Arthas: Rise of the Lich King (13 page)

Arthas was not surprised to hear the initial words—that the dead had risen and were attacking. What did surprise him was the term “vast army.” He glanced at Jaina. She looked utterly exhausted. The little break they had taken last night obviously hadn’t been sufficient to restore her.

“Sir,” cried one of the scouts, rushing in, “the army—it’s heading this way!”

“Dammit,” Arthas muttered. This small group of men and dwarves could handle a skirmish well enough, but not a whole damned army of the things. He made a decision. “Jaina, I’ll stay here to protect the village. Go as quickly as you can and tell Lord Uther what’s happened.”

“But—”

“Go, Jaina! Every second counts!”

She nodded. Light bless her and that level head of hers. He spared her a smile of gratitude before she stepped through the portal she created and disappeared.

“Sir,” said Falric, and something in the tone of his voice made Arthas turn. “You’d…better take a look at this.”

Arthas followed the man’s gaze and his heart sank. Empty crates…bearing the mark of Andorhal…

Hoping against hope that he was wrong, Arthas asked in a voice that shook slightly, “What did those crates contain?”

One of the Hearthglen men looked at him, puzzled. “Just a grain shipment from Andorhal. There’s no need to worry, milord. It’s already been distributed among the villagers. We’ve had plenty of bread.”

That
was the smell—not the typical smell of baking bread, but slightly off, slightly too sweet—and then Arthas understood. He staggered, just a little, as the enormity of the situation, the true scope of its horror, burst over him. The grain had been distributed…and suddenly there was a vast army of the undead….

“Oh, no,” he whispered. They stared at him and he tried again to speak, his voice still shaking. But this time, not with horror, but with fury.

The plague was never meant to simply kill his people. No, no, it was much darker, much more twisted than that. It was meant to turn them into—

Even as the thought formed, the man who had answered Arthas’s question about the crate bent over double. Several others followed suit. A strange green glow limned their bodies, pulsing and growing stronger. They clutched their stomachs and fell to the earth, blood erupting from their mouths, saturating their shirts. One of them stretched out a hand to him, imploring for healing. Instead, Arthas, repulsed, recoiled in horror, staring as the man writhed in pain and died in a matter of seconds.

What had he done? The man had begged for healing, but Arthas had not even lifted a hand. But could this even
be
healed, Arthas wondered as he stared at the corpse. Could the Light even—

“Merciful Light!” Falric cried. “The bread—”

Arthas started at the shout, coming out of his guilty trance. Bread—the staff of life—wholesome and nourishing—had now become worse than lethal. Arthas opened his mouth to cry out, to warn his men, but his tongue was like clay in his mouth.

The plague embedded into the grain acted even before the shocked prince could find words.

The dead man’s eyes opened. He lurched upright into a seated position.

And
that
was how Kel’Thuzad had created an undead army in so astonishingly short a time.

Insane laughter echoed in his ears—Kel’Thuzad, laughing maniacally, triumphant even in death. Arthas wondered if he was going mad from all he had been forced to bear witness to. The undead clambered to their feet, and their movement galvanized him to action and liberated his tongue.

“Defend yourselves!” Arthas cried, swinging his hammer before the man had a chance to rise. Others were swifter, though, getting to dead feet, turning the weapons that in life they would have used to protect Arthas upon him. The only advantage he had was that the undead were not graceful with their weapons, and most of the shots they fired went wide. Arthas’s men, meanwhile, attacked with hard eyes and grim faces, bashing skulls, decapitating, smashing what had been allies just a few moments earlier into submission.

“Prince Arthas, the undead forces have arrived!”

Arthas whirled, his armor spattered with gore, and his eyes widened slightly.

So many. There were so many of them, skeletons who had been long dead, fresh corpses recently turned, more of the pale, maggoty abominations thundering down on them. He could sense the panic. They had fought handfuls, but not this—not an army of the walking dead.

Arthas thrust his hammer into the air. It flared to glowing life. “Hold your ground!” he cried, his voice no longer weak and shaking or harsh and angry. “We are the chosen of the Light!
We shall not fall!
”

The Light bathing his determined features, he charged.

