Ebon Watch

Laiza Rottedsprocket galloped away from Light’s Breach, her ghoul running along beside her. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she was glad to put both Necrothirst and his pet worgen at her back. The former sometimes looked at her like he wanted to kick her out of the saddle for the amusement, and the latter’s fangs were around neck height when they rode together. It was enough to make a girl plain unsettled.

It wasn’t that she preferred being alone - just the opposite. When the assignment had come up, Laiza had jumped at it, hearing that she’d be with a squad. For the past few months since she’d been raised, she had mostly been sent on solo missions. She cleared scourge away from the Argent Dawn’s watchtowers in the plaguelands, bore messages back and forth between Acherus and Stormwind - all manner of tediously dull tasks that took her out into the wilds with nothing but her Deathcharger and her ghoul, neither of which could really be called company. Granted, Necrothirst and Kyladriss couldn’t be counted as company either, but the others were well enough. Like all Knights of the Ebon Blade, they carried their past heavily on their shoulders. Laiza made it a point not to ask, and neither did they. It was a good arrangement - one that was tacitly understood by all death knights.

The other thing this assignment brought was a change of scenery. For the last year of her life and the few months of her undeath, Laiza spent most of her time among the crusaders of the Eastern Plaguelands. Before her death and reanimation it hadn’t been much of a problem - she was an engineer, and every war effort needed more people who knew their way around siege engines. Aside from that, her previous specialty as an arcane mage made her incredibly handy in a pinch, when the forward line was under fire and their forces needed to be evacuated quickly. Now, though, that land held nothing but bitterness and unhappy memories. Zul’Drak was unpleasant, but at least it was unfamiliar.

Lazia crested a small hill and immediately drew her Deathcharger’s reins short, causing the undead animal to rear at the sudden command to halt. She sidled into a stand of bushes at the foot of a twisted, dead tree. Above her, barely visible through the thorny tree branches, floated a necropolis.

The gnome ground her teeth and opened her traveler’s map, spreading it out as well as she could across the saddlehorn and her mount’s neck. What she saw made her swallow. Light’s Breach wasn’t only within spitting distance of Drak’Tharon Keep, now in enemy hands. It was also a stone’s throw from the necropolis hovering above her. It was placed directly between Light’s Breach and the Ebon Watch - purposefully, unless Laiza missed her guess. It would be like Arthas to place things like that, cutting off his enemies from each other.

“Well here’s a wonderful pickle,” Laiza muttered to herself. She couldn’t swing south - that would bring her far too close to Drak’Tharon, and she definitely didn’t want to run into any scourged troll berserkers - not on her own. The map made it look like there was a low wall bordering this field to the north, meaning that if Laiza took that road she would have to hope nothing spotted her and fenced her in.

She edged her mount forward. Her ghoul, a mess of oddly-angled joints and rotting flesh, staggered to its feet to follow. Ahead of her through the trees, Laiza could see that the necropolis was not the only line of defense there. Scourge swarmed across the ground, and just ahead she could see that the soil had taken on the sickly orange tinge that meant Plague had been dumped there. “Straight through’s not an option either then. No wonder they haven’t heard from Ebon Watch.”

Her ghoul grunted like he agreed, but when she looked down she found that the useless sack of meat was chewing on its own foot. She kicked it, but misjudged the force of her kick enough that it sent the ghoul’s head rolling clear of its shoulders. “Wonderful,” she said, and waved her sword. The ghoul collapsed into an inanimate pile of bones. She’d summon another one later if she needed it. Sometimes she thought they were more trouble than they were worth.

Laiza turned her mount north. If she were in command of that necropolis, she would order scouts to patrol the lands around it, especially where a messenger might cross from the crusaders to the Ebon Watch. Wary of those patrols, Laiza didn’t dare gallop. Instead she nudged her mount into a quick walk, moving not in a straight line, but from tree to tree. As long as she could stay hidden from the Scourge forces of the necropolis, she should be okay.

