David Wise - Tales of Ravenloft

"Enough to stop me from pounding you into the turf like a tent peg," the bouncer growled. He reached one beefy hand forward to snatch the coin from the gambler.

From what Oliver could see of the brute, framed within the inadequate bounds of the doorway, his body was completely in proportion with his huge head. The sharp remained impassive as the coin was wrenched from his fingers. He merely stood corpse-still and gauged the brute's agility. Just as he'd suspected, the bouncer fumbled with the silver as he drew it up to his eyes. Oliver was certain he could slice the man's head from his tree trunk of a neck before he landed a single blow. The knowledge cheered the gambler and made him bold.

"I suppose you don't travel much, so the coin's mint must be new to you," Oliver drawled. "The twined snakes on the reverse mark it as Souragnean. It was part of a haul I took aboard La Demoiselle du Musard."

The bouncer pocketed the coin and rubbed his nose, wide and nearly shapeless from being broken so many times. "Silver's silver," he said, clearly unimpressed by the coin's origin. "Now get walking, whiles you still got legs to carry you."

"I'm here to play in the game," Oliver repeated. "If you need to see more of my coin — " The bouncer snorted. "I can see you ain't got enough blunt on you to buy your way in. The others brung theirs in chests."

Oliver held his left arm up, exposing the large diamond studding his cuff. "This little gem is straight from the duke of Gundarak's coffers. The silver it would take to purchase this beauty would fill five chests."

He twisted his arm so that the diamond cuff link flared in the bright, late afternoon sunlight. "Lovely, isn't it?" he lulled. "You'll never see another like it so long as you live." And while the beetle-browed doorman stared at the stone, Oliver stealthily slipped his right hand down to the hilt of his falchion.

"Watch his blade, Unthar," came a sweet, almost childlike voice from within the Iron Warden. "Master Arkwright's cuff links tend to precede his falchion into a fray."

The young woman who sidled past the bouncer matched her voice quite well. She was short, with girlish blond curls and round, cherubic features. The cotton dress she wore was the blue of cornflowers, trimmed with a fine white lace and cut to modestly cover her legs. A missionary's wife stranded in the wilderness. At least that was the impression she gave as she came to stand in the doorway of the derelict inn. Oliver knew better.

"Tisiphone," he whispered. The color drained from his face, leaving him as pale as a victim of the White Fever. And for the first time since entering Sithicus, the sharp was afraid.

Smiling sweetly, Tisiphone extended a dainty hand in welcome. "Glad to see you again, Oliver. It's been almost two years. I do believe that the game in Richemulot was the last time our paths crossed."

A vivid memory of Tisiphone flashed in Oliver's mind. The game had taken place in the fetid, dripping tunnels beneath the ruined city of St. Ronges. Guttering torches cast fingers of light and shadow over the grisly scene.

Bloody to the elbows, Tisiphone straddled a twitching corpse. When the unfortunate man had attempted to palm a pair of loaded dice into the game, she'd torn his throat out with her bare hands. Oliver could still hear her laughter, still see the grin on her pretty face as she licked the gore from her perfectly manicured nails.

Gently Tisiphone hooked an arm in Oliver's and guided him across the threshold. "I'd heard you set yourself up a permanent game in Gundarak. I was sur- prised. You never struck me as the type to settle down for very long."

"I'm not. I only worked the taverns in Zeidenburg for the winter. Otherwise, I've been roaming. "He glanced at the young woman. "Someone told me you'd finally run afoul of Renier's men in Richemulot and got yourself hanged."

She pulled down the high collar of her dress to reveal a smooth, milk-white throat. "Obviously you can't believe everything you hear. Tell me, what do you think of my place?"

From his vantage at the end of the long oaken bar, Oliver surveyed the taproom. It was poorly lit, but tidier than most, even rather homey. The tables were clean, the floor carpeted with fresh rushes. A small fire danced in the hearth that dominated one entire wall. The halfdozen men and women occupying the room gathered beside the flame, drawn like moths to the feeble, flickering light.

Oliver cautioned himself not to relax. If Tisiphone ran the Iron Warden, the pleasant facade most certainly masked something sinister. "Nice enough," he said noncommittally.

"I won the deed to the place a few weeks ago," Tisiphone offered as she poured a cup of blood-red wine. She slid the drink to Oliver and filled another cup for herself. "The man who lost the place to me inherited it when his father was killed by elves."

The sharp fought to maintain his guarded indifference. "Elves? I thought they were only a myth."

"I wish that were true," Tisiphone said darkly. "They avoid the main roads because of Lord Soth's patrols, but the hills and forests are full of them. They're monstrous things, feral and bloodthirsty. The tortures they use are more horrible than any you could dream up." She shuddered and took a long swallow of wine. "More horrible than any I could dream up."

The sound of Unthar shuffling across the rushes alerted Oliver to the bouncer's movement just as Tisiphone finished speaking. "If you want to be done by sunset, we gotta start," the brute said.

Tisiphone nodded curtly, and Unthar lumbered to the center of the taproom, where he withdrew a velvet cover from an elaborate dice table. A carved bone rail surrounded a long center of green felt. The center, in turn, was subdivided by thin lines of white paint into various betting areas.

"I welcome all of you to the Iron Warden. The game this afternoon will be death's-head dice," Tisiphone announced as she made her way to the dice-dealer's position along the rail. "For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it's a local version of craps, with two important variant rules."

She swept up a dice boat and emptied its contents — a pair of midnight-black dice with white pips — into her hand. "All Sithican dice have death's-heads instead of ones."

"How morbid. Now I know why I've never bothered to visit here before. "The speaker was a heavyset man, well-dressed to the verge of foppery. He was the only one of the competing players that Oliver recognized, a money-hungry grifter by the name of Dorlon, whom he'd wagered against in Gundarak.

"You don't know the half of it," Tisiphone murmured. She rolled the dice between her thumb and index fingers until both death's-heads grinned at the assembled gamblers. "The icons figure as ones in determining a point to be thrown. But if you throw them as a double on a first roll, you're bust — completely. You turn over everything to the house."

Oliver scowled. "Everything?"

"Are you worried that I'm going to ask for your soul?" Tisiphone replied. Suppressed laughter made her voice a little shrill. "'Everything'means all the coins and jewels you brought into the Warden. That's all."

Tisiphone handed the dice to the closest player. The black cubes were passed from gambler to gambler, so each could check them for loading. While the dice were examined, she continued to outline the game.

"The other rules variation is just as simple: if a shooter rolls a natural — seven or eleven — the house gets a chance to kill it. I roll both dice. If they come up double death's-heads, the shooter loses everything. If they match the shooter's natural, his win is doubled."

The less-experienced gamblers bristled at the harsh irregularities, but Oliver found them enticing. The house always had an advantage in craps; the death's-head variations simply meant the risk of going bust was more threatening, more complete. It was rather like fencing with unbated foils, a practice Oliver still pursued from time to time.