Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (29 page)

Read Dagger - The Light at the End of the World Online

Authors: Walt Popester

Tags: #horror, #fantasy, #heavy metal, #dagger, #walt popester

“
Nice one, where did you
read it?”

“
It’s an old saying of
Golconda.”

“
And this place. What is
it?” Dagger asked. “I mean, what’s that old wrinkled guy doing here
on the world Beyond?”

“
That
guy
is one of the five Dracons of the
Fortress, like Olem and Marduk, so try to show a little respect.
He’s watching over the Death Pass since we came on this world. This
is the last frontier. Can’t you feel the portal’s
vibrations?”

Dagger brushed the gleaming blades,
fascinated. They responded to the touch of his fingers, varying the
intensity of their reflections.

“
This is the Manegarm,”
Kugar explained “A metal that can rip the soul from the body of a
god, as Angra did with your father. It’s a sword like these that
preserves the soul of Skyrgal, at the Fortress.”

Dagger chose a sword and cut through the
air repeatedly.

“
You use it as a stick,”
Kugar noticed. “I hope someone will teach you how to handle
it.”

“
All questions in life can
be solved with a sword, but for some a dagger it’s
better.”

“
Dag?”

“
This came to me
now.”

“
Dagger?”

“
What?”

Kugar looked at him in silence, before
lowering her eyes. “Thank you for protecting my secret, so far,”
she said.

“
Oh. That. It’s nothing,” he
answered. “I don’t give a damn about your secret. It’s your burden,
it’s been giving to you and stuff like that. Everybody has to think
about his own, don’t you think?”

She nodded, then secured a sheath at her
waist, grabbed the sword and sliced through the air a couple of
times. She was good at it, it seemed. “Let’s just try to survive
the night. You too. You can come back to life every time you want,
but if you wake up in their hands, for you it will be over all the
same.”

“
Kugar?”

“
What?”

He made no reply, save with his eyes.

“
Dag, is there something you
want to tell me?”

“
Well, I…”

“
Dagger?”

“
I really appreciated all
that… you’ve done for me.”

Kugar raised an eyebrow. “Are you really
sure there’s nothing else?”

He stood silent. She smiled
and approached him, holding his hands. She brought him face to
face, so close that he could feel the hotness in her breath. Until
he began to have a predictable
reaction
. He tried to break free, but
she held him faster.

“
It
happens a lot of times, for a lot of reasons!” he
apologized.

“
I’m glad you appreciated my
efforts,” she said. Then, touching his lips with her mouth, made
her way between them and kissed him in a way that Dagger had never
been kissed before.

He closed his eyes, dragged away by that
erupting and irrepressible power born in the middle of his chest,
where his eternal doom was. Life and death, ceaseless torment and
ecstasy of senses, were so close to each other they looked like the
same thing. He decided to give himself over to that pleasure and
forget about the rest, letting her do of him whatever she
wanted.
When Kugar pushed him
back, making him fall to the ground. “Now we’d better get back
upstairs, abomination.”

That’s unfair!
he thought, as his heart was threatening to give
him up.

Kugar climbed up, looking at
him in a mixture of challenge and something else. It was
that
something else
that was driving him mad.

When they got back upstairs, they found
Moak sitting in front of the fireplace, with his pipe between the
lips, thoughtful. Olem must not have relived his eyes of the window
for a moment.
Araya was intent on boning the carcass with
his bare hands. He had taken off his cap so, when he turned to
them, Dagger found himself glancing in two yellow eyes that were
not of that world, sparkled with gold around the tiny black slits
of the pupils. He ran a purple tongue over a double row of
knife-sharp teeth. “No, old man,” he said to Moak, as if continuing
a conversation already begun. He put the index and medium fingers
in his mouth, sucking them clean of blood, and focused back on the
carcass. “Marduk is full of resources. He’ll get back to the portal
in one way or the other, finding out by himself what’s
happened.”

