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

by Walt Popester

  Dagger nodded. “You have made a spy of her. A pawn for your plans.”

  “There are many ways to win a war against these enemies.”

  “She risks death, do you know that?”

  “We all risk death.”

  “Even safe on top of your fucking towers, always maneuvering others from above like puppets?”

  “Dagger!” Araya yelled. Then he calmed down. “Dag, I couldn’t help it. You don’t know how much I care about that girl, so don’t judge me.”

  “You could have warned me. I didn’t even say goodbye to her.”

  “Everything had to be decided in silence. Don’t you understand it’s the only hope for Kugar? Once she will have accomplished her mission, she’ll be appointed Guardian and no one will ever be allowed to mention her impure origins—her Tankar origins—anymore. A great reward for someone who was about to be banished forever beyond the walls of Golconda, or worse, because of her blood.”

  “She will be a Guardian of the Hammer.”

  “Kugar has always belonged to the Hammer,” the Dracon replied patiently. “A hammer is engraved on the Arsis she’s carried around her neck since birth, but when I found her abandoned on my tower’s doorstep I didn’t want to listen to reason: she would be trained as a Guardian of the Poison. That’s it. I thought it was a sign of destiny. I convinced the others talking about stars, and things I saw when the mushroom was dancing. The truth is that I’d never leave a helpless orphan in the hands of the cockroaches. I wouldn’t even leave a dog in their hands. Now the roots are calling back and there’s nothing we can do when this happens, if not walking the road back again.”

  Dag brought a hand to his neck. “Who we are is not determined by the dress we wear, nor the symbol on a pendant. It’s the way your heart sounds that makes all the difference. I felt Kugar’s heart. I felt it beating against mine.”

  The Poison Dracon smiled bitterly. “There’s nothing that Kugar wants more than to tame herself.”

  Fight against herself, Dagger thought. And that’s not possible. “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it isn’t. But, fortunately, you’ve made new friends. I am not surprised that you’ve bonded immediately with a misunderstood child, an orphan with a thirst for revenge, and a girl who comes from the world Beyond just like you.”

  “A girl who comes from the world Beyond?”

  “Erin,” the Dracon specified. “Hasn’t she told you yet? Mmm, I see from your expression that she didn’t. I can understand why. Her story is slightly different from yours. What really doesn’t surprise me is the fact that you just as quickly bonded with Varg Belhaven’s son. Do you really think you can go around and pummel the children of the Pendracons?”

  Dagger shook his head. “Today we had another exchange of views. I’m afraid the matter has been updated.”

  “Hmm?”

  “In the arena, I cut his throat. And it seems he didn’t take it well: he died.” The boy listened to the silence of the Dracon as if it were the most serious of warnings.

  “And what the Ktisis were you doing in the arena with the others?” the Lizard asked.

  “Olem let me go.”

  “Olem did WHAT?!” the Messhuggah snorted, every trace of mockery gone from his face. He rubbed his temples. “Ktisis, he could have warned me! I knew you would have dived into a sea of shit, once stepped out of that underground. That was an ideal way to protect—”

  “To guard me,” Dag corrected him. “Call things by their names.”

  “—to keep you hidden, but now you are exposed, exposed to everything. Bah! I’ll think about that too. I’ll think about everything, as always. Humans make trouble and then lizards have to put things right. Just try to keep your mouth shut and speak as little as possible. You can still do that, can’t you?”

  Hearing those words, Dagger realized he liked that less and less. “What should we do?”

  “Now you have your dagger again, right?”

  Dagger nodded, showing the faithful Redemption at his side.

  “Okay. You must learn to use it. We can no longer wait. Soon the enemy will strike and you must be ready. But that thing radiates light. We need a dark and isolated place to train us in peace.”

  “The crypt of my family?”

  The Messhuggah nodded. “Yes, that will do. Now go back to the Nest and dine with your companions. Then, under cover of darkness, go to the Nightfall crypt. But in the name of Ktisis, don’t go down there alone, do you hear me? It’s a safe place, but someone will escort you to the distance, in case a Hammer has the bright idea of avenging Heathen. Do you trust me?”

