Dagger - The Light at the End of the World

by Walt Popester

  “Hammoth,” Skyrgal noticed, smiling. “What an honor. The new Pendracon in person has bothered himself to come and take what remains of his predecessor. Forgive me, if it’s not much.”

  He looked down at the deadly sword he wielded and felt his body shuddered with terror. That was the sword in which he had spent his exile. Aniah walked past him, supporting her blood brothers in the hardest hour. There was no shadow of fear in her eyes, just the satisfaction of having accomplished her desperate plan.

  “It was all an ambush. You knew they would have reached you here!” the force hissed. “I’ll find out who helped you and will boil him in the blood of his sons!”

  “Blood does not boil,” the woman said. “It coagulates.”

  “Do you recognize the sheen of this blade, exiled one?” Hammoth thundered. “Hand over that abomination and follow us on your will, or get humiliated in an attempt to flee!”

  “You mortals cannot soil your existence with the Exile of a force!” the god boomed. The light in his eye became blinding as he raised the sword against them. “You will not dare!”

  “Stop, everyone!” the Pendracon ordered. “Don’t move!”

  Skyrgal looked around and assessed the situation. Stoic in the cold, regardless of wind, he watched the Guardians one by one, still as the swords they kept pointed against him. No, there was no way out except for one, the last that he’d take into consideration. He watched the child clutched to his chest. He looked at his son with anger and desire at the same time.

  “Forgive me if we could be together for such a short time,” he said. “I promise this is not a goodbye. No, my son, this is the beginning of a long journey!”

  He kissed him on the forehead and everybody wondered what he had in mind. Until they saw him fling the baby in the air. When the Guardians broke the encirclement to catch him on the fly, the god took the opportunity to escape. Hammoth understood everything and jumped with his sword stretched out in the air. “Ah!”

  He felt the blade cleanly cut through the rotting flesh, as a black leg fell to the ground. Skyrgal turned around several times in the wind, broken, before falling down in the sand. He rose up on his back and began to crawl back, but the Pendracon ran to plant a knee in his rotten belly, immobilizing him. He raised his sword in front of him and pointed it at the mark in the middle of his chest. His one eye filled with fear as he looked in the god’s eye.

  The force found something to laugh about. “What is it? You lack the guts?”

  “Go back in your prison, exiled one!” Hammoth growled, piercing the spiral with his sword. Skyrgal’s eye went wide as he tightened every decomposed muscle of his body, screaming his last words as a mortal,“I’ll be back! Damn servant of a traitor god, I’ll be back!”

  Hammoth felt the hilt of his sword quivering in his hands while the impure soul flowed into the blade, leaving the desecrated remains of his predecessor forever. Soon it was all over. Too soon. He pulled the sword out of the empty body of Crowley and didn’t dare to look.

  Crowley, he allowed himself to think. Forgive me, my friend.

  The blade shone with its own light. He felt heat on his skin and saw electric sparks running throughout its surface. Immediately he put it back in the old sheath, on which silver symbols, bound to each other like the links of an unbreakable chain, were engraved. He felt the scabbard tighten around the sword, taming its power. It was said Angra himself traced those symbols with his divine finger when he had entrusted that soul to men.

  Hammoth fell to his knees, his fingers digging into the sand. “Angra, come to earth. I thank you,” he whispered, shocked by the extreme fatigue. He stood like that for a long time, oblivious to the storm, waiting for light to come back. He had restored the pledge of trust with his god. He would bring that soul back to the Fortress and it was going to be as if nothing had ever happened. Angra would forgive them and the cursed sword would be back in the crypt, where it was preserved and protected by the Pendracon since the dawn of time. That was just a hiccup, he thought, an accident due to the unreliability of men and the material gods they worshiped. Yet the fear of an impending danger already weighed on his conscience, like a shadow walking behind him to disappear only when he turned. He walked back on his steps, eager to get in the safe light of the fire once again. The Guardians were still in a circle around the baby, lying on the sand. No one dared to pick him up, no one even dared to touch him. He saw fear in his men, and then read his own fear reflected in their eyes.

  Aniah broke free from the grasp of the two Guardians who were holding her and threw herself down to pick up the child, clutching his fragile body against her breast. “It’s over,” she cried. “Angra come to earth, it’s over!”

  Hammoth put a hand on her shoulder, looking down on her. “Let’s get back to Golconda,” he said. “There, we will decide what to do with his son.”

  Aniah bowed her face and silently began to cry. When a cry of pain overcame the wind and reached them, “WHAT DID I BECOME?”

  Hammoth turned in time to see the shadow of a shapeless body crawl away into darkness.

  “WHAT DID I BECOME, HAMMOTH? WHAT DID HE DO TO ME?”

  Aniah stood up. “He’s still alive!” she said, her voice broken. She started forward, but the Pendracon held her by the arm and stared into her eyes.

  “Whatever he’s become now, that’s no longer the man you loved!” he said. “Nor my warrior King! Crowley is dead!”

