Then the smallest one frowned, running his tongue over his black lips. “But this time we big risk,” he said. “Yes, too much attention on us and fucking passage. Guardians not so stupid stupid.”
“We and shadows got power to resist any attack, now!”
“No, we not power! Not until the boy still in their hands! Better to stay hidden in dark for a little, at least until he back in our hands!”
“They not find him?”
“Nay, he not found. The remains of the ship searched top to bottom, and the whole sea. No trace of the boy. Shadows look for him for years. Time they hurry up!”
The big one growled. “Maybe healthy old torture come in handy handy. Sure prisoners know something!”
“By the way, I show to you one thing. Had some sort of pain in the ass for a while, following me since I came into the tunnel. And who think me so stupid as not to feel his smell of corpse left in the sun for days.” He stood up and turned around, grinning with his lucid fangs as he looked exactly at where Dagger was hidden. “You come out now!” he barked. “I know you to be there, what you believe? Do you think I not noticed? You come out and I kill you quickly. You make me come there, and I will entertain with you a little more more!”
Holy shit!
“With who you talk?”
“Someone followed me this far. Yay! His smell gets up to Adramelech!”
The big one jumped up. “And you let yourself follow here?” he barked. “Stupid, this serious serious! Passage no longer secret!”
His mate growled and wore the glove with long metal claws. Even the big one put it on, ready to fight. Apparently, they wore only one on the right hand, keeping the other one free to grab the neck of their victims. The blades gleamed menacingly in the firelight. They were sharp and pretty damn long, definitely longer than Redemption.
With fire at their backs, the two beasts moved a step forward, but Dagger came out from behind the pillar and pointed the blade against them.
“Not a step further!” he menaced, trying to sound more determined than his trembling legs would indicate. The two stopped and looked into each other’s eyes.
“A boy?”
“Yes, sweet boy to eat raw.”
“You made follow you from a boy?”
“Come on, look how he dressed! Bet one of them, a Guardian!”
“He’s only a novice, he’s not even… oh come one, look how he holding his dagger!”
At that, the little one cocked his head sideways as if reasoning. “One moment!” he said.
“What?”
“Light! Light!” he barked. “The dagger shines! Him the Boy! Yay! The Boy!”
“Bring it on, motherfuckers! I’ve already killed several of mangy dogs like you!”
The two Tankars looked at each other again, this time only to burst out in wild laughing barks. Dagger took advantage of their distraction and started forward, recommending his soul to Ktisis and, now that he was around too, even to his father Skyrgal. He stuck the lightning knife into the chest of one of the two. Who answered just throwing him to the side with a single backhand hit on the belly. Dagger barely had time to notice he was suspended in midair, before slamming his back against the rock wall and slide to the ground, folded in two like a handkerchief.
The Tankar ran his hand over the charred wound. He licked his own blood as he looked straight into his eyes. He looked seriously pissed off now. Dagger forced himself to ignore the pain and stand up again.
“You boy very imprudent,” the giant said, pointing him with his index finger. “Yay, you very unwise and not even know how to use that dagger! That be very powerful if you know how to use it. Too bad you do not have more time. Now we Tankar eat you slowly, the hell with our orders.”
“You do not do shit!” the little one warned. “Do not forget who he is!”
In response, his buddy turned around with his arm outstretched and decapitated him.
Dagger jumped into the fire and grabbed a firebrand, waving the flames in front of him, in hope that the bestial nature of his enemy feared fire.
Seriously, how do I think to get away with it, this time?
The beast growled, moving the menacing blades in the air, before shooting forward at full speed. Dagger closed his eyes, resigned to his umpteenth death. Then he heard a hellish commotion and new ferocious barks. Hearing, he knew he was still alive, or at least part of that world. He opened his eyes and saw that a Tankar with thick white hair, born out of nowhere, had bitten the neck of the giant moments before killing him. He sprang to his feet, watching the two beasts clung to each other in a desperate struggle for survival. Without asking himself too many questions, he stuck the burning wood in the eye of his enemy, who abandoned the fight against the white wolf to pull the ember out of his skull. Even with a face reduced to a twisted mask of blood and burning hair, he was back on his feet. The white one was whining, hair stained with the blood gushing from a gaping wound on the side.
Dagger was not unprepared. He dodged the giant’s gloved hand and planted Redemption in the middle of the mighty left bicep. This time, the shock blew up the arm of the beast, who yelped in pain as he tried to stop the bleeding with the remaining hand.
The white Tankar came again to his aid, but the disfigured and dismembered one managed to turn around in time to draw four lines of blood on his chest, knocking him out. That was the last thing he did, as he himself seemed to understand bringing his hand to the bright blade stuck in his throat.
