James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

Soth studied his adversaries. They showed no signs of immediate attack, so what were they up to? Brandishing his sword before him, the death knight took a few quick steps down the hill. The wolves close at hand rushed as one to block his path. They crowded before the death knight, yellow teeth bared in snarls. Soth took another step forward, and the beasts braced for his charge, but did not advance up the hill.

Letting his sword drop, Soth stood still and listened for sounds of other movement in the trees. “They are intelligent, after a fashion,” he noted aloud, not taking his eyes off the wolves. “They have orders to keep us here. Something else is in the woods, too. It’s coming this way.”

The death knight turned toward the shattered tree, expecting to see his seneschal hovering over the stump, as before. “Caradoc?” He scanned the hill and the tree line, but the ghost was nowhere to be seen.

A hiss of pine needles rubbing against something large and the snap of sticks under the tread of something heavy revealed movement in the trees. That can’t be Caradoc, Soth decided instantly, for his body has no substance here.

A strange creature broke out of the trees and lumbered up the hill. At first it appeared to be a man dressed in rags, protected by a few pieces of ill-kept armor. A rusty helmet hung low on its brow, almost over its eyes. Its chest was protected by an ancient and battered breastplate, but only one leg was covered by a greave. It shuffled barefoot through the thorny privets as if it wore the finest dragonleather boots.

The smell of rotting flesh reached the death knight before the feeble moonlight revealed anything else about the creature coming toward him. “Zombie,” he said to himself.

As the dead thing got closer, Soth saw that it had gray-green skin. The flesh looked to be smeared onto its body like soft clay and was covered with welts and sores. The stench grew stronger; Soth knew it would have choked a mortal. Yet the odor of corrupt skin and stagnant blood was nothing new to the fallen knight. Though his flesh had never really decayed, his loyal knights had slowly decomposed over the years, filling Dargaard Keep with the thick charnel smell of unburied corpses.

“Turn back,” Soth ordered, though his tone was more patronizing than commanding. “You have no quarrel with me. Go on your mindless way before I am forced to dismember you.”

The zombie didn’t pause in its halting march up the hill. Soth repeated his order. “Turn back now.”

The undead creature continued its advance. Soth was baffled. He had some modicum of control over all the lesser forms of undead on Krynn; zombies were unthinking masses of reanimated flesh, but on some instinctual level they had always recognized the death knight’s power. Until now.

Soth planted his feet, waiting for the shambling corpse to get close to him before he lashed out.

One step closer, then another. The moon revealed the zombie’s features to Soth. Beneath the rusty helmet, dark voids filled the creature’s eye sockets, and only the barest fragment of a nose clung to its face. Pasty skin, pocked from maggots feasting upon it, pulled tight over its cheekbones and chin. Lips and cheeks had been torn away to reveal a set of large, crooked teeth. Slowly, mechanically, the shambling undead took a few more steps. At last it thrust out its hands toward Soth. The bony fingers ended in sharp talons.

Soundlessly Soth’s blade cut through the air. The blow knocked the zombie off balance, and its left arm dropped to the hard earth with a thud. Grunting, the creature straightened and reached for the death knight with its remaining arm. Soth calmly swung his sword again. The zombie’s right arm followed its left. Yet the mindless creature pushed closer to the armored man. Jaws opened wide, it leaned forward to use the only weapon left to it-its sharp, yellowed teeth. With a curse, the death knight struck the creature in the face with his sword’s heavy pommel.

The zombie reeled backward, its skull caved in, the fragment of its nose gone. Before it could shamble any farther forward, Soth lashed out with his blade. The creature’s severed head rolled through the air and landed faceup in a thorny bush. Headless and armless, the zombie’s body stumbled drunkenly on the hill, then toppled into the dirt. A small gout of blood dribbled from its neck, staining the rusted breastplate crimson.

“Pay heed to this!” Soth shouted into the darkness, pointing at the corpse with his sword. “I’ve passed your test!”

As if in response to this boast, the wolves around the hilt released their voices into the night. The baying rang through the forest. More sounds of creatures crashing through the underbrush came just as the howling ceased. Six more zombies, clad in armor and rags like the first, shuffled up the hillock.

“Bah!” the death knight scoffed. “One or six or six hundred, I will slaughter these mindless things like sheep before a feast.”

When Soth took a step forward, however, he found his movement hampered. He looked down and, there, clinging to his armored right ankle, was one of the defeated zombie’s arms. Even without a body behind it, the limb was holding Soth fast, anchoring him in place. The zombie’s other limb was dragging itself across the ground, its fingers resembling nothing so much as a spider’s legs as it moved closer.

“What madness is this?” the death knight exclaimed.

He glanced at the severed head caught in the bush. Its mouth still chewed at the air, and the bush’s thorns dug long, deep scratches into its cheeks as it moved from side to side. The gruesome sight distracted the death knight’s gaze for just a moment. The other zombies had almost reached him by the time he looked up again. Soth did not raise his sword at first; instead he called to mind a spell and pointed.

A small flame burst from the tip of Soth’s finger, then sped toward the lead zombie. The flaming ball swelled quickly, leaving a dancing trail of fire and smoke in its wake. The half-dozen undead climbing the hill did nothing to avoid the missile, almost as if they dimly realized they were doomed.

The fireball struck. Hissing as it was engulfed in magical fire, the first creature fell to the ground, an unmoving, charred husk. The lethal attack took in the shuffling things around that one as well. Suddenly, the flaming corpse exploded, showering all the remaining zombies with fire. Three more of the monsters were soon burning, their bodies covering the hillside with dark, foul-smelling smoke.

Of the two remaining undead, one wore no armor whatsoever. This zombie was clad in a long robe, one like those worn by some priests or monks on Krynn. The death knight dispatched this one first. He raised his sword high and swung it down in a two-handed blow. With a sickening sound, the blade tore through the zombie’s shoulder, continuing through bone and desiccated flesh before exiting from the hip on the other side of the body. The robe-clad zombie managed one more step before its body split into two writhing halves.

The howl of wolves sounded over the hillock once more as the last zombie stopped, just out of sword’s reach from Soth. This one wore no helmet, but the rest of its body was covered in ancient armor. Emblazoned on the breastplate was a raven, its wings spread wide in flight. Wisps of long blond hair hung in places from the zombie’s rotting scalp, and much of its face was covered with skin, making it look far more human than any of its compatriots.

Soth, his feet still held by the two disembodied arms, presented his sword in a defensive stance. Yet the expected attack never came. The wolves cried out again, then the zombie turned and shuffled down the hill. Passing its burning kin, the creature repeated a single word over and over again. “Strahd,” came the strangled hiss. “Strahd.”