his time the death knight had heard enough bardic stories to know this was meant to keep the sound of the tale from becoming repetitious or plodding. Practiced bards knew well that easily bored audiences seldom lavished rewards on storytellers who didn’t hold their interest.
The tale Magda told was simple, though she filled most of the afternoon with its telling. After Kulchek had slept one night in every spot in Barovia, he tried to move on. At first he could find no escape from the duchy; mists surrounded the borders and brought him back to the dark domain whenever he tried to leave. For twenty nights he did not sleep. Neither could he stop to rest, for if he dozed off, terrible winged creatures would come to tear him to bloody shreds. Such were the terms of his curse.
Late on the thirtieth day, when Kulchek was certain he could keep sleep at bay no longer, his faithful Sabak spotted a large, horned rat. The flesh-eating rodent was of a type Kulchek had seen before in his wandering, albeit in a land far from Barovia. The natives of that faraway place claimed the rat lived only there and nowhere else. Since he believed that claim, the wanderer set his dog after the creature. If it lived locally, it would head for its lair; if it had traveled from its home somehow, it might lead him to whatever gateway had brought it to Barovia.
Exhausted from lack of sleep, Kulchek could not keep pace with the hound, but the burning prints Sabak left in the stone as he chased his quarry were clear enough markers in the growing twilight. From high on the slopes of Mount Ghakis they followed the rat, down to the River Luna. At the place where the river forks, the horned rodent shot down a hole and disappeared. Sabak bayed in frustration as his quarry escaped. The Vistani, Magda took time to note, still claim the mournful sound could be heard at the river’s fork, just at sunset.
Kulchek finally reached the spot where the creature had disappeared into the earth. In his anger, he struck the ground with Gard, his cudgel, shattering stones and knocking huge welts into the soil. Then, from deep inside the ground, voices came to the wanderer’s ears, the voices of one hundred men or more, laughing and shouting in merriment. Realizing the rat’s burrow must lead to the scene of this underground revelry-and perhaps a portal, as well-Kulchek used Gard to clear a huge swath of dirt from the area. There, a dozen feet below the ground, lay a pair of huge iron doors. They were parted slightly, but a massive lock and chain of ancient, rusted metal kept them from opening farther than a rat’s width.
Such obstacles meant little to a thief of Kulchek’s skill. Using the never-dulled, needle-pointed dagger, Novgor, the wanderer opened the lock as quickly as if he’d held the key. The hallway crawling from the gates deep into the earth was dark and damp. Carefully Kulchek crept toward the voices, Sabak at his heels. After treading mile upon mile of corridor, he came to a massive chamber, lit by more torches than he’d seen in his entire life. The light from the flames was almost blinding.
One hundred men sat at long tables, eating and drinking. A horned rat crouched at each man’s feet, gulping down the scraps of flesh and lapping up the pools of ale spilled from the table. Past them all, on the other side of the room, stood a doorway wreathed in flames of blue and gold. Through the flickering fires, Kulchek could see a strange landscape. Here was the portal he had sought for so many sleepless days and nights.
The hundred men leaped to their feet, ready to slay Kulchek, for their lot in life was to guard the portal against any who sought to use it. The wanderer knew his lack of sleep would weigh heavily upon him in the battle, so he plumbed his quick mind for a way to win swiftly.
Before the men could even draw their swords, Kulchek held his never-dulled dagger before him, its side toward the guardians. The light from the dozens upon dozens of torches flashed off the bright silver of the blade and blinded fifty of the warriors. These the wanderer slew before they had advanced another step. With each death, one of the horned rats leaped through the portal. Though the blue-and-gold fire licked at their fur, the rodents passed unscathed from Barovia into the strange landscape.
The slaughter of the fifty made the odds more to Kulchek’s liking, and he stood against the charge of the remaining warriors. Against these he wielded Gard. With each blow, the cudgel shattered another man’s skull, and the bodies soon piled up around the wanderer. Sabak dragged these bodies away so the corpses would not hinder his master in the fight.