“Die, you bastard!” Dagger cried, working his way through the neck of the beast, aided by the Mayem’s vital force. He levered on the cervical vertebrae and chopped off his entire head. The giant seemed to raise his claws against him, still shaken by the unholy life that had suddenly abandoned him. Finally, the chopped neck gave his last gush of blood, and the body was abandoned to a deserved death.
Dagger knelt in the sticky red fluid, panting. He looked at the blade, wondering why only now it showed all that power. The handle was covered up with blood. His blood. When he saw it rapidly absorbed, or drunk, by the cursed metal, he realized the Guardians had not told him the whole truth. Now that it had taken his blood, he could feel the blade’s surface as if it were the skin of his hand. It had become part of him, the natural continuation of his arm. The feeling passed only when the blade slipped back inside the sheath, becoming silent and unusable again.
He turned to the white Tankar and stepped back in surprise, because on the ground was no longer the beast who had saved him.
With four lines crossing the bloody belly, lying on the ground was the naked, lifeless body of Kugar.
* * * * *
He rubbed his fingers to loosen the layer of coagulated blood that covered them. When he dropped it into the flames, he was hit by its sour and disgusting smell. He moved his skeptical look to Redemption, silent by his side. Giving him the cursed weapon, Marduk had done for him more than anyone else had ever done. Even Kugar, in one way or another, had risked her life for his salvation. The Guardians did not trust him any more than he would trust them, yet they were dying for him.
Who can love you anymore than I, that I wanted and created you? said Skyrgal’s voice in his head.
He unsheathed the blade, turning it in his hands. “I do,” he replied to the voice in his head. “I love me more than he who created me.”
Kugar moved in her sleep and let out a groan of pain. “No,” she yelled, jumping up. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. She saw her wounds, then turned to the headless Tankar’s corpse.
“There was a fight,” Dagger said, sheathing Redemption. “We had the best of it.”
“It looks so.” Looking at herself, the girl realized she was stark naked.
Dagger blushed and looked away.
“What? You’ve never seen a girl as she is?”
“Stop it.”
She smiled. “Nice virgin god that I’ve found me,” she said. “I hate to think at what you’ve done while I was unconsciou
s.”
“I just medicated you!”
“Really? And with what?”
He did not answer.
Her eyes widened. She took her fingers to the wounds, then the nose. She grimaced in disgust. “Dagger!”
“I’ve never seen a wound infected in that way, and I had no other means!”
“You pissed on me!?”
“No, I just tamponed it with a cloth soaked in…! I mean…”
She tried to punch him, but he dodged and pinned her to the ground. They looked into each other’s eyes, before bursting into laughter. They stayed like that for some time, lying on the ground facing each other.
“I’m afraid this is the most beautiful thing someone has ever done for me,” Kugar said. “Shit, you must really care for someone to do such a thing.”
Dagger became serious. He ran a hand through her hair.
“Hey?” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t get any weird ideas. I’d better find something to put on me.” She pushed him away, got up and went to rummage through the human remains at the base of a column, probably the last meal of the Tankar who stood guard. She found a worn-out coat and bent down to pick it up, slowly, wearing it despite the caked blood stains on the fabric. Then she sat down before the fire, hugging her knees with her arms. “The show is over, kid.”
Dagger’s heart was pounding like horseshoes on cobblestones. “You don’t remember anything, do you?” he managed to ask.
“Nothing at all, sweetheart,” Kugar replied. “Since I ran away with hair growing everywhere on my skin,” she paused, before growling, “I hate it! I hate every time it happens!”
“And how many times is that?”
“Sometimes every day, sometimes it does not happen for months. I never know if I’m about to become a threat to those around me. At any given, Ktisisdamn, moment of my existence.”
“When I did not see you anymore, I decided to follow the beast in this cave,” Dagger explained. “But he found me out. He was going to kill me, then you came. You must have followed me into the cave, and you saved my life.”
“I did not do it on purpose.”
“What?”
“Saving you. It was just instinct. Probably it’s like when dogs bite other dogs before attacking their masters.”
“It’s all the same. You did not drown when the ship sank and I have not been gutted in this place. Now we’re even. In fact, I have even medicated you.”
Kugar smiled and shrugged her shoulders under the rags.
“You’re one of them, right?” Dagger supposed. “I mean—”
“No,” she interrupted him, getting serious. “I’m not one of them, even if their blood flows inside me. My mother was a Guardian, my father a Tankar,.” She looked down at the beast’s severed head. “The wolf men that inhabit the desert of Candehel-mas, Gorgors’ allies, or pawns. Really delicious individuals, as you may have noticed.”
“And I suppose I’m the only one to know your true nature.”
“What do you say? The Guardians would banish me forever beyond the walls of Golconda, if they knew my true nature. And they would do well. I would do the same with myself!” Her voice was loaded with rage, in the end. “Do you know how to keep a secret or do I have to kill you?”
“A secret must just be kept on the right side of your mouth,” he answered. “In the end, I owe you. If you had not intervened, it would have ended very badly for me. I hate to think where I would have resurrected this time.”
