Ravenloft: Tales of Ravenloft by Brian Thomsen

Author:Brian Thomsen [Thomsen, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-0994-5591-2
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2016-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The Rigor of the Game

James Lowder

The game brought Oliver Arkwright to walk the harrowing roads of Sithicus, just as it had propelled him on other foolish journeys throughout his twenty-odd years as a gambler. To anyone who bothered asking, Oliver bluntly cited greed as his only motivation for such risky ventures. He knew better. The money purchased food and shelter and sometimes even companionship, but he’d realized years ago that he pursued a sharp’s life solely for the thrill of tempting fate.

And he’d tempted it sorely on this trip. Since crossing the border from Gundarak three days past, Oliver had seen snakes as long as boar spears and slavering wolves with eyes that glowed like embers, even in the moonless murk of the Sithican night. He dispatched these threats as he did most living obstacles that stood between him and a game—mercilessly, with a lightning-quick flash of his falchion. But there were other things in the darkness as well, ghostly things that groaned and shrieked like the damned. Oliver suspected his sword would avail him little against such phantasms. Fortunately, the keenness of the gambler’s curved blade was more than evenly matched by the keenness of his wits; he managed to elude the wailing creatures and even catch a few hours’ sleep in dry gullies along the road-side.

Now, at last, he stood on the weatherworn threshold of his destination. It was a wayside inn very much like the myriad wayside inns Oliver had frequented in other, equally gloomy lands. The hulking two-story box slouched at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, as if it had been traveling to someplace where it might share the company of other buildings, but lacked the resolve to finish the trek. And so it huddled on the forest’s verge, defeated and forlorn. Only the inn’s sign remained defiant. The miniature armor-clad knight affixed to the board clasped an embossed shield in one hand. In the other he clutched a long sword at the sky, ready to smite the very sun.

Oliver spared the knight the briefest of glances before he smiled with anticipation and strode to the door. The fatigue born of the past three days disappeared suddenly. In its place crackled a frisson of excitement.

That excitement dimmed only a little when Oliver discovered the door barred resolutely against him. When his first knock went unanswered, an uncomfortable dread began creeping up his spine. Had he come to the wrong place? He stepped back and again surveyed the sign. The knight’s slate-gray armor and the badge embossed on his shield rekindled the sharp’s hope—no, this was definitely the Iron Warden. And for all its forlorn appearance, the place wasn’t deserted; eight tethered horses grazed to one side, and smoke curled languidly from the chimney.

His falchion drawn, Oliver closed on the portal once more. “Unless you want me to hack it down, you’d best unbar this door immediately!” He broke the answering silence by rapping on the wood with his sword’s ornate pommel.

The

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