A/N: Hello folks, and welcome to my story!

I will start by saying that this story will be much more realistic, grounded and dark than the games. Magic will be present in a great manner, but not everywhere. In other words, it will be nerfed so it's not available to everyone. This is a change that I found necessary for my story. It also helps that it is not lore breaking.

Furthermore, Bastard of Lordaeron will be a slow paced story dedicated to character development and storytelling, and is definitely not a smut (nothing against smuts, though). Romance will have a great role, but that is not the main point of the story.

The lore that I'll keep up with will stretch roughly to WotLK, but it won't be the same, diverging heavily from the moment Arthas murders his father. This means no Deathwing and anything that happens beyond WotLK. Deathing might appear in this story, but he'll be presented differently, instead of being a world ending threat. Same goes with other villains and characters that appear in the lore. You get the point.

Lastly, any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated, be it positive or negative. Post a review, let me know what you think, what you like or don't like, etc. It will make me very happy.

Thanks and enjoy the story! :)

Chapter 1: The Greywood

Born beneath the ever snowcapped peaks eternally hidden by the clouds, the wind blew to the west, across the central plain in Tirisfal Glades and above the Capital City of Lordaeron, where the tides had turned during the Second War. Down it flailed into the valley between the western mountain range and a place called Ivard, eternally guarded by the high peaks of the Western Rise and its dense forests. It beat on the young man who was gliding between the densely packed spring was supposed to arrive a good month earlier, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow. In some places, snows still remained.

Gusts of wind clung to Asher Grimwold's cloak against his back, whipped the earth-colored wool around his legs, then streamed it out behind him. He wished his coat were heavier, or that he had worn an extra shirt. Half the time, when he tried to tug the cloak back around him, it caught on the quiver swinging at his hip. Trying to hold the cloak onehanded did not do much good anyway; he had his bow in the other, an arrow nocked and ready to draw.

As a particularly strong blast tugged the cloak out of his hand, he glanced at the area around him. He wondered if he should head back as the Greywood – named such for the color of the land in the base of the mountain - began to grow dark around him. Father wouldn't be pleased if he came back empty handed, and the sheep had a good head start when it ran away. All he had to give his father were some tracks he had found, but no signs of the animal.

"You fool," he whispered to himself with a hint of a sarcastic smile as he thought back on how he lost the sheep. All these years he spent keeping the whole flock together, he never lost a single lamb. Not a single one. With a sigh, he accepted it had to happen someday, but why that day of all days? His father was swarmed with chores, and Asher's help was invaluable. Yet, he had to go about and lose a lamb in the woods and spend the whole afternoon looking for it. And Greywood was a big forest, the largest in the valley beneath the Western Rise.

Asher glanced at the sky with concern. There was not much daylight left. For some reason, he felt tension. Not because of the wounded pride of losing the lamb, but more because of a nervous tension that came perilously close to fear. Asher was not the one to be afraid of the dark, but Greywood felt different that night.

He felt a little foolish longing for his father's presence, but it was that kind of day. The wind howled when it rose, but aside from that, quiet lay heavy on the land. No birds sang in the forest, and no squirrels chittered from a branch. Not that he expected them, really. Not this spring. Only trees that kept leaf or needle through the winter had any green about them. Scattered patches of snow remained on the ground where dense clumps of trees provided deep shade. Where the sunlight did reach, it held neither strength nor warmth. The pale sun sat above the trees to the west, its light crisply dark, as if mixed with shadow. Yes, it was one of those kinds of days, made for unpleasant thoughts.

Without thinking, Asher touched the nock of the arrow. It was ready to draw to his cheek in one smooth movement, the way his father Dan had taught him. Winter had been bad enough on the farms, worse than even the oldest folks remembered, but it must have been harsher in the mountains, if the large numbers of wolves driven down into Ivard were any indication of it. Wolves raided the sheep pens and chewed their way into the barns to get the cattle and horses. Bears had been after the sheep too, where a bear had not been seen in years. It was no longer safe to be out after dark. And men were the prey as often as sheep, and the sun did not always have to be down.

Taking steady strides, Asher considered turning back one more time, but then the tracks grew fresher. Holding his arrow nocked, he ignored the wind that made his brown cloak flap like a banner, and strained his eyes in an effort to see better and not let anything surprise him. Asher had been a hunter as much as a farmer, learning well under Dan's tutelage. Some winters were harsher than others, and some years yielded less meat from the sheep than others before. Asher pulled his weight over beneath an ancient, gnarled tree and leaned his back against it.

