~*~ Chapter 63 ~*~

~The Overlook~

The Banshee Queen listened to Salira's diatribe, used to it by now. The living and freshly dead often exploded at her when they got the chance. She heard this speech a thousand times in every form, and would hear it a thousand more before the end of her days.

Finally she answered, "It is me or him, Ms Porter. You can no longer pretend the Forsaken are Scourge. This land belongs to my people; we died fighting to keep the Scourge away and we are graced with a gift of being able to continue that fight."

Disgusted, the warrior looked back out at the sea, "Don't pretend the plague is some wonderful thing. I have seen fresh undead and it's never pretty watching them realize what they are."

"There is no joy in this curse," the Dark Lady admitted, metallic voice sounding hollow for a moment. Her hand came up slightly as if grasping a necklace which would lie under her breastplate. "What is done is done and without that druid cannot be undone. I would see Loarderon brought together under one leadership and the Scarlet fight with me, but I'm well aware of how thoroughly your indoctrination goes."

"Maybe I do have hearing problems: I could swore you just said you'd support the Scarlet cause in ridding the world of the undead."

"I allowed Hillburn to believe Whitemane drove me out to make them feel safe. I would rather the Scarlet stay than flee. As long as two forces fighting the Scourge remain in Loarderon, Arthas can't hope to regain his footing here."

Scoffing Salira put her fears to voice, "Why are you so set on us staying here? So we can keep breeding soldiers for your war? Fel, even the children aren't safe. You make them into soldiers to fight for you!"

The Dark Lady's eyes snapped, blazing angrily, "Since I was freed from Arthas I have never harmed a child. I resent that accusation. Some living must remain, and not for the reasons you think. Out there somewhere is a living Menethil and If Theron's man is any good he'll find her. Some day in the future there will be a Queen in Loarderon who was meant to be there. She'll need citizens. Not that I intend to leave her many, but some are better than none; and rather I be the one to take them over Arthas, yes?"

Salira didn't say anything, opting not to touch any of what the Dark Lady just claimed, admitted to and lied about in that last exchange. They stood silently overlooking the soft wave below and listening to the Forsaken children taking out undead in the forest around them. If what the Dark Lady claimed was true then was she really allowing the Scarlets to live in order to maintain a living population so that Lorderon might be reborn someday? Surely not. If she wanted Lorderon to be a kingdom for the living again she'd have left after the Battle for the Castle like she promised. Instead she unleashed a dreadlord on Grand Martial Garithos and killed the one man the Scarlet High Command said could have saved Lorderon from the Scourge.

The Banshee Queen broached conversation, choosing to tell Salira about the new matron she got today. Though she sounded too much like a noble lady shopping for a nanny rather than taking advantage of a critical blow, she answered Salira's question about what on earth the undead would need with an orphan matron. Simply the Dark Lady replied, "I only know how to train soldiers, not raise children. I never had any before I died. Not for lack of trying, mind you." A shy smile crossed her face before vanishing into the foggy realm of forced-forgotten memories. "The Underground have chosen to join the Forsaken."

"And here I though you said you lost so many troops." The red-clad woman's mouth set in a hard, angry line, temper rising in her cheeks, "You only replaced them with the ones in the underground chambers, didn't you? Oh, the woe of being you."

Ignoring the jibe, the Dark Lady asked a question of her own, "Are you mad because the Underground didn't need to be locked to begin with? All those people could have kept living and fighting for you and now they will fight for me. Or are you made because I didn't kill you all and claim all of Tirisfal for my Forsaken?"

"I get it," Salira said loudly, "I get it, ok? You need a place to live, I understand that, but so do we. They say you're a master tactician so figure it out. That's what I want from you; I want you to figure out how I can have it all. My son, my safety, your … child soldiers... to stop doing your recruiting, which just exacerbates all the problems. You can blame the Scourge all you like, but they aren't sitting in the darkness calling out for their parents by name and then butchering them. That is one thing even Arthas never did! If you owe me anything then give me back my life and let me be."

She listened to Salira's list of demand, most of them about her Angels, before responding, "I cannot undo what has been done, Salira." She gestured to the burnt out house behind her. "I cannot give back the lives that were lost that night. I understand why you're so against children fighting, but I am not the one who made them warriors."

The Forsaken Queen looked to continue but her eyes tracked onto something that moved away from the edge of the forest and into the clearing. A small hand reached out to touch the Scarlet woman. Reflexively she took the hand, glanced down- and fell to her knees sobbing.

"She didn't make us fighters." His soft, undead voice held an edge of fear, as if she would strike him or push him away in rejection. She held his hand, shaking with emotions, other hand covering her mouth and tears pouring down her face. "We don't fight because she tells us too. We fight because she cannot make us stop."

"I never meant to... I never meant to do this to you." Her voice shook, as did her armor. Pulling him into her, he went wide eyed at the embrace. Her gloved hands came up to pull the cold body to her, to run her fingers through his brown hair, to feel it under her lips once more. She kissed his head, ignored the way his scalp was hard and dry, ignored the paleness of his skin or the glow in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." A decade of guilt and grief came pouring out as the Scarlet warrior held her son and rocked him. Soon the other children came out of their posts. They surrounded the warrior, put their hands on her shoulders and told her it was OK. Her body wracked as wave after wave of pain crested and fell.

"It's been ten years, Salira," The Dark Lady knelt and put her own hand on shoulder. The gesture might have been friendship, companionship had it been anyone but the Banshee Queen. "How long are you going to punish yourself? Ten years of bringing them gifts, ten years of avoiding this place, and ten years of holding your secret from the Scarlet High Command. Let it go."