  “I’ve always trusted you.”

  “Then lock yourself in there and don’t be afraid. I’ll use my mayem key to enter.” He smiled. “Then you’ll understand from what power I have defended you from, all this time.”

  * * * * *

  The novices, for the most part boys and girls of the Sword, dressed in their boiled leather, sat at the tables feasting, singing and belching. Those of the Hammer were reduced to a few isolated, totally drunk groups singing and swaying their draug mugs in the air. Dagger found in them a striking similarity with Tankars, their sworn enemies. Some watched as two fought in a corner, while others grabbed the butts of their female companions, whose only responses were to laugh and drink on.

  When he entered the common room of the Nest, all fell silent. Someone muttered something and someone else laughed, but he didn’t care.

  He noticed Erin sitting at the Hotankar table, staring morosely at her dish full of food. He walked slowly toward her. “You look like the portrait of happiness.”

  She looked up and acknowledged him. “You have no one to kill tonight?” she muttered, but there was no malice in her voice.

  Dagger dropped down on the stool in front of her. “So, you too come from Melekesh. Was there any need to hide it? What am I for you, just a—?”

  “I was just born there,” she corrected him. “It’s different.”

  “Even your mother was raped by a god?”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Sorry.”

  He rested his elbows on the table and looked at her. “Kugar’s gone.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Erin ran a hand through her hair. “She came to see me one last time before she left.”

  “She really cared about you.”

  “You can’t figure out what there was between us. You’re too innocent.” She glared at him. “My family was killed because of you.”

  “Bad topic of conversation.”

  “My father was Arleb, the former Delta Dracon, the one your mother had to hand you over to in the world Beyond.”

  “What?!”

  “You and I would have become brother and sister. Funny, isn’t it? But a spy inside the Fortress must have informed the enemy. So I lost my family and you never found one.”

  Dagger was silent. If he dared speak, he would compromise himself. Does Erin know who I really am?

  She continued, “It was the woman who faithfully served my father to save my bacon, leaving me at the door of the Death Pass keeper after a long sea voyage. At least this is what I was told. Often, it seems to me that some piece is still missing, a part of the truth that Marduk and Araya preferred to omit. Anyway, I was back on Candehel-mas and here begins my revenge.”

  “Another revenge…and against whom?”

  “Against you—who do you think? You were the cause of all my pain. Can’t you see how I’m taking revenge?”

  He smiled. “Do you think I enjoyed myself in Melekesh?”

  “If you are playing who’s got the longest one, you would surely win. I’m a girl.”

  Dagger blushed.

  “What? You’re affected by such a simple joke? Did you ever have a girl before me, Dag?”

  “Do we have to talk about it?”

  “It will be better to know each other, if Kugar is really gone. Now you no longer have a light to look at all the time.”

 
“You’re mean.”

  “No. I’m confused.” Erin buried her head in the crook of her arm. “I’m sorry, Dag. I said something horrible.”

  “I already went to a whore of your age, if you’re so interested,” he said, before closing his eyes. This was not necessary, he thought.

  “That was not necessary,” she said.

  “She was good to me,” Dagger apologized. “Then I saw her head go down in the water, the night they came looking for me in the ship cemetery. Even Kug thought me a virgin, you know? And now I’ve lost her too. I think I’d better warn you. Something always happens to those who love me, and there’s been no exception so far. Funny…”

  “Do you really think you’re the only one who has lost someone he cared about?”

  “No. And if it wasn’t for me, you’d still have your family.”

  Erin toyed with some roasted potatoes on her plate, now gone cold. She took one between her fingers, sticking it in her mouth. “They’re good,” she said absently.

  They remained silent for a long time, barely eating.

  “How did Ianka and Kugar get to be friends?” Dagger finally asked. “If Ianka knew she was a Tankar?”