Jaina was more exhausted than she had admitted even to herself. Drained after the days of fighting with little or no rest, she collapsed after finishing the teleportation spell. She thought she blacked out for a moment, because the next thing she knew her master was bending over her, lifting her off the floor.

“Jaina—child, what is it?”

“Uther,” Jaina managed. “Arthas—Hearthglen—” She reached up and clutched Antonidas’s robes. “Necromancers—Kel’Thuzad—raising the dead to fight—”

Antonidas’s eyes widened. Jaina gulped and continued. “Arthas and his men are fighting in Hearthglen alone. He needs reinforcements immediately!”

“I think Uther is at the palace,” Antonidas said. “I’ll send several magi there right away to open portals for as many men as he needs to bring. You did well, my dear. I’m very proud of you. Now, you get some rest.”

“No!” Jaina cried. She struggled to her feet, barely able to stand, forcing the exhaustion back by sheer will alone, holding out a shaking hand to keep Antonidas back. “I have to be with him. I’ll be all right. Come on!”

Arthas had no idea how long he had been fighting. He swung his hammer almost ceaselessly, his arms shaking from the strain, his lungs burning. It was only the power of the Light, flowing through him with quiet strength and steadiness, that kept him and his men on their feet. The undead seemed to be weakened by its power, although that seemed to be their only weakness. Only a clean kill—Arthas fleetingly wondered if you could call it a “kill” if they were already dead—stopped them in their tracks.

They just kept coming. Wave after wave of them. His subjects—his
people
—turned into these
things.
He lifted his weary arms for another blow when over the din of battle came a voice Arthas knew:

“For Lordaeron! For the king!”

The men rallied at Uther the Lightbringer’s impassioned shout, renewing their attacks. Uther had come with a solid core of knights, fresh and battle-hardened. They did not shirk from the undead—Jaina, who despite her bone-weariness had also portaled in with Uther and the knights, had apparently briefed them sufficiently so that precious seconds were not wasted in stunned reaction. The undead fell more quickly now, and each wave was met with fierce and impassioned attacks from hammer, sword, and flame.

Jaina sank down, her legs giving way beneath her, as the last of the walking dead burst into flames, stumbled about, and fell, dead in truth. She reached for a waterskin and drank deeply, shaking, and fished out some dried meat to gnaw on. The fight was over—for the moment. Arthas and Uther had both removed their helms. Sweat matted their hair. She chewed on the meat and watched as Uther looked out over the sea of undead corpses and nodded his satisfaction. Arthas was staring at something, his expression stricken. Jaina followed his gaze and frowned, not understanding. Corpses were everywhere—but Arthas was looking almost as if in a daze at the bloated, fly-riddled body of not one of his soldiers, or even a man, but of a horse.

Uther walked up to his student and clapped Arthas on the shoulder.

“I’m surprised that you kept things together as long as you did, lad.” His voice was warm with pride and a smile was on his lips. “If I hadn’t arrived just then—”

Arthas whirled. “Look, I did the best I could, Uther!” Both Uther and Jaina blinked at the harsh tone of voice. He was overreacting—Uther wasn’t censuring him; he was
praising
him. “If I’d had a legion of knights riding at my back, I would’ve—”

Uther’s eyes narrowed. “Now is not the time to be choking on pride! From what Jaina has told me, what we faced here was only the beginning.”

Arthas’s sea-green eyes darted to Jaina. He was still smarting from the perceived insult and for the first time since Jaina had met him, she found herself shrinking a little from that piercing gaze.

“Or did you not notice that the undead ranks are bolstered every time one of our warriors falls in battle?” Uther persisted.

“Then we should strike at their leader!” Arthas snapped. “Kel’Thuzad told me who it was and where to find him. It’s—something called a dreadlord. His name is Mal’Ganis. And he’s in Stratholme.
Stratholme,
Uther. The very place where you were made a paladin of the Light. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Uther sighed wearily. “Of course it does, but—”

“I’ll go there and kill Mal’Ganis myself if I have to!” Arthas cried. Jaina stopped chewing and stared at him. She had never seen him like this.

“Easy, lad. Brave as you are, you can’t hope to defeat a man who commands the dead all by yourself.”

