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

by Walt Popester

  The Sword Dracon approached Varg’s son, whispering something in his ear. Olem laughed with Heathen, before parting with a pat on his shoulders.

  “I’ll kill you with this hand,” Heathen said. “Then I’ll use it to touch myself thinking about your Seeth!” He attacked.

  Dagger foresaw his actions long before he moved. With a single blow he slashed his throat, a rapid and relentless movement that disarmed his opponent in the most definite way.

  Heathen danced in the air as his hammer fell to the ground followed by a long, red spatter.

  Breaking point reached. Dagger only thought.

  All novices stood watching silently, without cries of surprise or approval. Some of the Faithful Twelve of both orders swallowed a lump of saliva and closed their eyes, when Heathen fell down in a pool of blood—it tinged of garnet reflections his black armor, marrying with the color of the stylized hammer on his chest.

  And then there was silence.

  “What did you think I’d bring up, you of the Hammer? A wimp like your Pendracon?”

  Dag turned. Olem had spoken. Please. Shut up.

  The Sword Dracon approached the son of Skyrgal, placing a hand on his shoulder and continuing to observe the first-born of Varg coldly. “Next time take it easy, son. I just wanted you to wound him,” he whispered.

  “Looks pretty wounded to me, Drac. Are you happy with me, now?”

  “I told you not to call me that. But yes. Now I’m happy.”

  Some Hammer Guardians moved a step toward them.

  But Evoken, who had observed everything, stretched out an arm to stop them. He came forward, bent over the lifeless body of his brother and lifted him from the sand. “All decisions are up to my father, Pendracon Varg Belhaven.” He said no more. He walked past them and went up the stairs.

  I had never killed a human being. Dagger thought, before realizing he didn’t feel anything. I never wanted it to be you. We both deserved better.

  No one dared to move a step toward the teacher and his student, motionless at the center of the circle.

  “Thinking of all the times I made fun of Kugar and Seeth during your training…” the Dracon said. “I ran the risk.”

  “I don’t think I’d ever be able to slash your throat.”

  Olem made an amused sound. “Your training started with me and with me it ended,” he murmured in a low voice, so that no one else could hear. “I made a warrior of the street thug I just had to keep an eye on. I can be fairly satisfied with my work.”

  The mute eyes around him made Dag even more convinced of having mistaken every possible evaluation since he had arrived at the Fortress. Now he had no doubt about Olem’s sincerity, even though he could be sure that he was a traitor.

  “Try to get out of here as soon as possible,” Olem continued. “There’s no one to trust, not in this place. Only out there, on the street again, you’ll learn the most important thing: there’s no future you don’t write every day, no destiny already accomplished. You make of yourself what you are, and no one else. Never allow others to use your pain against you. The only purpose of suffering is to remind you, at every opportunity, that you exist. No matter what you are, you are part of the great show that goes on stage since always.” A tear was expelled by force from those eyes that were not made to cry, daughter of the internal conflict that had torn him up to that moment. “For me, it’s already too late.” Olem smiled at him one last time, before pushing him away.

  Dagger walked to the exit. He wanted to be alone, at least for a moment, just a moment. The world could not deny him.

  The circle of novices broke to let him pass as if they were afraid even to touch him. He regretted the mud of Melekesh on his skin, the visible and tangible evil that flowed in its dirty roads.

  Why Holly? Why did you say those things? I want to know what you meant. When he got under the porch of the Nest, he heard the echo of fast footsteps. He turned around ready for a new fight, but this time it was Erin. She stood there, watching him in silence.

  “What do you want?” he asked, unfriendly, even if being in her company was the only thing that could make him feel better now.

  “If you decided to get yourself killed, why didn’t you ask your friends to kill you like every good Guardian would?” The girl approached. “Look instead at the mess you got us into.”

  He was about to answer when he saw Ianka coming.