“
He runs too many risks,
however, he’s not aware of anything,” the Guardian replied.
“Gorgors will be looking for us throughout the forest and when
they’ll cross his path—”

“
He’s the Delta Dracon, he
will make it,” Olem interrupted. “And, if he doesn’t make it, then
he’s not worthy of the name. A Delta moves in the dark, kills in a
flash and feeds on death, a little like you of the Poison. They are
just a little more loyal. They use their daggers and the cover of
darkness to kill. They don’t blow up your house or poison your
beer. Your
beer
,
dammit! Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with all of you guys. Can’t
you just love the battlefield?”

“
Well, Dracon Olem, we’ve
talked about it a lot of times.” He slammed a piece of muscle
dripping with blood on the table, packing it up. “There are many
ways to win a war or a battle, or a fight, a dispute, an exchange
of opinions or views. There’s always a good reason and a good way
to kill someone.”

“
Uhm
,” Moak considered. “Yes, Marduk will make it.” There was a
moment of silence, barely filled by the din of the fire burning in
the hearth. “We’ll all make it, but what for? Their host is on the
threshold of this world. They’ll take us from behind. Now that they
have opened their portal, they will come through here to plunge
into the heart of the Glade, hitting where we can’t defend
ourselves. And first strike will be deadly!”

“
Brother Moak is right,”
Araya agreed. “They’ll no longer attack the impenetrable walls of
the Fortress as they’ve always done. Not now that, thanks to the
two portals, they can… come through the back door.”

“
They’ll annihilate us,”
Olem added. “Eating us from the inside like a cancer. Return
him
to the Fortress will
be like saying, ‘Come on in, we were expecting you!’”

Everyone turned to Dagger. It did not take
long for him to figure out whom the Dracon was talking about.

“
You say they are looking
for me?” he replied. “Yes, I guessed so.”

“
Irony,” said Araya. “The
word of the gods or of the forces that have lived through all
eternity, as they like to be called when time does not force us to
shorten.”

“
So, if I went back to the
Fortress, everything will be in one place,” Dagger reasoned. “The
soul of my father, his body… and
me
. If someone wanted to get their
hands on all three, they could simply attack and storm the
Fortress, right?”

Araya hissed in agreement. “What you say is
true,” he allowed. “And I understand where your words are leading.
Yet, at the Fortress we’ll know how to protect you, as for
centuries we have protected the body of daddy and his damned
soul.”

“
We are still ahead,” Moak
stepped in. “We will return to the Fortress, we’ll build a new
system of defenses in the Glade to counter their attack. Even if it
were the last thing we do, we’ll kick their ass as Crowley
did!”

Hearing that name, a shadow fell on all of
them.

“
By the way,” Olem said as
if to change subject. “That message you found on the Tankar’s
commander down in the temple. Do you still have it?”

Moak put his hand in his pocket, as if he
had remembered only then. He pulled out the parchment and unrolled
it, reading it carefully. “It does not make much sense,” he
said.
Olem held out a hand, never looking away
from the window. Moak handed him the parchment and Dagger stretched
out his head to peep. He did not understand what he was reading, if
those were words after all, but his heart skipped a beat when he
saw the symbol on top of the message:

∞

Kudr ò Sktena amis.
Temko o ‘kvana Ramidt.
Io’ten Cruachan koro. Satanke.

 

“
What language is this, for
Ktisis sake?” Olem said.

“
Judging from the abuse of
consonants, it seems the Gorgors’ language,” Moak answered. “But
it’s transcribed in our alphabet. Must be the way in which Gorgor
and Tankar communicate between themselves.
Sktena
reminds their equivalent for
‘damned’ and
Temko
means ‘wait’. For the rest—”

“
Io’ten Cruachan
koro
sounds like, ‘Only a few Cruachan, for
now.’” Kugar intervened, approaching to read. “
Satanke
reminds one of their names,
it’s probably just a signature.”

