James Lowder - Knight of the Black Rose

The dwarf shuddered. The reason for Soth’s ravings crystallized in his mind.

The portal had returned them to the duchy of Barovia.

The Old Svalich Road remained strangely clear for the two days it took Soth and Azrael to march east from Vallaki to Castle Ravenloft. They both knew Strahd would hear about the slaughter the death knight had perpetrated in the quiet fishing town. Yet no one challenged their progress, even though the switchbacks and blind turns that allowed the road to climb the foothills of Mount Ghakis made it a perfect location for an ambush.

Of course, the wolves followed their every move from a distance, disappearing into the forest if Azrael tried to catch up with them. The death knight cared little about the beasts, though he knew they were conveying information back to the count. The dwarf found them a challenge, and he sometimes passed an hour stalking the wolves. While he was skilled as a hunter, they were beyond his abilities.

“Strahd will be expecting us, of course,” Azrael said as he trudged along the road. “Do you have a surprise for him, mighty lord? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, of course.” When Soth didn’t reply, he shrugged and scanned the bushes for any sign of the wolves. The death knight had grown ominously silent since their return to Barovia. It was all Azrael could do to get him to speak four times in a day.

“I’m sure you do have a surprise for him,” the dwarf said, more to himself than to his companion. He sighed, then scratched furiously at the peeling skin on his neck. A few thin ribbons came off under his fingernails, revealing new pink skin.

Few signs of the damage wrought by the lightning bolt remained on Azrael’s body or face. The charred skin had been shed, and his shoulder had righted itself. His left eyelid drooped a little, but his sight seemed to have returned completely. The same was true of his sense of smell. Only his lip and jaw, as smooth and hairless as his pate, stood as reminders of the attack.

Azrael had stripped one of Soth’s victims in the marketplace, replacing his bloodstained tunic and breeches with a new shirt and pants. Both were too large, but he used a razor he found in a man’s pack to cut them to size. He’d also grabbed a mace from the fallen watchman, knowing as he did that the count would likely send skeletons or zombies after them. Such blunt weapons were effective for smashing their reanimated bones to dust. Now, with each short-legged step Azrael took, the mace tapped his thigh reassuringly.

They spotted the castle and the village of Barovia just before sundown, a fact Azrael took as a bad omen. “Uh, shouldn’t we wait here until the sun rises again and Strahd is forced back to his coffin?” the dwarf asked tentatively.

“No,” the death knight replied. “We will have to fight our way to the keep whether the sun or the moon shines down upon us. The sooner we begin this war, the sooner I will have Strahd’s head adorning the gate of Castle Ravenloft.”

The ring of poisonous fog that Strahd could raise around the village was nowhere to be seen, and the town itself appeared deserted from Soth’s vantage; nothing moved in the streets, and the shops and marketplace were closed, even though there was still enough daylight to conduct business. That did not mean the count had failed to prepare a defense for his home, however.

A small army crowded before the rickety bridge, which Soth knew was the only way into the keep. “He has pressed the villagers into defending his home,” Soth noted as he and Azrael started down the road.

“Human soldiers?” the dwarf scoffed. “This won’t be much of a challenge.”

But when the death knight and the werebadger reached the clearing, they saw that zombies made up the bulk of the army of two hundred, with a few skeletons and battle-scarred and fearless mortal mercenaries filling out the ranks. Gargoyles flapped over the crowd, goading the soldiers into position with whips of barbed steel. One of these officers left the ranks as Soth approached.

“My master sends his greetings, Lord Soth,” it shouted as it flew toward the death knight. The gargoyle’s slate-gray wings took on a red tint in the light of the setting sun. Its face was long, with a chin that jutted out like a sharpened dagger. Its body was so rounded that it appeared almost soft. Soth knew better; such creatures always had skin as hard as stone.

Landing gently before Soth, the gargoyle kneeled and bowed his head. “My master has heard of your return to the duchy, noble lord, but he knows not the reason for your anger.”

The death knight faced the messenger. “I have nothing to say to you, lackey. My words are for Strahd alone.”

Standing, the gargoyle nodded. “Know this, then, Lord Soth. My master has sealed the keep with his sorcery. You cannot enter by walking through the shadows.” He gestured at the assembled army. “You can gain entrance only by passing across the bridge, and we are charged to prevent this.”

“Then the doom of these troops is sealed,” Soth replied.

After bowing again, the gargoyle flapped back over the army. He crossed over the bridge and entered the keep’s courtyard to inform the count of the death knight’s words. The commanders shouted final orders, and the army shuffled forward.

Azrael cupped the mace in his hand. He wished he’d remembered to take the mail shirt from Gundar’s castle, but he brushed that thought aside. Weapons of steel or iron could do him tittle harm; he regenerated too quickly from the wounds they caused for them to present any serious threat. Only weapons created by magic or blades wrought from silver were a real danger, and it didn’t look like the zombies and skeletons carried such precious arms.

“One-hundred-to-one,” the dwarf said, grinning up at the death knight. “Just enough to make it interesting.”

Soth turned. “I won out over greater odds when I was a mortal knight on Krynn,” he replied. “And I did not possess the powers I have now.”

The army had closed to a dozen yards. The zombies were unarmed, though Soth remembered how difficult they had been to defeat when he faced them on his first night in Barovia. The skeletons and the few humans wielded a variety of weapons-swords, axes, even flails and pole arms. Yet he did not draw his own blade, not yet at least.

With a quick movement of his hand and a softly spoken command, Soth called a swarm of flaming stones into existence. The meteors were the size of the death knight’s fist, and when they hit the front rank, they burned holes through whatever they struck-flesh, armor, or bone.

A skeleton, its skull shattered, dropped to one knee. The zombies behind it trampled it beneath their stumbling advance. Rag-clad dead men caught fire, and their attempts to put out the magical flames simply spread the fire to their hands and arms. They fell, too, though their fellows dodged the flaming corpses. In all of this, the undead soldiers made no sound. The battle was far from silent, though. The human sell-swords screamed as they died and the gargoyles continued to shout their commands.

Soldiers shambled forward to replace the thirty destroyed by the sorcerous attack, and the death knight drew his sword, its blade dark in the growing twilight.

The first soldier to get within striking distance fell to Azrael’s mace. The dwarf howled his victory as the skeleton dropped to the ground, its spine crushed, its rib cage split apart. It was soon joined by a human; Soth had almost severed his head from his neck. But the cry of victory died on Azrael’s lips when he saw a glint of silver. A mercenary, scars zigzagging his cheeks, stepped toward the dwarf. In one hand he held a silver long sword, in the other a dagger glowing with a faint aura of magic.

“After he prayed to Paladine, Soth received a quest,” Caradoc reported. “He was to go to the city of Istar and stop the kingpriest from demanding the power to eradicate all evil on Krynn.”