Dagger - The Light at the End of the World (7 page)

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Authors: Walt Popester

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BOOK: Dagger - The Light at the End of the World
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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.”
He turned around. Dracon Marduk was on the
threshold of the room, knelt to the ground and wrapped in his
amaranth cloak. In the dim light of the fireplace, glistened the
twelve daggers from which he never separated, the two-handed sword
on his back, and the knife on the calf.

“
How’s that bitch sister of
yours?” the Pendracon asked, before spitting a laugh.

“
Aniah is shocked. Thank
you.”

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