“What part of the sentence ‘it was just instinct’ you did not understand? Besides, I don’t think I was the only one to risk her life for you, given the thoughtlessness with which you throw yourself into the arms of death. To follow a Tankar in his den. Tsk! You have to be completely crazy to do it. Maybe you cannot die, but others around you can. And do!”
That phrase slipped inside his heart like a red-hot blade, but Dagger tried not to show it. The dying eyes of Seeth filled his whole mind. Seeth who was sleeping her eternal sleep on the bed he had dug with his bare hands.
“You should learn how to defend yourself.”
“It’s very powerful.”
“What?”
Dagger looked up. “Redemption,” he said. “My dagger blew his arm off. Look!”
Kugar grinned, turning to the dismembered corpse. “It’s truly an extraordinary weapon. Not just because of the material it’s made of. I’m afraid there’s much more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hypotheses. You and that weapon seemed inseparably linked: it kills only in your hands, as if it obeys only you. If wet with your blood, it becomes even more powerful.”
“I don’t remember having told you it got wet with my blood.”
Kugar kept silent for a while. “I’ve read a book or two,” she went on then. “Some of which I was not even allowed to read. Not so many talk about the Living weapons.”
“Living weapons?”
“It’s that damn metal that makes them alive, but I cannot tell you any more. There’s only one book that talks thoroughly about them, about their creation and use, but no one knows where it is kept. Moak has been looking for it for years. I’ll tell you we came to this world to look around and see if, maybe, it was here. Funny.”
Dagger shook his head. “You don’t have the face of a bookworm.”
“But you’ve got the face of an asshole! Now we have something else to think about instead of that damn knife!”
“And what should we do?”
“Respect your certainties and get to the bottom of them. You were the one who wanted to ‘find out from where they pop out.’ Good, now you’ve got a chance!”
“You have not yet recovered.”
“My body regenerates quickly, almost as fast as yours!”
In answer, Dagger put his finger on her wounds and Kugar started at the pain.
“Well, almost,” she corrected herself, clenching her teeth. She moved her eyes on the flames. “Neither Tankar, nor human. I’m in the middle.”
“If your mother was a Guardian, then her own blood flows in your veins,” Dagger encouraged. “Your Tankar blood is not a doom, it can be a weapon. Like today.”
Kugar listened in silence, then grinned and replied, “it’s the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard. And just in case you’re wondering, the answer is no. The two of us have nothing in common. You are an abomination. I am still part of this world. Thanks to Angra!”
Dagger shrugged. “I think I already got it. I was just trying to say something, there’s no need act like a bitch.”
“I appreciate the effort,” she allowed. “But everyone has his own monsters to fight and only few are really scary. I’ll tell you, I prefer mine.”
Dagger shook his head. “Talking was not a good idea. Talking is never a good idea. We have to get set if we want to recover the time lost.”
“I need a blade.” Kugar approached the beheaded corpse of the Tankar. She pulled the glove from his clawed hand and tried it on, moving her fingers in the light of fire. “I have to say, I appreciate many aspects of their culture.” She smiled smugly before turning to him. “On march!”
* * * * *
The reassuring fire light left them fast, when they got back to climbing the winding staircase that led up to the top of the cave. Dagger made his way using Redemption, even though its light made them far too easy prey.
Kugar followed him in silence, her every sense alerted, as if waiting for a surprise she already knew would be unpleasant. “If shadows are not coming to greet us, it’s only because they are waiting for us,” she opined.
Dagger sheathed Redemption. When his vision adapted, he realized that darkness was not complete. He could even see the vault, white and red, with numerous cracks through which filtered a crystal clear water. Gliding along their surface, water fell from the stalactites crashing on the distant stalagmites, making them look like two cold lovers decreasing their distance drop by drop until, when t
hat tyrant called time had been defeated, they would finally reunite.
Dagger turned to Kugar. He could see her bright blue eyes in the middle of the wide, black nothingness behind.
You and I are forever bonded. What happens to you, happens to me, he found himself thinking, blind to his own emotions.
Light came from somewhere above. Continuing to climb and climb, often slipping on the dank steps at the risk of falling into ruin, they came to the beginning of a new tunnel. Dagger looked down. It was impossible to see how deep was the void at their feet, so he grabbed a piece of white stone and threw it. He did not hear anything.
Kugar grabbed him by the arm, sifting out the apparent silence. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Swords! Someone’s fighting!”
They looked at each other’s eyes one last time, before running in the belly of the semi-darkness. They emerged into a new cave whose high blue walls rose up to a distant rift in the vault, from which the ethereal light of dawn came through. Dagger stopped to look in ecstasy at the sunlight, a sight he had not admired for so long. The beam fell from the top and widened into a broad cone, just before a precipice. Kugar invited him to look there.
Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Page 18
