Free Dagger - The Light at the End of the World by Walt Popester Page B

forward.
    “ Twelve of our blood
brothers died to come and rescue you!” the voice behind her said.
“I hope you are a bit sorry, at least. What are you hiding in that
rag?”
    “ I must go to the world
Beyond. This order comes from Dracon Marduk,” Aniah said, as she
realized those men were not there to talk. A blow on the temple
blurred her sight and everything disappeared. Hearing the cries of
her terrified child she came back to her senses. She drew her
sword, blindly beheading the Guardian who tried to tear him from
her arms. Immediately, the other ones threw her on the ground and
closed on her to hit her again and again, and again. She felt the
fingers of one of them reach beneath her tunic. And then inside
her.
    “ Open your legs, come on!” a
grotesque voice snarled as two hands grabbed her ankles. “Do it for
all those who died because of you, before we cut your throat like a
sow!”
She felt his saliva on her throat and wept
helplessly, still holding the baby against her breast as they
began. They had been sent there, they had not come on their own,
she knew it. She was being punished for her betrayal. She hoped it
would all end soon then, suddenly, she were soiled by a spray of
warm blood. She looked up and saw the throat of the Guardian over
her slashed by a deep cut. The other ones cursed and backed away in
terror, vanishing. Aniah took the lifeless body of the Guardian off
from inside her, before kneeling on the floor and screaming.
Marduk appeared in front of her, emerging
from nowhere. He had a bloody dagger in his hand.
    “ Marduk,” Aniah groaned,
throwing herself into his arms. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry big
bro!”
    “ Shhh, little sis…” he said,
stroking her hair. “It will be okay, you will see. Now, you see
what the situation is here at the Fortress.”
    “ I’m sorry.”
He spoke softly and clearly. “Everything
you have been through has only made you stronger. Even this. You
have a mission to accomplish. When you do, come back. I will find a
solution for you too. You will leave the Fortress and change your
life. I will think about it. I will think about everything, as
always. Do not worry about anything this time.”
She slowly left his protective embrace,
putting a hand to her waist to unsheathe the dagger of Mayem, the
only that survived the destructive fury of Skyrgal in the tavern of
Adramelech, days earlier.
    “ Here,” she said. “It’s a
gift.”
Marduk looked at her suspiciously as he
took it from her hands. “A dagger of Mayem?” He was aghast. “Where
did you get it? These weapons are cursed!”
    “ When the time comes it will
be useful to you, I am sure. In this, lies what I, now, love above
everything else. Even though it is my death and ruin.”
Marduk did not understand those words. When
he looked up to ask for an explanation, Aniah had already
gone.
There were still many things he wanted to
tell her and, he was sure, many things she had not said.
    * * * * *

3. The old man
     
    That night, like every
night, old Sannah was sitting at the desk in his studio, surrounded
by endless piles of papers and dust, somewhere in that maze of
channels and wrecks that was the neighborhood of abandoned ships;
best known as the ship
cemetery . That room had been the cab of a
commander once. In there decisions had been made that had decreed
the death of many men. Approach maneuvers, boardings, tortures and
turns of the keel to punish the unruly. He smiled at the thought.
Now it was just the asshole from which he ran the Spiders guild,
not one of the most important associations in the putrid city of
Melekesh, perhaps not even a real guild. Perhaps the only refuge
for a bunch of mutts, abandoned in the world, that did not have
anything better to do with their lives than get killed while trying
to sneak something for him.
The gentle rocking of the floor went along
with the weak cemetery sea waves, while old Sannah drew another
entry on a register stained with moisture. He rubbed