Shadow Vault Decree

“Thane Ufrang the Mighty sits within his hall overlooking the Savage Ledge,” Lankral said. “I’ve studied him. The thane is a patient vrykul, with a head for strategy and warfare. He’s also shown a penchant for biding his time and not wanting to overplay his hand in the ongoing battle. I need him dead! I’ve written a decree. Stand before the thane and read it aloud.”

The duke arched his eyebrow in amusement.

“It should… unnerve him at the least.”

There is a condition on the thing. You cannot read it once anybody has drawn. It has to be done standing still, in front of him, before a blade is out, which means walking up the length of a vrykul hall past his own men with a piece of paper in my hand and my weapons where they were.

Ufrang’s hall stands above the ledge where I killed six of his warriors the day before. His pillars are cut with battle-runes and he was on his seat when I came in, and he watched me the whole way up without moving. A patient man does not stand up early.

I read it out.

“By order of Duke Lankral, Commander of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, Vanquisher of the Scourge and Conqueror of The Shadow Vault, you are hereby served notice to cease and desist from all activities providing materiel assistance, vrykul, and any other type of support to the Lich King. Failure to comply will result in your immediate destruction. My messenger will serve as the instrument of my will. What is your decision?”

My messenger will serve as the instrument of my will.

He wrote that down. He wrote it in the second person for a thane and in the third person for me, and he had me stand in a foreign hall and say it aloud in my own voice about myself.

“What is this?!” He was up off the seat by then. “My answer? Here’s my answer, little messenger! You come here to die!”

His blade was out before he finished the sentence and he was fast off the throne, and the first cut opened my cheek because I had spent the walk up reading a document instead of watching his hands.

He fights nothing like the ones on the ledge. They all lead with the same committed overhand; he did not lead at all. He gave me the first two exchanges, took what he wanted from them, and started working my left where the pauldron had frozen twice at the vault and does not sit properly any more.

“Ugglin oo bjorr!”

I do not know what that meant. It was the first thing he said in his own tongue.

“I will feed you to the dogs! Sniveling pig!”

Then he made his one mistake: I gave ground toward the throne dais and he followed, and the step up cost him half a beat on the backswing. The greataxe went into his throat on that half-beat and the mace finished it against the pillars of his own hall.

Duke Lankral nodded his approval at my report of success. “We face a foe that dwarfs us, not only in stature, but also numerically. If we are to win the battle for Icecrown, we must outthink them! With Ufrang dead, that gives us an advantage in Jotunheim. Let us see if we can capitalize on it.”

Ufrang went down in his own hall in front of his own men, and the thing worth taking off the body was not a trophy but the iron he had been carrying to keep somebody locked up somewhere, so the next order was simply Get the Key.