  Probably Schizo had never stopped gloating since he had seen him kill Heathen. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do the same if I had an occasion like that, but…” He put a hand on his shoulder. “…I’d have left him alive. Spending the rest of his days mutilated, I assure you, would have hurt his feelings.”

  “Take that hand away.”

  “Hey, don’t act the great hero because you murdered Heathen. Everyone in here could do it, but we were not so crazy.”

  Erin pulled Ianka’s hand away. “My brother is right,” she agreed.

  “Stop calling yourself brother and sister!” Dagger broke in. “You’re not really…you’re just so alone that…” The image of a ruby-red gush filled his mind. He clenched his fists and a tear ran down his face. Alone, he thought. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

  “Your friends are right,” Ash intervened, approaching calmly.

  “Hey! Are you taking turns?”

  “Today you didn’t have to prove anything to anyone,” the son of Hammoth said. “But you…you always feel like you have to prove something, don’t you.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Schizo commented.

  The white blood continued, “If you were looking for a way to destabilize the entire situation without remedy, I have to admit you hit the target. The order is broken because of you. The Hammer Guardians will retreat to Sabbath, leaving us alone to fight against the enemy at the gates. And you’ve unleashed worse enemies. You know who Heathen and his brother are. You saw them that night, didn’t you?”

  “Saw? Saw what?” Ian asked.

  Dagger and Ash turned to him.

  “Go to Ktisis,” Ash said. “Erin, take him away. He’s getting on my nerves, as always!”

  In answer, Ianka grabbed Ash by the neck, almost lifting him. “All right, white bait, I’ll see you in the arena. I’ll gut you and feed on your intestines! Yes, yes, a good fight in the arena when it reopens from winter break, if you dare.”

  Ash pushed him away with one hand on his chest.

  Schizo continued to rant in a theatrical way, while Erin dragged him away to the Nest. “I’ll slaughter you. I’ll cut off your hand and cook it with olives and a mogwart’s liver.”

  “Jerk,” Dagger said.

  The white blood snapped in a flash. He took Dagger by the throat and nearly hit him with a fist loaded behind the shoulder. Surprised by the sudden outburst, Dag stared waiting for him to say something.

  “Don’t you ever say that again. Don’t you!” Ash growled through clenched teeth, as serious as Dagger had ever seen him. He slowly seemed to come to himself and let Dag go.

  Dagger rubbed his sore neck. Damn, he did want to hurt me.

  “If someone’s always laughing, it doesn’t mean he’s happy,” Ash said. “Perhaps, on the contrary, he laughs because he’s the loneliest person in the world. He laughs to not forget how. Ianka’s is a crappy story, Dag, perhaps more than yours.”

  “Tell it.”

  Ash looked at him in silence. Then he sat down on the steps leading to the Nest, staring into space. “You two have a lot in common. He too survived his night of massacre, one in which the Tankars attacked the village on the Main Road where he lived. It was little more than a simple matter of diplomacy, in the end.”

  “Diplomacy?”

  The white blood darkened. “Nothing weighs more than a vulgar act of violence placed on the scale of a negotiation. After the ending of the last holy war, the wolf-men had to prove they could still hit hard, and this was nothing more than a showdown paid by those who were not responsible fo
r anything except being born on the wrong piece of land. That night only one child had to survive to recount what happened—when a patrol of Guardians ran into the smoking ruins of the village, they say Schizo was standing in the middle of the street holding in his arms the body of his sister. At least, the half that was left. He, alone in an entire world painted blood, had been sentenced to survive. The Tankars forced him to watch everything and then get to dawn alive and without a scratch, if not the grooves carved into his consciousness.” Ash looked up. “He was the older brother, you see? Immobilized on the ground, he couldn’t defend them while…” He paused and looked down again. “This is why I think he’s adopted Erin, to fill that void, to give a face to the darkest shades of his own memories. And that’s why I think he’s put on the Hotankars. Every one of us replaces a brother or sister he’s lost. I know for a fact that he’d die for us, and would gladly do it without asking for better. We are his Redemption. Those who, maybe, he will save.”