She passed signs of the war on her way to the wall. Bodies, presumably purified by the Light and unable to be raised, littered the ground. Bones and bits of ragged flesh, what remained when a Scourge soldier was slain, were far more numerous than the whole bodies of the Crusaders. Every now and again Laiza passed a Scourge catapult, broken and abandoned. The catapults showed signs of holy fire on their carriages.

A broken stone structure stuck out of the ground ahead of her. Despite the way the map made it look, it wasn’t a wall in the traditional sense. The sides were sloped enough that a sure-footed mount could climb them, and it was wide and flat on top, paved with stones. Laiza would lay money down that this had been a major thoroughfare for the Drakkari before they fell to the Lich King’s might.

The gnome hid in the shadow of another thorny tree, watching the surface of the road. Did she dare try for it? Most of the Scourge were mindless, and wouldn’t know a road from any other path on the ground. They knew only hunger, cold and pain. Still, they’d said Drak’Tharon was producing death knights, and they would know to watch the road.

“Better safe than dead. Again,” Laiza said, only a little bitterness making its way into her tone. She did not climb the wall to chance the road, but rather rode parallel to it, keeping to the shadows of the trees and picking her way carefully over the broken, rocky ground.

She had not gone ten feet when she felt a vibration come up through her Deathcharger’s hooves. Another followed, in a rhythm very like footsteps. Laiza backed her mount into a bush, ignoring its snort of protest. An enormous shadow glided over her just before the source came into view.

It was a flesh giant, larger than any Laiza had ever seen raised. She would barely clear its big toe, and Necrothirst would be lucky to come up to its ankle. Its footfalls shook the earth enough to disturb her mount, who shook its head and stamped. Laiza stroked its neck, trying to keep it from making noise. Her skin prickled as the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Massive bolts were driven through its shoulders and knees, likely to hold the thing together, and it had a metal jaw. “Sweet Light above us,” Laiza whispered to herself. The thing didn’t even glance down. It could have crushed her with one boot if it chose. “I’m lucky I decided not to take the road.”

Laiza waited until the flesh giant passed, until she could no longer feel the vibrations of its footfalls. No wonder she hadn’t seen any riders on the road. Why use riders to patrol when you had that? She shuddered despite herself, resuming her course at a quicker pace. She wanted to get to the Ebon Watch before that thing turned around.

The trees gave way to an expanse of hilly ground leading up to the foot of the mountains that separated Zul’Drak from Dragonblight to the south and Crystalsong Forest to the west. On the other side of the open ground, Laiza could see a small camp with a fire burning. Tattered banners with the sigil of the Ebon Blade flapped in the breeze.

Lumbering troll corpses jerked across the open ground aimlessly. They would have been raised by Plague quickly after their deaths, en masse. Death knights took time and concentration to raise properly, to bind their former intelligence, skill and will into the body. These were merely zombies.

Laiza shifted in her saddle, trying to think quickly. Now that she was waiting for it, she felt the faint vibration of the giant’s footfalls returning. “Aw, damn,” she muttered, and pointed her runeblade at the dirt.

A tattered, fleshless ghoul climbed out of the earth and scrambled to follow her as she broke into a gallop. The zombies weren’t aware enough to swarm her, but when she passed close enough to one its head jerked around and it began shambling in her wake. Laiza rode straight for the camp at a hard gallop, leaned low over her Deathcharger.

A tall, willowy figure stood abruptly from where she was crouched. She pulled a large axe off her back and stood at the ready to receive Laiza’s pursuers. Another death knight jumped to his feet near the back of the camp, running to the gap in their fence, unsheathing his sword as he went.

Laiza dismissed her mount, skidding into camp with the forward momentum. She turned, bringing her sword to bear, and pointed it at the ground in front of her. An unholy rune went chasing down the blade and a circle of red corruption boiled up from the earth.

The zombies staggered into it, their glassy eyes fixed in Laiza’s direction. “Sorry about the company,” she said to the two death knights on either side of her. “There didn’t look to be a clear path anywhere.”