Somewhere off in the woods, a wolf howled.

Why did he stop? He wondered and paused for a moment, staring off into the distance. A cold wind whispered through the trees. His cloak stirred behind him like something half-alive. He could not shake the feeling, the feeling that something was wrong. Asher decided to listen to the darkness, and he could feel it. Almost since he was old enough to walk, he had run loose in this forest. The ponds and streams of the Greywood, beyond the last farms east of Ivard, were where he had learned to swim. He had explored into the hills by the western mountains, and once he had even gone to the very foot of the Western Rise, him and his best friend, Robin Rains. That was a lot farther than most people in Ivard ever went, except for those that would ride all the way outside the valley, to the town of Westend, to sell their products, and those that fought in the Second War. Those people were rare, especially the latter. Today, Greywood was not the place he remembered. Not sure what, but he could feel something. He spent his whole childhood in Greywood, but he had never been so afraid. What was it?

His brain assured him that it was just the wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmanned him so much? When he found no answer, he slid away from the tree, his fingers tight on the nock. The trees pressed closer to his path as he followed the tracks. His hood was down, and despite the cold, he felt his face sweating. Asher threaded his way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge known in Ivard as Highpoint. Not many people went up there, and certainly no sheep, yet the tracks led this way. Uphill, he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, with slick footing, and rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Asher made no sound as he climbed.

The great sentinel tree was right there at the top of the ridge, where Asher had known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Asher slid in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and mud, and looked down on the empty clearing below.

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment, he dared not breathe.

What was left of the sunlight shone down on the clearing, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock, and the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as he had remembered it from the past. He had been here many times before.

But the tracks vanished.

They seemed to vanish into thin air, as if the lamb had sprouted wings and flown away. Asher was confused. His eyes swept back and forth over the clearing. Nothing. Nothing to tell him where to go next.

Asher turned away, and began climbing down. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the Light, and slipped an arrow free from the quiver. The feeling of bow and arrow in his hands didn't give him much comfort. As he watched the base of the ridge, the feeling grew in him that he was being watched. For a while, he tried to shrug it off. Nothing moved or made a sound among the trees, except the wind. But the feeling not only persisted, it grew stronger. The hairs on his arms stirred, his skin pricked as if it itched on the inside.

He shifted his bow irritably, rubbing his arms, and told himself to keep moving forward and stop letting his fancies get the best of him. There was nothing in the forest around him, nothing he could see. The sudden cold and hot mist that formed from his breath made him shiver. It was hard to resist the urge to rub at his arms for warmth, but putting the guard down was not an option, not during this time of the year when wolves ran loose and preyed on those not careful enough. Then he glanced over his shoulder… and blinked. Not more than twenty spans down the road, a cloaked figure on horseback followed him, horse and rider alike black, intimidating, and ungleaming. The rider's cloak covered him to his boot tops, and the cowl tugged well forward so no part of him showed. Vaguely, Asher thought there was something odd about the horseman, but it was the shadowed opening of the hood that fascinated him. He could see only the vaguest outlines of a face, but he had the feeling he was looking right into the rider's eyes. And he could not look away. Not for a moment. Queasiness settled in his stomach, and the land seemed to get colder. There was only a shadow to see in the hood, but he felt hatred as sharply as if he could see a snarling face, hatred for everything that lived. Hatred for him most of all, hatred for him above all else.

Abruptly a stone caught his heel, and he stumbled, breaking his eyes away from the dark horseman. His bow dropped to the ground, and only an outstretched hand grabbing the tree bark saved him from falling flat on his back.

Pulling himself breathlessly upright, Asher's eyes trailed back to where the rider was. The forest was empty.

Disbelieving, he stared into the forest around him. The barebranched trees provided no cover, but there was not a glimmer of a horse or horseman. He was sure he was there. A man in a black cloak, riding a black horse.

Abruptly, Asher realized that he had been standing in place, lost in his thoughts. Then he realized what had been odd about the horseman, aside from his being there at all. The wind that beat at him got colder the moment Asher spotted the horseman. His mouth was suddenly dry. He must have imagined it. He was tired, and it was almost dark. But he did not believe it, even though the dark rider apparently vanished into thin air.

With a worried frown, he peered into the woods around him. These forests were known to him. Other than an occasional wolf here and there, there were no dangers in Graywood. Old grumpy Ron used to say that the times were changing, but he had been saying it since Asher could walk and talk. Fear crept in again, and Asher made the first step towards Ivard. Dan needed to know. The whole village needed to know. But first, Dan. He was his father.