  Dagger clenched his fists. Suddenly, there was no one in the world he felt closer to than that asshole who was always laughing. Now he understood the great emptiness he had often seen in Ianka’s eyes. “At least this time it’s not my fault,” he whispered.

  “You couldn’t save Seeth. Stop damning yourself.”

  He turned. “And how do you kn—?”

  “Your friends know your story.”

  Dag stared at him with his red eyes. “Have you been instructed, too?” he asked, before insight dawned. “Are you, too, just bodyguards?”

  “We’ve never been anything else,” Ash said with naturalness, ignoring how much those words could hurt. “At least, at the beginning.” He corrected himself. “We were instructed to watch over you, but what concerns me is, with time, I’ve managed to appreciate you. I have a weakness for the crap you do.”

  “And the others?”

  “Erin has found her own way to guard you, if I’m not mistaken. I see her happy when she’s with you, happy as she’s never been before. It seems that all those who’ve been assigned to guard you found, in the end, a reason to be your friend…Olem included. You have something in common with them and I envy you for this. I feel like a stranger.”

  You must be really alone, if you envy people the pain that binds them. “And then? What happened to Ianka afterward?” Dagger asked.

  “Schizo was entrusted to the orphanage of the Sanctuary—an entire city built around Skyrgal’s hammer and devoted to the worship of Ktisis. I don’t know what he went through in there, but he avoids talking about it so I think nothing good. He ran away as soon as he could to the slums of Agalloch, where he found his new family in a gang of thugs who put his hate to profit. They made him, at just ten, one of the most silent and reliable assassins in the whole city. Ian drew the best from the worst scum of this world. He’s as agile as a Messhuggah, determined as a Guardian of the Hammer, silent as a Gorgor and fierce as a Tankar. Bumping into him in one of the dead city’s alleys would mean certain death for most of us.”

  “But now he’s here, with us.”

  “Thanks to Olem,” Ash said. “It was he who discovered Ianka’s innate talent with the sword when, one night, Ianka tried to rob him outside a brothel in Agalloch. The scar on his face is the work of Ian. It’s the mark placed on his life, but Olem didn’t become Sword Dracon by chance. He wounded Schizo almost to death that night, before taking him to the Fortress to cure him. Destroying and rebuilding people is a peculiar trait of your teacher, though most of the times he entrusts the task of reconstruction to Araya. In a small way, the two Dracons look a bit like Angra and Skyrgal, don’t they?”

  “Destruction or Creation…” Dag whispered to himself.

  “What?”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then? They slammed Ianka down into the prisons, treating him like an animal. You could barely understand what he barked when someone approached him to bring food. Everyone saw the savage look of a beast in his eyes, but not Olem. He saw the wildfire of an indomitable warrior-born mirrored in those green irises, someone who wasn’t able to agree to a compromise even if it meant death. Ianka longed for death…and maybe he still does. Olem deprived him of food. He beat him and had him beaten. He bent him like a disobedient animal, then took him with his novices acting, as always, against the will of all. A thief here at Fortress? No one could tolerate such an idiocy. Instead, Holly has made of him one of the strongest among us. A little like you, apparently.” He kept silent for a while. “Ianka’s humor…damn it, can’t you see it? It begins when you find out you hate yourself, deeply, for what’s happened to you or what you are, and discover that everybody hates you for the same reason, and pushes you more and more to the corner, where you are alone, marginalized. Then something happens, a joke, a fart, and people start to laugh. And you discover that you’re getting a positive reaction in that way, not affection, of course, but a reaction. Soon you realize that being funny builds an impenetrable wall around you. It becomes your shield, the barrier behind which you can hide. Eventually you end up with a second self, a buffoon that goes around in your stead on the other side of the barrier. The fool’s constantly joking and in high spirits, trying to attract the attention of all to avoid people going beyond the boundary and finding out who is hiding behind it. The fool is what’s farthest from the true self.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah,” Ash agreed. “The real Ianka is somewhere behind the wall he’s built around himself, in a corner, alone with his remorse and his lousy memories. We see people with those beautiful smiles imprinted on their faces and we never ask ourselves the question, Who knows? Who knows what kind of monsters they are fighting, the weight they carry inside? Who knows? And when you ask yourself that question, it doesn’t take long to figure out the answer. Nobody knows. Nobody. This is why we should always be well-disposed toward our neighbor. Because we don’t know. We don’t know if someone is happy or sad, or why he is, we don’t know who was behind the doors he had to close for good. We don’t know how big an asshole and bastard the monster is that he’s fighting, so we should do everything accordingly. I think pretty much the same thing happens with Olem, only that he’s not funny. He hides everything behind his aggressiveness.”

