal was foolish enough to hide the god of Emptiness.”

  “Or at least part of his soul.”

  The Nehama drove away those last words with a gesture. “And though I know the boy in front of me is not the god cowardly hiding inside him like a parasite, you can’t exempt yourself from the responsibility fate has given you. No one can do it, not even me. What flows in our veins, our blood, is too important to simply…ignore it.”

  I need to drink something, Dag thought. “Blood has nothing to do with it. No more,” he said. “The problem has become bigger. Gates, mirrors that reflect what they want…things like that.”

  “Thanks to you, Crowley and the Gorgors are no longer watching over the Kahars,” Baikal continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I’ll move my next piece on the chessboard toward them. Toward my old friend Vektor.”

  “Apparently someone has had shitty friends worse than mine.”

  The Nehama growled. There was an unexpected force, and violence, in the cry repressed in his throat. He stretched out his clawed fingers and for a moment he seemed on the verge of hitting Dagger. “I don’t tolerate that word. Don’t dare to pronounce it anymore.”

  Dagger looked back at the deep orbits of the skull.

  “Yes,” the Nehama resumed. “You will help me. There must be a reason if my lord, worshiped in this place for centuries, has decided to put me before the god against whom I swore revenge. You should hope, too, that it is so. Hope to be useful to me. Ktisis has already caused me a lot of problems, and I don’t think I will tolerate others.”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “Hmm?”

  Dagger turned to the Emperor. “That it was me. What pushed you to get me out of that cage?”

  The white wolf stared into space. “That’s simple. You pronounced the magic phrase and the door opened. Maybe you didn’t even notice it.”

  “I doubt it was vagabond surrounded by assholes.”

  “No. I found that vaguely racist.” Baikal stared at him. “Come here.”

  He’s drunk, Dag knew, advancing. I’m in the hands of a drunk Tankar.

  The Nehama took Dagger’s chains in his hands and broke them with the same ease with which he would rip off an old rag. “The story, my story, is too long and I’m too drunk to tell it.”

  The distant light in his eyes made Dagger think that Baikal had always been too drunk to tell it.

  “Maybe I was a sacrificial victim too,” the beast continued. “Since I was completely given to my lord Hanoi, my people have been spared by the disease which was flagging them. Maybe my mentor knew it. Maybe he knew that only my Redemption would save his people.”

  “Or maybe not.”

  Baikal shrugged. “It’s always difficult to make sense of it all when it comes to gods, don’t you think?”

  “Oh. You have no idea.” Dagger looked around.

  “Don’t worry, there’s no way out. And then, why go now and miss the show?”

  “What show?”

  “The audience,” Baikal answered. “You never know what may happen during my audiences. Sit here at my right side. Retribution is at hand.” The Nomad Emperor lifted the bell and played it.

  A camouflaged door opened among the skulls and a guard appeared, knelt to the floor.

  “They have waited long enough, let them come up.”

  The guard beat his chest twice and disappeared again in the dark.

  Dagger sat at the foot of the throne and looked impatiently in front of him. Shortly after, a long procession of Tankar guards climbed to the room, followed by dozens of men and women wearing gray, opaque armor.

  One of them swept the sand off the shoulder, revealing the black metal hiding underneath.

  Hammer Guardians! Dag felt the need to flee, then realized the black Guardians couldn’t harm him now.

  Finally, an energumen came inside who wore the armor of the Anti-Pendracon, the same one worn by Varg Belhaven and, though briefly, by his son Evoken.

  The man, with short platinum hair and eyes of an intense white, hammered his chest once. “Baikal, son of Exodus. Finally we meet.”

  The Nehama drew a circle in the air with the middle and forefinger. “I’m glad to see you again, Ismahia, Dracon of the Hammer.”

  “Don’t gesture so in my presence! I’m not one of your underlings and I’m not asking for a hearing.”

  “Strange,” Baikal replied with patience. “The situat
ion looked pretty much like that.” He raised his hand, distractedly. A Tankar came up with a wine skin and a cup, and poured wine again.

  Ktisis, it must be impossible to detach him from a bottle, Dag thought.

  “So tell me, why did you ask to see me?” the Nomad Emperor asked.

  “To remind you your obligations,” the man spat.

  Baikal lifted just a finger and the servant stopped pouring the wine. “Obligations? I have obligations only to my people and my lord, who have suffered for so long. Every decision was made for their benefit.”

  “Also to join us?”

  “Especially that one.”

  “Then it’s time to honor your promise and get back to the battlefield under my command. Come on. Hurry!”

  Baikal was motionless. “There’s nothing I can stand any less.”

  “Than what?”

  “A leader who is non-conscious of his power and potential. He can lead whole peoples to ruin.” The emperor took a short and measured sip from his cup, savoring the wine as if there was no better in the world. “Where do you think the river would lead me, if I hadn’t immediately realized my strength but relied on the arrogance of my Tankar blood alone? First with a weak, insecure pace, then in a long and determined march, I took every step in one direction.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Tankar Dawn. The end of the road.” The Emperor got up and descended the few steps of the throne, walking forward. “A river carries all sort of waste, but some can be of some use. Some are invaluable, too. It’s up to us to select and separate the garbage from the rest. Existence works the same way. It brings with it negative experiences, bad friendships, big and dangerous wastes that could drag us away with them in the current if we don’t hold strong enough.”

  “And what would we be?”

  Muzzle to nose with the man, the Nomad Emperor answered, “If I decided to search the alliance of those same humans who once would skin me and my children, dancing drunk from their pain, I did only because it was the most functional decision. At that moment.” He smiled, and walked slowly around the black Guardian. “Another step in the fetid mud of compromises, moved toward the Dawn. A useful waste taken out of the current.”

  “And now?” The Anti-Pendracon realized only then where the conversation was going. Dagger saw it in his eyes.