She did, tears flowing into the matted hair of the child who once held onto the hem of her dress as she hung laundry or run to retrieve her arrows as she practiced archery. He would run along the fence around the vegetable patch and shoot his toy crossbow at bunnies. He would climb up on the roof and watch the lights of the Lorderon castle being lit, one by one in the evenings. She would sit up there with him and tell him stories about the Capital, it's citizens and the people from far off lands who would come and visit.

Little had she known that her utopia would not last. Prince Arthas came back from Northrend, murdered his father and set the Plague of Undeath loose in Brill. From there it spread to the rest of Loarderon. He bombed the docks so no one could flee via sea and had choke points created at the Bulwarks to stop people fleeing to Quel'thalas. The worgens had already made Silverpine an unsafe option.

In a matter of months no where in Tirisfal Glades was safe. Betrayers began popping up everywhere to exchange their miserable lives in exchange for the secrets of the resistance and power. Even the food could not be trusted. The Scarlet Crusade was formed, but even they faced their share of betrayal from within. In the end they excluded everyone who was not human and who did not share the zealous hatred of the Scourge in all it's forms.

Salira's safe haven by the sea gave her and her small son some protection. The garden in the back provided enough vegetables to eat, as did the fruit from the trees. On occasion an escaped livestock would fall into one of her traps and they would eat meat. For almost a year they hid from the Scourge. But the Light did not protect them forever.

One night a Death Knight came. Salira defeated the monster, taking the head clean off. She had been a guard in the royal throne room once and was quite skilled with a number of weapons. No more Scourge came after that, but children started showing up. Feral children who fled into the wild or were driven out by their parents. Salira could not keep a bunch of defenseless children alive by herself, so she deemed to train them in the art of weaponry. It had gone smooth at first, the children being able to gang up and put down smaller undead who wandered too close to the house. She called them her Light-Blessed Angels, the small ones who give her hope.

Two years passed. The children grew and more children came. Somehow Salira got it into her head that she could lead these children into battle against the Scourge some day, that their skills with bow and some of them with magic could inch by inch reclaim Loarderon. She got it into her head that she would come across adults who could help the reconquest and form an army. She got it into her head that she was good enough to kill Arthas. She got it into her head that she could lead the living to war against the undead, and win.

She had been wrong. It was bound to happen that her excursions to nearby farmsteads to scavenge supplies would bring her under attention from the Scourge. Soon another Death Knight was at her door. This one had not been so easy to vanquish, and put up a fel of a fight. In the end she(1) burned down Salira's house with many of the children still inside. The one who managed to escape, or were drawn out by the combat, decided to fight. Salira realized what she had done to them when their tiny forms, outlined by the fire, came rushing at the plate clad soldier of death wielding nothing more than pitch forks and pairing knives.

It had been a mistake. The death knight had only grinned when she saw their bare feet fresh from their beds – she blighted the ground around her, pouring plague into the earth. Every bare foot that touched it was instantly infected. Salira was forced to flee, leaving behind the children who had been her life for the last several years... leaving behind the son she had though was still in the house as it burned down.

"Never again," she whispered into the dark hair of the child she could no longer pretend had perished in the fire. If she had stayed, would he have survived? Did the blighted ground kill him or the Death Knight when she ran like a coward? "I'll never leave you again, do you hear me? I'm so sorry."

"You should have seen it, Salira. How we smashed the Scourge, you and I." The Dark Lady was seated now, drawing her long legs up to her chin as she spoke. "We sent them back to Arthas with their tail between their legs. The necromancer is dead. Either she pissed the druid off something fierce or Serz brought those hounds he doesn't think I know about with him from Tarren Mill."

Salira sniffed hard, trying not to have a runny nose all over the child in her lap. "We could do that again," she said through a tight throat, "We could do that all over Tirisfal and rid the Scourge form these lands once and for all! The Scarlet Crusade and the Forsaken could join forces, work together towards our common goal. Why can't we just work together and then... and then... and then whatever happens next will finally happen and we can get on with our existence?"

The Dark Lady sighed, having answered this question a thousand times as well, "Because the Scarlet Crusade does not allow undead. I am under no delusions that today will change anything. They have Whitemane back, that is all they care about. The number of their people who died and did not get resurrected make no matter to them as long as the High Inquisitor is safe. And you? If you go back to them it will not end well. They know you helped me tonight, even if it saved the compound. Even if you do become fully Scarlet once more, they will never trust you again."

"What then? What hope is their? You said I can't go back but I can't stay with you, so where can I go where I can be safe, have my son AND work to defeat Arthas at the same time?"

Clearly the former Scarlet warrior was surprised when the Banshee Queen reached over and wiped a tear from her face. She took the tear into her hand, channeled some kind of elfin magic into it, then slid it into one of the leather pouches on her belt. "You're coming with me to Brill for a couple days. After that I am going to introduce you to an annoying friend of mine who fields his armies with my champions the way I fielded mine with yours. I cannot give you what you want, but I know who can." Salira let go of the squirming body in her lap and watched him run back in to the woods, followed by the rest of the children.

"Of course," the Banshee Queen amended, helping herself and Salira off the ground, "changing your tabard will only make you someone else's pawn."

~End Notes ~

1) Most of the time I don't explain my little hints because with some old fashioned attention to detail a person might remember that Sylvanas retrieves her sister's necklace or that Salira told Nekov about her house by the sea, and that Arthas "has a Death Knight where I [Nekov] once had a sister". I don't logically expect anyone to make the connection when I tell readers that her name was Mandy.