  “Have you ever had a friend, Dag?”

  “I hate you assholes, when you say that!”

  Erin smiled bitterly. “Sometimes fate shows a subtle sense of irony. Kugar developed her powers with adolescence, when we were all too bonded, including Ianka. Schizo would have never given up his favorite drinking buddy…but now Kug is out there, alone. I wonder how she’s doing.”

  “They promised to let her live if she succeeds in her mission.” Dagger said, before remembering Araya’s warning. Just try to keep your mouth shut and speak as little as possible.

  “I wouldn’t go around saying it out loud, if I were you,” Erin warned. She looked over his shoulder and Dagger turned around. Ianka and Ash walked toward them with three dishes full of food in their hands.

  “Now the family is complete,” she said.

  “According to tradition, you deserve a last meal,” Ash sat next to Dagger. “Eat my potatoes too, if you want. You don’t want to make the worms starve when those of the Hammer strike, right?”

  Ianka sat next to Erin. “Did it hurt you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “If someone calls you a bastard pooch again, I swear I—!”

  “Ian.” She took his hand. “I don’t need to be defended now. In one way or another, all the women always make you pay for it in the end.”

  The tables around them were empty. They would be occupied only when there were no more places anywhere else. Warren sat far away, with his friends from Sabbath, yet he didn’t eat with them. He just listened to their words, occasionally nodding.

  “Eating together has a religious meaning,” Ash said. “You don’t eat with those you don’t consider friends.”

  “Why isn’t he sitting with us anymore?”

  “For a reason that escapes us, Ian,” Erin replied. “War’s behavior is always been a maze for everyone.”

  The white blood shook his head. “I know my brother. He does nothing without a purpose. It’s just…I still don’t understand. After the accident Dag caused, Varg and all the black Guardians are abandoning the Fortress. There are just a few black novices left.”

  And I can easily imagine which ones, Dagger thought.

  “So why does he still need to be with them?” Ash continued. “Will he follow them to Sabbath?”

  “Maybe he’s just found himself another gang,” Erin interjected. “Maybe he was just tired of us.”

  “But we are the Hotankar!” Ianka protested. “You can’t give up the Hotankar!”

  “There are no friends in a pack. It’s the instinct of survival that dictates who sticks together,” the girl continued. “Warren’s always been a step ahead of us. He doesn’t see anything but packs within these walls, and the survival instinct that moves them toward fratricide. Man is a wolf to man.”

  “So what are we?”

  “There’s not such a great difference between us and Tankars, maybe just a little fur. Do you think they don’t know friendship? Do you think they don’t cry when we tear their brothers apart saying, They stepped over the line? Blood has the same color, always the same damn color.”

  “Apart from that of Gorgors,” Ianka pointed out.

  “Apart from that of Gorgors,” Erin agreed.

  “And I don’t dare to think about their other fluids. One thing I never understood is do Gorgors have women too? And how do they fuck?”

  “Ian, I think the argument is—”

  “Seriously, yesterday I thought about it all night,” Schizo interrupted. “I was playing a little by myself, since Tina left the Fortress with her father, Big Hammer—I never got why they called him so, do you have any idea?—anyway, I mean, how do Gorgors behave under the sheets? If their pee can pass a man from side to side, what are they able to do with their cu—?”

  “Ian!” Ash interrupted him, putting a hand to his eyes. “How much have you drunk, exactly?”

  “Not much, but somebody put something in my drink,” Ianka said. “Uhm. Now that you make me think about it, I think that someone was me.”

  “It’s not true,” Ash said. “I drank from your glass and I can still put one foot before the other. It’s that you are completely crazy, especially when you’re sober.”

  “Kugar’s gone,” Erin revealed like a bolt from the blue. That took away the will to joke from everybody.

  The green-eyed boy nodded. “It had to happen, sooner or later. She’s always been the best of us, and this is her salvation. Araya would never surrender her to the enemy. Anyone else would be hanging down in some dark cave of the Glade already, or rotting in the bottom of our characteristic prisons.”