  “Do you think Olem is…good?”

  The white blood tsked. “Good or bad are useless adjectives when it comes to people. Sympathy or antipathy, or indifference, between two living beings is derived from the common experiences. One right or wrong look, and you get one spark or the other. Olem and Ianka were similar, this is why he helped Ianka.” He shrugged. “I trust Olem. I’d follow him anywhere. You take everything for granted and think it’s due to you because you are the son of Crowley, but you’re wrong. Now you have thrice the musculature you had when I saw you for the first time, and the ease with which you got rid of Heathen was surprising. Olem trained you better than he would have trained his own son, if he had one. He did a great job with you. If I were you, I would start to wonder…well, to worry why.”

  “Is he gay?”

  “That was a joke, wasn’t it?” Ash pulled out a familiar, small cigar and looked at it. “Keep your eyes open, and remember what I told you. Don’t trust anyone, least of all yourself.” He walked away.

  Dagger watched him disappear, then walked up to the balustrade and looked at Ianka, intent on destroying one straw dummy after the other under the patient eyes of Erin. Ian, what the fuck…

  The noise of new steps made him turn. Two hooded figures walked toward him, coming down the stairs of the Nest. He immediately brought his hand toward the handle of Redemption, but stopped when he recognized Kugar, darkened and with her eyes focused to the ground.

  It was the first time he saw her after that distant day in the prisons. She wore a black robe with a hood pulled over her head and eyes. The handle of a war hammer rose on her shoulders. She had returned to the Nest to collect her things, it seemed, escorted by Varg Belhaven and his Faithful Twelve. The Pendracon accompanied the
girl with one arm around her neck, as if she were his property. They walked past him, headed to the Fortress.

  “Kugar!” he yelled.

  She didn’t answer.

  Only Varg turned. And his grin was the only reply he got.

  * * * * *

  10. One vision

  Araya was sitting cross-legged on top of the five oaks, a silhouetted shadow against the vast landscape of the Glade and the silvery waterfalls.

  He held up two fingers. “You’re not used to knocking on the door, in Melekesh?”

  Dagger walked in lockstep. “Where the Ktisis is she going?!”

  “You can’t interfere with Kugar’s choices,” the Messhuggah replied without turning, unperturbed. “In here everyone is responsible for his own destiny and past. As you’re not accountable to her for anything, she’s not accountable for anything to you. And then she’s just following her orders, remember?”

  “Kugar and I fought together!”

  Araya turned back and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “Again with this story? Are you sure there’s nothing more?” He stood up and took him by the arm. “Come. Kug decided to be a Guardian of the Hammer, and this choice belonged to her alone.”

  “You didn’t give her any choice.”

  “This is not completely true,” the Dracon replied, accompanying him to the wooden railing of the terrace. “The choice was hers. The Council of Five just made her an offer she wouldn’t be so stupid to refuse.”

  “Which one?”

  “During these long months, guided by me and my Faithful Twelve, Kugar has learned how to use her bestial nature in view of a fundamental mission, one that only she can accomplish—infiltrating that doomed temple to read, transcribe, translate!” As he said these last words, he locked his fingers into a fist. “She should act safely, now that Tankars have crossed the portal and are marching toward the Fortress.”