  Aniah looked at him helplessly, begging for mercy with her eyes. She was caught in the middle of the desire to escape once again behind her lost love, and the inevitability of fate that kept on making fun of her. Hammoth raised his arm to point at the way from which they had come, and brought it down.

  The Guardians remounted their Mogwarts, giant cats with long ivory tusks and thick black hair, the only animals able to face the desert’s wrath. They were soon on the march; two rows of Guardians, under the silent gaze of Adramelech’s ruins.

  “These walls have eyes to see, I tell you,” one of his men muttered. Hammoth couldn’t find the strength to answer.

  * * * * *

  The Pendracon took Aniah with him. He was concerned about the possible reactions of his men. The Guardians watched the woman suspiciously now, some with open contempt. Many had known her for a long time – some had even trained with her as children – but the sight of what she had done and what was now forcing them to do had changed their attitude. It was no wonder. The Guardians pledged their lives and deaths to Angra, the god of equilibrium. It was irresponsible to ask them to accompany such a creature, the son of his old enemy, Skyrgal, to the heart of their stronghold. And even if everyone knew that this insanity was the only sensible thing to do, Hammoth already felt his authority creak under the weight of corruption.

  “I loved him,” Aniah whispered, at some point of the long way home. “I swore him eternal fidelity in front of Angra. But Crowley is now alone. Out there.”

  The Pendracon turned to her. “Do not talk,” he ordered. “There’s still a long way to the Fortress.”

  She kissed the sweet child on the forehead. Hammoth found himself feeling pity for her, for all of them. He wondered what he would do once back at Golconda. They left the sacred mountain six days before in search of hope, and now were bringing back ruin.

  On the third day of the march they were attacked by Tankars, the mighty wolf-men of the desert. They managed to fight them off but lost two Guardians, pierced by the sharp blades of their clawed gloves to defend Aniah and her burden, the one the Tankars were trying to reach. It was not the hunger brought by famine that moved them. In their bloodshot eyes, Hammoth had seen a blind and murderous rage. They wanted the child; it was the primal instinct to consider that baby the greatest threat. Greater than the men, greater than the swords they wielded, an incomprehensible blasphemy for their violent and pure souls. Now that they had learned their lesson, the beasts kept following them at a distance, watching warily among the tall rock formations, eroded by wind
.

  The two companions’ death made mother and son even more undesirable in the eyes of the Guardians. One of them protested, screaming hysterically, and crying, that it was all madness. Hammoth was forced to slap him in front of the others to reassert his authority. He felt a deep shame. From that moment on, he shunned the eyes of all. He feared the situation would soon get out of hand. Back to the Fortress, for some of his men, a couple of beers would have been enough to unleash their tongues and talk about what they had seen. The word would spread quickly and the Guardians would have soon turned against the presence of the son of Skyrgal at the Fortress. They would have conspired against him too if he had failed to agree immediately with their side. Some were idiots enough to do so, and talkative enough to convince the other ones to do it. They would never accept that blasphemy among them. He could ask them to be quiet about it, but soon, he realized that no agreement could ever prevent a Guardian to speak with complete freedom with his blood brothers, with whom they shared life, war, and death.

  At the end of the fourth day’s march, the wind got weaker. The Pendracon decided to camp for the night saying that the worst part was over. Now they could proceed with more calm. After the horror they had witnessed, and the fatigue of the long march, his men were heartened by the idea of finally being able to sleep in the shelter of their tents. They decided guard duty with a draw of straws and, to set a good example, Hammoth made himself available. When he was roused in the middle of the night by the hand of the watchman who preceded him, he realized that the dreadful hour had come. He waited until they were all asleep. Then he drew his sword. He chose to start from the most faithful among them: Worton, his old instructor, who provided him with all his knowledge and made him the man he had become. The same who had the honor of pulling his eye out when the Council had elected Hammoth Pendracon of the Guardians. He closed his lips with his hand and slid the blade along the neck, choking his short and mute surprise. There ended his humanity. Once he found the courage to begin it, that task got easier. He delivered to death his chosen Guardians, men and women who had offered to his service the best years of their life and unquestioned loyalty. Throat after throat, tearing jugular veins and carotid arteries, he got to the last one, the youngest.

  Hammoth realized he was not sleeping. He had watched everything in silence, waiting for his turn with maniacal discipline. He did not scream. He did not tremble. He just nodded and, with his last words, he said, “Do it, my King. It is the right thing to do. A secret is worth a thousand explanations.”

  The Pendracon bowed his face and closed his eyes. He put his sword against his throat and leaned with all his weight against the handle. The boy died with dignity. His blood, still warm, soaked into the sand, turning the camp into a quagmire where his brothers’ corpses were already resting in their eternal sleep. He turned. Aniah was awake and held the child in her arms, looking at him. She said nothing.

  The Pendracon rose with a bloody punch of sand in his hand and threw it in her face, then took another and pressed it against his lips, sucking the blood of his loyalists. “May the shame of this night and your sins remain forever within us! Eat! Eat the consequences of your actions, bitch!”