He walked, but soon after, he ran. Asher dashed between the trees, glancing over his shoulder and all around him for the horseman. But he was not there, and there was no sign of him being there at all. He did not stop looking back until the high-peaked, thatched roofs of Ivard surrounded him. The village lay close onto the Greywood, the forest gradually thinning until the last few trees stood actually among the stout frame houses. The land sloped gently down to the east. Farms, fields, and pastures quilted the land beyond the village all the way to the Greywood on the other side of the village. The land to the west was just as fertile, though the farms were a rarer sight. Some said the land was too rocky, as if there were not rocks everywhere in the valley beneath the Western Rise, and others said it was a hardluck land. Whatever the reasons, only the hardiest men farmed in the western Greywood.

Small children and dogs dodged around him in whooping swarms once he passed the first row of houses. In the last months, there had been little of play or laughter from the children, even when the weather had slackened enough to let the children out, fear of wolves kept them in. The adults were paranoid when the news of the war in the east reached Ivard several months ago. A threat to the kingdom and its people, so the rumors said. A gallant prince rode out of the Capital with a royal army to stop invaders and save the kingdom. Asher scoffed, unsure whether to believe in the stories or not. Stories are often just that, stories. But he still found himself in the moments of wishfull thinking, craving for adventure he heard all about in the stories. But he was old enough to understand that he was meant to live as a shepherd from Ivard, where he grew up and will spend the rest of his days. Still, as content as he was with his life, Asher wanted to see what the rest of the world looked like.

It seemed that the approach of the Spring Festival had taught the kids to play again, and it had affected the adults as well. The goodwife stood in a window, an apron tied around her hair, long and short done up in a kerchief, shaking sheets or hanging mattresses over the windowsill, in almost every the roofs, more than one, a goodman of the house clambered about, checking the thatch to see if the winter's damage meant calling of the old thatcher, the grumpy old man Ronald Rolf.

Asher knew his father was not in the village, rather at their farm beyond, but he was glad to see friendly faces. Those helped him forget about the horseman, if only for a few moments. He hoped to see Robin by the smithy, but he was not there. Others paid little attention to him, everyone was deep into what they were doing. It was a busy day, as it would be tomorrow, on the eve of the Spring Festival. But the days were still short as the winter lingered, and there was too much to be done.

Soon the street opened into the wide, green area, a broad expanse in the middle of the village. Usually covered with thick grass, the green this spring showed only a few fresh patches among the yellowish brown of dead grass and the black of bare earth. The mounds were already being built for Spring fires — three careful stacks of logs almost as big as houses. They had to be on cleared dirt, of course, and not on the grass, even as sparse as it was. On the edge of the green, wooden railings were put up for horse races, and targets were being put on display. The three whole days of the Spring Festival would be taken up with singing and feasting, with time out for horse races, and contests in almost everything, including archery, skills with the sling, and the quarterstaff. Most Western Rise folks who fought in the Second War against the orcs claimed that no one in the kingdom could match their skill with a bow and arrow. The Spring Festival was supposed to come when spring had well arrived, the first lambs were born, and the first crops appeared. Even with the cold hanging around, though, no one had any idea of putting it off. Everyone could use a little singing and dancing.

Toward the west end of the green, a spring gushed out of a low stone outcrop in a flow that never failed. The rapidly widening water ran swiftly to the east from the spring, with willows dotting its banks all the way to Master Gavain's mill and beyond, until it split into dozens of streams in Greywood's northern reaches. The farms of Ivard lay to the western end of the village, spread out in the plain. Most of them were similar in size and appearance, yet they were different enough and unique for anyone who lived in Ivard long enough.

Farmers worked hard in the fields, their tunics drenched in sweat, even with the sun almost sunken at the horizon and stars visible in the sky. There was much to be done, and the days were still short. Two hundred spans after the last row of farms, where the trees started again, Asher reached his home, a lone holding in the woods.

The Grimwold's farmhouse was not a big house, not nearly as large as some of the sprawling farmhouses to the east of the village, dwellings that had grown over the years to hold entire families. In the valley beneath the Western Rise, that often included three or four generations under one roof, including aunts, uncles, cousins, and nephews. Dan and Asher were considered out of the ordinary as much for being two men living alone as for farming in the Greywood itself.

Here most of the rooms were on one floor, a neat rectangle with no wings or additions. Two bedrooms and an attic storeroom were fitted up under the steeply sloped thatch. If the whitewash was all but gone from the stout wooden walls after the winter storms, the house was still in a tidy state of repair, the thatch tightly mended, and the doors and shutters well-hung and snug-fitting.