“
Uhm
.”

“
And where did you learn
their language?” Olem asked.

Kugar looked down. “In the Messhuggah’s
library,” she answered.

“
And what were you doing in
the—?”

“
Olem!” Araya interrupted.
“We have too many things to think about. We’ll discuss the rules to
access my library some other time.”

Olem turned to Kugar. “What are you waiting
for? Translate!”

“
There’s written, more or
less,
‘not yet taken the son of the
damned. Waiting for the attack. Only few Cruachan for now.
Satanke’
. Did you notice the symbol on
top?”

“
Do you think we didn’t see
it?” Moak said, tucking the message and putting it in his pocket.
“The message is pretty clear: they are waiting to attack because
they want to get their hands on
you know
who
and they don’t have enough Cruachans to
move in this world.
Temko
or wait. This is the key word for them as well as
for us. The narrow and dark tunnel through which we passed, might
have been only a secondary passage. They couldn’t have a whole army
march through there. They moved like shadows in the night sky,
using the great rift in the mountain that we have…
I
have blown up. They
must open a new passage for their Cruachans to move again and this
takes them time. They’ll make it, but not in a few days. For once,
we were lucky.”

Olem nodded, focusing back on the window.
Night was falling fast.
Dagger came up. “We’ll be attacked
tonight?”

“
You can be sure,” Olem
replied. “As I’m sure you’re hiding something.”

* * * * *

At nightfall, they
barricaded the door and the windows and climbed on the roof armed
to the teeth.
Araya
took off his coat, revealing the red armor he wore underneath,
modeled on the forms of a human musculature, made to perfection:
the deltoids, the trapezius, the biceps and the pectorals shining
and vermilion like the muscles of a flayed man. He put on the
helmet too, a skull of a metal blue, like the one which composed
Olem’s armor, forged in death’s eternal battle cry.
For the rest, the Poison Dracon wore his arms: two
scimitars on his back, two belts of curved daggers across his
chest, two long chains coiled around his arms and ending in a sharp
point, suspended in the air, two katars ready to use, on his
hips.

Dagger looked at the simple bow he had,
feeling like a kid with a defective toy in his hands.

“
Do you know how to use it,
at least?” Olem asked.

In response, the boy shot an arrow against
the bark of a tree, centering it. “A spider has many hidden
qualities.”

“
How in bloody hell does
this thing work?” They both turned to Kugar, intent on arguing with
her crossbow. “Can’t we just poison the entire forest?”

“
Why did you choose that?
It’s slow to reload!” Olem warned.

Just then, a dart inadvertently set off
from the crossbow. The unequivocal piercing scream of a Gorgor
stunned them, followed by a rustling, and footsteps. At last, they
saw the shadow stumbling in the dark, before it collapsed to the
ground with the dart planted in the front.

“
Not bad!”

There was a brief moment of silence, then
the Gorgors’ acute cries rose from the forest, like a flock of
predators about to pounce on a helpless prey. Dagger looked down.
The mark on his chest beat once, twice, and he felt blood dripping
down his belly. He unsheathed Redemption and let his hand and knife
become one.

“
So it begins,” Olem
muttered, gripping his sword with both hands. “Remember, shoot them
in the head!”

Now they could hear the Gorgors’ footsteps
break the branches and grind the dried leaves, somewhere in the
impenetrable darkness. Soon there appeared the flaming blades,
which made them far too easy targets. An arrow whizzed by his ear
and Dagger fell to the ground in time to see the traps, placed
everywhere in the clearing, starting to work. The unlucky ones
condemned to march first died impaled, burned and dismembered.
Traps closed on their legs, cutting them neat; deep holes claimed
their feet, sticking them in such a way as to make it impossible to
break them free. For a moment, it seemed that very little of them
would manage to get across. But soon the shadows realized that, if
they marched on the path, they would not incur in the traps.
However, who did not understand that found it too easy to march on
their comrades’ corpses.

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