“And so it was that Kulchek the Wanderer defeated the one hundred men and found his way from Barovia,” Magda concluded, her voice rasping from the long tale.
The sun hung low in the sky, making long shadows trail behind Magda and Soth as they trudged along the road. The river ran close at hand now, and the steady, soothing rush of the water had underscored the end of the Vistani’s tale. High reeds partially blocked the Luna from view. From time to time the travelers noticed slanted, reptilian eyes watching them cautiously from those dark-thorned reeds. More often, larger shapes moved in the trees that lined the opposite side of the river.
“Well?” Magda asked. “Was the story any help?” She shielded her eyes and glanced toward the lowering sun. “If nothing else, it helped to pass the afternoon.”
The death knight did not answer. Slowing his pace, he cocked his head as if to listen.
Sullen, the Vistani took a slow swallow from her water skin. “At least you could-”
“Silence,” Soth hissed, raising his hand. He appeared ready to strike the woman, but then lowered his mailed hand. “Do not turn around. Something is following us. It has been for some time.”
From the expression on her face, Magda clearly had to battle her curiosity to stop herself from looking over her shoulder. “Is it another alligator-man?”
The death knight shook his head. “It is a small beast, child-sized, perhaps the thing you saw back near the village.” A note of savage pleasure crept into Soth’s voice. “I do not like being toyed with, and this mysterious tracker has at last moved close enough for us to discover its identity. I must trust you to do as I ask, Magda.”
Trust? The word startled the Vistani. “Of-of course,” she replied.
“Do you see that bend ahead, where the trees cover the road in shadow?” he began. “When we reach it, I want you to keep walking, no matter what I do. I will tell you when to stop.”
The trail wasn’t difficult to follow, not with the death knight leaving a set of scent-prints stinking of the grave in his wake. No, even though his feet did not disturb the ground as he walked, the dead man was much easier to follow than the Vistani who served as his guide. All gypsies knew sufficient wood lore to make their paths difficult to detect, and this one was no exception. What was her name again? Ah, yes. Magda.
The beast curled back his thin, leathery lips and grinned ferally. If the knight doesn’t mind, I’ll leave her hanging by the side of the road for Strahd. That will curb the vampire lord’s anger a little. Everyone knows by now that killing one of Girani’s brood is enough to win Strahd’s gratitude, and only a fool could underestimate the power of that.
In the road, Lord Soth raised his hand to the girl, ready to strike. The beast’s heart quickened. The death knight had tired of her prattling at last!
He moved through the reeds a little more quickly, though the sound of the river masked what little noise he made. The soft mud accepted his clawed feet willingly, further muffling the sounds of his passing. Sniffing the air, he leered.
If he’s angry, the beast noted to himself with glee, then he might even let me eat her heart. And it’s been so long since I’ve tasted the blood of a Vistani.
Lost in a reverie of victims past, the beast’s mind wandered. When he looked for his quarry again, they’d passed around a bend in the road. He hurried to catch them; the knight was ever wary, and more than once since leaving the village he had attempted to lay a false trail. That never threw the beast off the scent, though.
His eyes searching the shadowy roots of the trees for an ambush, the mysterious tracker loped into the copse. Nothing moved in the darkness. No creature hid in the murk. Sniffing, he picked up the scent-first the knight’s, then Magda’s. They had both passed into the copse.
Warily he crept through the undergrowth, watchful for some flash of silver that might expose a hidden blade or the stench of fear and expectation that meant someone was waiting to strike from the shadows. But the scent continued uninterrupted. It seemed they had both passed through the copse without even pausing.
At last the beast could see the road again, if the muddy path the Vistani had chosen to travel could be called that. Magda walked slowly in the sunlight, but the knight was nowhere to be seen. Panic gripped the beast, and he looked frantically from left to right. A sudden breeze carried a strong stench of decay from behind him, but before he could turn around, an ice-cold hand clamped down around his neck.
“Where is your master?” the death knight asked, stepping from the murk beneath a twisted oak. The ability to enter the darkness and travel from one shadow to another had served Soth well. He had remained hidden within the copse’s darkness, shielded from the beast’s extraordinary senses.