  The storm ended completely on the fifth day of march. They continued to move forward on that one, old road that ran through the desert. He began to think things would get better when he saw the dry land shaking its mantle of sand off. With another day of march, the earth was dressed with a shy and suffering vegetation. Soon they found themselves crossing the central plain of Candehel-mas, marching past crumbling farmhouses, empty barns and low, white stone fences, which didn’t seem to protect anything; that land was stubbornly arid. The poor and dirty peasants bowed as they passed, the children flocked barefoot and saluted with their bony hands. But not the animals. The dogs snarled, hurting themselves against the rusty chains in the attempt to reach them. The birds in the sky, in turmoil, deafened them with their screeching. Soon the farmers stopped bowing, looking wary. Hammoth took the woman on, his face still, unmoved. On the seventh day, he saw a mountain rising against the red sky and breathed a sigh of relief. They were home, no matter what they had left behind, nor what lay ahead.

  At the top of the sacred mountain of Golconda, the Titan of Skyrgal stood high. The body of Kam Karkenos petrified, locked into place, as it was when Angra deprived him of his soul. Hammoth marched more slowly, watching with fear and reverence. The mighty right arm, the only one remaining, seemed today to shade his eyes from the merciless sunlight, in what was in truth Skyrgal’s last desperate act of defense in the presence of his destiny. Everything about him was the specter of the ancient terror. The four horns twisted, deformed, along the evil goat’s face. The gaping jaws. The large and empty eye sockets. The flames that were once his body now became thin stone blades, sharp as the nightmare he continued to embody in those born at his feet.

  Hammoth clenched his fists and looked away. You won’t break me! He thought. You won’t take me! I’ll fight you under blood red skies!

  That colossal body was waiting since and for eternity. Around it, walls were constructed on walls. Wars fought after wars. Each page of their bloody history had been written before his twisted horns. But now everything was changed again. He looked down on the tender infant in the woman’s arms and shuddered. Everything had changed and he was afraid.

  Sweet nauseating pain. Is death the only release?

  With their faces obscured by their hoods, they advanced through the walls of Agalloch, the city built at the feet of Golconda. Entirely erected in the hard, yellowish granite obtained by the dismantling of Adramelech’s colossal ruins, Agalloch was a huge, perfect circle traced at the feet of the sacred mountain. Every rock seemed to remember the desert it came from. Often, in the buildings’ facades, it was possible to see the eye, or the fang, or the claws of the sculptures they were part of. Its straight and closing-in alleys, its improbable architectures, the long faces of its inhabitants never failed to disquiet him. That was the city that first absorbed the attack of the desert and its foul creatures, their first defense. No one could count the times it was sieged in its tormented history, invaded but never destroyed, its people kidnapped, raped, tortured, dismembered but never defeated. That stone, filled with blood, could not die, as the gods it once portrayed. That city, that perfect circle, was eternal.

  Halfway between heaven and earth, on a natural step on the high mountain, the Guardians had erected their impregnable Fortress, its soaring towers overlooking the desert; to be again in the sight of his impenetrable defenses gave him a precarious sense of security, immediately swept away when a dog appeared out of nowhere to attack them. It tried to jump against the woman and her son, but the owner rushed to stop it. The beast then turned against him, sinking its jaws in his neck and not letting go until he had died. A passerby came with a hammer and smashed the skull of the ferocious beast, and the dog and its owner lay dead on the ground. All those who had witnessed the scene looked at them suspiciously while they continued to ascend the sacred slopes of Golconda, looking indifferent to the death that surrounded and followed them.

  When they got through the gate of the Fortress, two children ran to meet them with big smiles on their face. “Dad! Daddy!” they screamed. The Pendracon forced himself to watch the smile disappear from their faces, as the gate was closed behind him without any following. Children understood things quickly, especially the worst. They didn’t weep and he envied them for their courage.

  My fault. The pain and solitude that are going to accompany you forever, from now on. Even when you will take a wife and have your own children, not even those will fill the emptiness of a denied childhood. My fault. All my fault.

  When, at last, he got in the room at the top of his tower, finally alone and sure that no one could see him or judge him, Hammoth gave himself over to a long, desperate cry. He hurt himself punching the wall. He smashed everything he found in his hands but, in the end, what was left of his anger was just a huge void
and a long series of decisions to be made. Sitting on the ground, as a homeless man in the room of a king, he used his wine reserve to drown his fears and force the voices inside to quiet. Only at sunset he found the courage to look out from the balcony of the tower, the tallest of the Fortress. It was located at its exact center, towering above all. The bottle in his hand, now empty, slipped between his fingers and flied down, far away, before crashing against the council hall. He grabbed a fragment of glass and turned it several times in his fingers, his eyes seeking refuge in the Far East, that desert full of threats from which he had just returned. Crushed on the horizon, he could still see the dark outline of the ruins of Melekesh. He had fought against everything to arrive in time for the appointment with Aniah, but now that he had made it, now that the impossible was accomplished, he understood the fight was just started and they were already losing.

  In that complete silence, he heard a cough, and shuddered. From behind him came a deep voice,“Pardon me, my Pendracon. I did not mean to frighten you.”