One of the zombies, festering with the shadow disease from Laiza’s circle of death and decay, reached out to claw her. She knocked its flailing arms aside and chopped, runes and shadow magic flickering over her blade. The sword cut deep into the zombie’s chest, and Laiza used it to hold the thing at a distance while she sent more runes flowing down her sword. More disease crawled over the zombie, and she made a shoving gesture with one hand. Streams of shadow leapt out of the impaled zombie and streaked toward the others, infecting them as well.

“Come from the Argent Stand?” that was from the human death knight to her right. He had summoned a bone shield and was cleaving the undead into multiple pieces with a grim smile.

“Light’s Breach,” Laiza said. “I’m fresh out of Ebon Hold.”

“Just what we need,” the sin’dorei next to her said sourly, her lip curling. “More fresh corpses for the battlefield.” Her axe flickered with frost runes - one of the few frost death knights Laiza had seen who weilded a two-handed weapon. She froze the enemy and shattered them with the edge of her blade.

“I’m just a scout,” Laiza said. “There are six of us all told - well, five and a feral worgen.”

“Feral worgen?” the human asked. “A worgen death knight?”

“I was as surprised as you are,” Laiza said with a shrug. “I’ve never heard of it before. We practically have to keep her chained up, except our commander’s managed to make her obey him somehow.” The last of the zombies fell to Laiza’s ghoul, who immediately began devouring the corpses. Laiza returned her runeblade to her back. “Anyway, I’ve been sent to check in. Light’s Breach wants to know how you’re set for personnel.”

“It’s just us,” the human said. “For now, at least. I heard Highlord Mograine was sending us a small squad - that wouldn’t be you?”

Laiza shook her head. “Our orders are to facilitate communication between the Sunreavers and the Silver Covenant. Our commander speaks Zandali.”

His jaw clenched. “Of course. Of course you aren’t our reinforcements.” He shook his head. “Stefan Vadu. This charmer is Bloodrose Datura.”

The blood elf glared at them and returned to her side of the camp, sitting down in front of a tent. She began to sharpen her runeaxe. Laiza rolled her eyes, reminded of Necrothirst. Not that she wasn’t bitter about her own undeath, but she didn’t see the point of wasting energy being angry about it all the time.

“So my report will be yes, you do need reinforcements. Should I have Light’s Breach send-”

“No Crusaders!” Bloodrose hissed, leaping to her feet with her axe brandished. “Self-righteous, brainwashing cretins.”

“Oookay then, no Crusaders,” Laiza said, turning back to Stefan. “I suppose you’ll just have to wait for whoever Highlord Mograine sends.”

“That would be wise,” Bloodrose said. Stefan shook his head at Laiza, indicating that the subject was closed. The blood elf turned stiffly away from them and leaned forward, glaring fiercely into the distance. “It would seem your commander keeps you on a short leash.”

“What’s that?” Laiza said, climbing up on a nearby supply box. She jumped up and down, trying to see whatever Bloodrose saw on the horizon.

Stefan squinted in the same direction. “Yes, that’s the signal fire from the Argent Stand,” he said. “You’ll have to go. We can’t answer the signal fire, and it’s more than likely for you anyway.” He escorted her out of the fence line, glancing back at the blood elf. “Make a truthful report. Commander Falstaav will send reinforcements, whether she likes it or not. We’re dangerously close to losing this camp.”

Laiza summoned her Deathcharger, scowling. “If I wanted to run all over scourge-infested wilderness I would have signed up for that,” she complained. “I was supposed to be with a squad, not scouting.”

Stefan smiled humorlessly. “What else are gnomes good for?” he asked, and smacked her Deathcharger’s rump.

The animal leapt forward with a shuddering neigh of equine fury, and Laiza was forced to wrestle for control, cursing blackly. The zombies still hadn’t adjusted their shambling patterns to protect the hole she’d carved in their ranks, so at least she made the road easily. Argent Stand was past Light’s Breach in the direction she’d already come, meaning she’d have to skirt the road and that unnerving flesh giant’s patrol path. Again.

“If I wasn’t sure before that the Light hated me, I surely am now,” Laiza grumbled, and nudged her mount on. Whatever Necrothirst wanted, she hoped it was important.