She hadn’t expected that. She looked from Arthas to Uther, then back again. “I—I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” He was right, and despairingly, she knew it. “Wouldn’t you rather die now than die from this plague? Die a clean death as a thinking, living human being rather than be raised as an undead to attack everyone, everything you loved in life?”
Her face crumpled. “I…that would be my personal choice, yes. But we can’t make that choice for them. Don’t you see?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t see. We need to purge this city before any of them have a chance to escape and spread the contagion. Before any of them turn. It’s a kindness and it’s the only solution to stop this plague right here, right now, dead in its tracks. And that is exactly what I intend to do.”
Tears of anguish burned in Jaina’s eyes.
“Arthas—give me a little time. Just a day or two. I can teleport back to Antonidas and we can call an emergency meeting. Maybe we can figure out some way to—”
“We don’t have a day or two!” The words exploded from Arthas. “Jaina, this affects people within hours. Maybe minutes. I—I saw it at Hearthglen. There’s no time for deliberation or discussion. We have to act. Now. Or it will be too late.” He turned to Uther, dismissing Jaina.
“As your future king, I order you to purge this city!”
“You’re not my king yet, boy! Nor would I obey that command even if you were!”
The silence that fell crackled with tension.
Arthas…beloved, best friend…please don’t do this.
“Then I must consider this an act of treason.” Arthas’s voice was cold, clipped. If he had struck her across the face, Jaina could not have been more shocked.
“Treason?” Uther spluttered. “Have you lost your mind, Arthas?”
“Have I? Lord Uther, by my right of succession and the sovereignty of my crown, I hereby relieve you of your command and suspend your paladins from service.”
“Arthas!” Jaina yelped, her tongue freed in her shock. “You can’t just—”
He whirled on her furiously and spat, “It’s done!”
She stared at him. He turned to look at his men, who had stood by silent and wary as the argument had progressed. “Those of you who have the will to save this land, follow me! The rest of you…get out of my sight!”
Jaina felt sick and dizzy. He was really going to do this. He was going to march into Stratholme and cut down every living man, woman, and child within its walls. She swayed and clutched the reins of her horse. It lowered its head and whickered at her, blowing warm breath from its soft muzzle across her cheek. She was fiercely envious of its ignorance.
She wondered if Uther would attack his former pupil. But he was bound by an oath to serve his prince, even if he had been relieved of command. She saw the tendons on his neck stand out like cords, could almost hear him gritting his teeth. But he did not attack his liege.
Loyalty, however, did not still his tongue. “You’ve just crossed a terrible threshold, Arthas.”
Arthas looked at him a moment longer, then shrugged. He turned to Jaina, his eyes searching hers, and for a moment—just a moment—he looked like himself, earnest, young, a little scared.
“Jaina?”
The single word was so much more. It was both question and plea. Even as she stared at him, frozen like the bird before the snake, he reached out a gauntleted hand to her. She stared at it for a moment, thinking of all the times that hand had clasped hers warmly, had caressed her, had been lain on the wounded and glowed with healing light.
She could not take that hand.
“I’m sorry, Arthas. I can’t watch you do this.”
There was no mask on his face now, no merciful coldness to shutter his pain away from her. Shocked disbelief radiated from him. She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. Gulping, her eyes filled with tears, Jaina turned away to find Uther regarding her with compassion and approval. He held out his hand to help her mount and she was grateful for his steadiness and composure. Jaina was shaking, badly, and clung to her horse as Uther mounted and, holding her horse’s reins, led them both away from the greatest horror they had yet encountered in this whole dreadful ordeal.
“Jaina?” Arthas’s voice followed her.
She closed her eyes, tears slipping from beneath closed lids. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Jaina?…Jaina!”
She had turned her back on him.
He couldn’t believe it. For a long moment he simply stared, dumbfounded, at her retreating figure. How could she abandon him like this? She knew him. She knew him better than anyone else in the world had known him, better maybe than he knew himself. She had always understood him. His mind suddenly went back to the night they had become lovers, bathed first in the orange glow of the wicker man’s fire, and later the cool blue of moonlight. He’d held her to him, pleading.
Don’t deny me, Jaina. Don’t ever deny me. Please.
I never would, Arthas. Never.
Oh yes, powerful words, whispered in a powerful moment, but now, now when it really counted, she had done exactly that—denied him and betrayed him. Dammit, she’d even agreed that if it were her, she’d want to be killed outright before the plague came and twisted her into a violation of everything good and true and natural. She’d left him, alone. If she’d stabbed him in the gut, he didn’t think he could hurt worse.
The thought came, brief and bright and sharp: Was she right?
No. No, she couldn’t be. Because if she was right, then he was about to become a mass murderer, and he knew that wasn’t who he was. He knew it.
He shook off the dazed horror, licking lips suddenly gone dry, and took a deep breath. Some of the men had departed with Uther. A lot of them. Too many, truth be told. Could he even take this city with this few?
“Sir, if I may,” Falric said, “I’m…well…I would rather be hacked into a thousand pieces than turn into one of them undead.”
There were murmurs of agreement and Arthas’s heart lifted. He grasped his hammer. “There is no pleasure in what we do here,” he said, “only grim necessity. Only the need to halt the plague, here and now, with the fewest casualties possible. Those within these walls are already dead. We know it, even if they do not, and we must kill them quickly and cleanly before the plague does it for us.” He looked at each of them in turn, these men who had not shirked their duty. “They must be slain, and their homes destroyed, lest the dwellings become shelter for those whom we are too late to save.” The men nodded their understanding, gripping their own weapons. “This is not a great and glorious battle. It is going to be ugly and painful, and I regret its necessity with my whole heart. But it is with my whole heart that I know we must do this.”
He lifted his hammer. “For the Light!” he cried, and in answer his men roared and lifted their weapons. He turned to the gate, took a deep breath, and charged in.
The ones that had risen were easy. They were the enemy; human no longer, but vile caricatures of what they had once been in life, and smashing their skulls or slicing their heads off was no more of a hardship than putting down a rabid beast. The others—
They looked up at the armed men, at their prince, in first confusion and then in terror. At first, most of them didn’t even reach for weapons; they knew the tabards, knew that the men who had come to kill them were supposed to be protecting them. They simply could not grasp why they were dying. Pain clenched Arthas’s heart at the first one he struck down—a youth, barely out of puberty, who gazed up at him with incomprehension in his brown eyes and got out the words, “My lord, why are—” before Arthas cried out, as much in anguish at what he was being forced to do as anything else, and caved the boy’s chest in with a hammer that he absently realized was no longer radiant with the Light. Perhaps the Light, too, grieved the dire necessity of its actions. A sob ripped through him and he bit it back, willed it back, and turned to the boy’s mother.