The house, barn, and stone sheep pen formed the points of a triangle around the farmyard, where a few chickens had ventured out to scratch at the cold ground. An open shearing shed and stone dipping trough stood next to the sheep pen. Few farmers in the valley beneath the Western Rise could make do without wool to sell when the merchants came.

When Asher took a look in the stone pen, the heavy-horned herd ram looked back at him, but most of the black-faced flock remained placidly where they lay or stood with their heads in the feed trough. Their coats were thick and curly, but it was too cold for shearing.

Drawing a bucket of water from the well, Dan looked up to see his son approaching him. With his thick chest and broad face, he was a pillar of reality that day, like a stone in the middle of a drifting dream. His sun-roughened cheeks might be lined, and his hair might have only a sprinkling of brown among the grey, but there was a solidness to him, as though a flood could wash around him without uprooting his feet.

Asher's steps suddenly became insecure, and he was filled with shame when he noticed Dan looking behind him, for the lamb that he had lost.

"No luck, lad?" Dan said.

He patted Asher's shoulder to reassure, reminding him of how much he wished Dan was there with him in the woods that afternoon. Asher was a head taller than his father — taller than most people in the village really, even when he was just fourteen. Four years later, he grew even taller. Asher had a little of Dan in him physically, except perhaps for a breadth of shoulder. Blue eyes and blonde hair came from his mother, so Dan said. She had been an outlander, a woman from afar, and Asher didn't know much about her except that she died when she gave birth to him.

"I couldn't find it, father." Asher muttered reluctantly.

Dan gave him a resigned look and set the bucket of water down. "It is what it is, lad. Don't be too hard on yourself." He patted Asher's shoulder again and picked up the bucket. The cloudless sky was deep purple, like an old bruise, and faded to black. The stars began to come out, and a half-moon was already there. Night was there, and a fire was still to be started in the house and water warmed for a bath. "We'll try again tomorrow."

"No!" Asher's instincts took over, and he grabbed the sleeve of Dan's white tunic.

Dan frowned and asked, "Are you all right, lad?"

"A rider," Asher said breathlessly, remembering that gaze under the hood. "A stranger, in the woods."

The older man turned his head away and peered at the woods warily.

"Not here, but out there..." Asher's words trailed off for a moment. "I saw him on the way back. A man in a black cloak, riding a black horse. I almost fell when I saw him. Then he disappeared."

Dan's stance seemed to stiffen, and he squinted his eyes, still examining the surrounding woods of the farm, but his face never revealed any fear. Asher guessed that fear was so obvious on his face, as if it were written on his forehead.

"I wouldn't doubt your word, lad, but where has he gone?"

"I don't know. But he was there." His shoulders lowered in defeat, and he wished to nock an arrow and draw his bow at something, but there was nothing to aim at. "He was."

"If you say so, lad. Come on, then. We should get back inside." He started toward the house, his cloak whipping in the wind. "Tomorrow, when we go looking for the lamb, we'll look for him. A horse leaves hoof prints. If we find them, we'll know for a fact he was there. If not… well, there are days to make a man think he's seeing things."

Asher could hardly disagree with his father's words. He himself had doubted what his eyes had seen. After all, he had been tired from all the work he had done over the past couple weeks. The winter was hard, and there was more to be done than ever before. But if his eyes hadn't played tricks on him... A man who could disappear so suddenly could reappear just as suddenly, maybe even right beside them.

"No, father, there's no need." When Dan looked at him in surprise, Asher covered his flush by tugging at the hood of his cloak. "You're probably right. No point in looking for what isn't there, not when we can use the time to do what's left and prepare for the Spring Festival."

"You know what, I could do with a pipe," Dan said slowly, "and a mug of ale where it's warm." He gave a broad grin. "We should go to the Drunken Bard. I expect you're eager to see Thera."

Asher managed a weak smile. Of all things he might want to think about right then, the innkeeper's daughter was far down the list. He did not need any more confusion. And she confused him much more than any other person. For the past year, she had been making him increasingly jittery whenever they were together.

He was hoping his father had not noticed he was afraid when Dan said. "Remember the void. Let it fall into it, empty yourself. Don't think about it too much."

It was an odd thing Dan had sought to taught him, something alike meditation. To feed all your passions into this void, to empty your minds of all the emotions. Dan said it helped him whenever he had to use the bow.

"Now, let's get back inside, take a warm bath, and go to Drunken Bard. What do you say, son?"

Asher somehow pulled off another smile, albeit a reluctant one. His answer was a simple nod of his head.