“Then feel free to tag along, Uther. I’m going, with or without you.” Before either Uther or Jaina could protest further, he’d leaped into the saddle, yanked his steed’s head around, and headed south.

Jaina got to her feet, stunned. He’d left without Uther—without his men…without
her
. Uther quietly stepped beside her. She shook her fair head.

“He feels personally responsible for all the deaths,” she told the older paladin quietly. “He thinks he should have been able to stop this.” She looked up at Uther. “Not even the magi of Dalaran—the ones who warned Kel’Thuzad in the first place—suspected what was going on. Arthas couldn’t possibly have known.”

“He’s feeling the weight of the crown for the first time,” Uther said quietly. “He’s never had to before. This is all part of it, my lady—part of learning how to rule wisely and well. I watched Terenas struggle with the same thing, when he was a young man. Both good men, both wanting to do the right things for their people. To keep them safe and happy.” His eyes were thoughtful as he watched Arthas fade into the distance. “But sometimes the only decision is which is the lesser evil. Sometimes there’s no way to fix everything. Arthas is learning that.”

“I think I understand but—I can’t let him just charge off by himself.”

“No, no, once I get the men ready for a long march, we’ll be on his trail. You should rest up too.”

Jaina shook her head. “No. He shouldn’t be alone.”

“Lady Proudmoore, if I may,” Uther said slowly. “It might be good to let him clear his head. Follow him if you must, but give him a little time to think.”

His meaning was obvious. She didn’t like it, but she agreed with him. Arthas was distraught. He was feeling angry and impotent and wasn’t in a state to be reasoned with. And it was precisely for those reasons she couldn’t let him be really alone.

“All right,” she said. She mounted up and murmured the spell. She saw Uther grin as he suddenly realized he could no longer see her. “I’ll follow him. Come as soon as your men are ready.”

She would not follow him too closely. She was invisible, but not silent. Jaina squeezed her horse with her knees into a canter to pursue the bright, brooding prince of Lordaeron.

Arthas kicked the horse hard, angry that it was not going faster, angry that it was not Invincible, angry that he had not figured out what was going on in time to stop it. It was almost overwhelming. His father had had to deal with orcs—creatures from another world, flooding into their own, brutal and violent and bent on conquest. That seemed like child’s play to Arthas now. How would his father and the Alliance have fared against this—a plague that not only killed people, but in a sick twist that only a deranged mind would find amusing animated their corpses to fight their own friends and families? Would Terenas have done any better? One moment Arthas thought he would have—that Terenas would have figured out the puzzle in time to stop it, to save the innocent—and the next he rationalized that no one could have done so. Terenas would have been as helpless as he in the face of this horror.

So deep in thought was he that he almost didn’t see the man standing in the road, and it was with a sharp, startled yank that he pulled his mount to the side just in time.

Chagrined, worried, and furious at being made so, Arthas snapped, “Fool! What are you doing? I could have run you down!”

The man was unlike any Arthas had ever seen before, and yet he struck the youth as somewhat familiar. Tall, broad-shouldered, he wore a cloak that seemed to be made entirely out of shiny black feathers. His features were shadowed by the cowl, but his eyes were bright as they peered up at Arthas. A beard streaked with gray parted, revealing a white smile.

“You would not have harmed me, and I required your attention,” he said, his voice deep and mild. “I spoke to your father, young one. He would not hear me. Now I come to you.” He bowed, and Arthas frowned. It seemed to be—mocking. “We must talk.”

Arthas snorted. Now he knew why this mysterious, dramatically clad stranger seemed so familiar. He was some kind of mystic—a self-styled prophet, Terenas had said; able to transform into a bird. He’d had the gall to come right into Terenas’s own throne room, with some kind of doomsday blather.

“I have no time for this,” Arthas growled, gathering up his horse’s reins.

“Listen to me, boy.” There was no mocking note in the stranger’s voice now. His voice cracked like a whip and despite himself Arthas listened. “This land is lost! The shadow has already fallen, and nothing you do will deter it. If you truly wish to save your people, lead them across the sea…to the west.”

Arthas almost laughed. His father had been right—this was a madman. “Flee? My place is here, and my only course is to defend my people! I will not abandon them to this hideous existence. I will find the one behind this and destroy him. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”