  Dagger was about to add that, given the nature of her mission, Araya was taking the risk that Kugar would meet a similar fate. But he didn’t say it.

  “Let’s try not to think about it,” Schizo continued. “For now, her place is occupied by someone as unconscious as she, though not equally capable of sniffing out trouble from miles of dist—”

  Ianka couldn’t continue. A novice of Sabbath, passing by, overturned a full mug on his head, laughing heartily as Schizo found himself drenched in draug from head to toe.

  Ash jumped, but Erin stopped him with a hand on the forearm.

  “No fighting in the Nest!” she reminded him. “There’s the arena for it! Everything that happens in the arena remains in the arena!”

  Ianka ruffled his hair, flipping drops of alcohol on the table. He barked like a Tankar and went back to eat as if nothing had happened.

  The Hammer novice laughed at him. “Here’s the fearsome Schizo. Bah, you’re all cowards as they say. Someone could piss on your head and you would just say, Look, it’s raining!”

  “Go tell that to your pack leader,” Dagger said, without even looking at him. “At the cemetery, I guess. What did they write on his grave in the end? Hey Heathen, it’s cold down there, cover your throat?”

  The black novice cocked his head sideways and watched him, amused, as if such an answer had just added more fun to the matter. Ianka let out a laugh before returning to rub his nose on the plate and eat like a dog. Erin brought a hand to her eyes and sighed, while Ash’s face progressively displayed all shades of color from white to purple. The Hammer finally burst into a laugh, before leaving.

  “Was there really any need to make matters worse?” Ianka asked, dripping draug everywhere. “Now not only will they kill you, but they’ll also do it slowly.”

  Dagger turned to him. “Why did you accept that? You, who’d even beat your mother if you knew who she was?”

  “Is he trying to teach me something?” Schizo asked, turning to Ash. “No, seriously…is this here guy trying to teach me something? What’s his name again?”

  “Ianka has always avenged himself,” Erin said. “Here’s a lesson you can’t teach him.”

 
“Revenge is a dish best served,” Ian rubbed his wet hair. “On cooking times, there are different opinions. I like to let it cool down just a little, not really make it cold so that one says, Why have I prepared this dish? I don’t remember! Nay, never forget hatred, never let it cool down too much, but let a bit of time pass between the received offense and the consequent, inevitable shower of bloody guts; it only adds charm to the matter. What do you know? Do you want to teach me something? Well, I’ll teach you one thing, so open up your ears, because maybe Olem pounded you so bad that they were swollen and you couldn’t hear him as he told you this. There’s nothing more difficult than to hit someone when he’s expecting to be hit, when he’s on the look out, when he’s constantly keeping a hand on the handle of his knife. Let the asshole cool down a little. Let him lower his guard. And then hit him! Do it when he’s sleeping, do it when he’s emptying his bowels. Hit him when he’s happy, when he’s drunk with his friends, hit him when he’s on top of the world. Hit him—Ktisis!—when he’s fucking his girlfriend, right there, the moment he’s going to come, with all his muscles contracted, all sweaty, and a turgid cock inside the—”

  “Ian, lower your voice, little brother.”

  “Slam! A shining sword through his back to impale him on the girl he’s impaling in turn! Impale that bitch, too! She must be nothing good if she goes to bed with such an asshole. Hit a guy when he just wants to enjoy the peace he’s conquered marching over your back. Hit him when he’s forgotten he’s offended you, that shit-face, when he’s in a position to say, Hey, I thought you’d let me fuck tonight! Yes, take your revenge when your enemy would rather just enjoy the moment. And make sure he suffers seven times what you have suffered!”

  “Thinking about it, someone has definitely put something in his draug,” Ash said.

  “You don’t even know what revenge means, Dag,” Ian concluded. “If it was me, in your place, I’d have killed everyone, for Ktisis, everyone! But you have one gift. You always do the wrong thing at the right time. I encourage you to be someone else; stop being yourself!”