At first glance, the assault on Southshore looked like a carbon copy of last year's bloody brawl. In fact, when Duke caught a glimpse of the tribal banners fluttering in the message he received, he couldn't help but let out a snort of pure, unadulterated disdain for these attacking orcish clans. It was pathetic, really. These weren't even in the Horde's top ten heavy hitters.
Duke, ever the optimist, had originally figured that dangling Chief Blackhand's head on a pike would at least lure out his two brain-dead sons, Rend Blackhand or some such riff-raff. But nope. Not a single big-name clan in sight. Just a ragtag collection of small and medium-sized chieftains, still clinging to the tattered coattails of the former Warchief.
These poor, deluded fools paid the ultimate price for their ignorance of the current geopolitical landscape, treated by Orgrim as nothing more than sacrificial lambs, cannon fodder for a feint. No Death Knights, no lumbering Ogres, no cackling Warlocks… Duke could practically taste the boredom. He knew, with a certainty that could move mountains, that no matter how many of these green-skinned clowns showed up, they wouldn't even be able to scratch Southshore's back, not after it had spent over a year fortifying its defenses like a paranoid dwarf.
Don't you dare underestimate the Grand Canyon-sized chasm between the Horde's top ten clans and the pathetic stragglers behind them. And for the love of the Light, don't ever think that all orcs swing the same way. Why do the higher-ranked clans pack such a bigger punch? Simple as pie: only the most powerful clans get to stake their claim on the juiciest territories and the fattest herds. And conversely, with prime real estate and a steady supply of grub, they can afford to feed and breed more warriors, more clan members. It's a vicious cycle, a snowball rolling downhill, gathering momentum and power.
Unless a long-distance campaign goes belly-up, wiping out their entire nest egg, it's harder than pulling teeth to get a top-tier clan to fall from grace. Generally speaking, the official warriors of the top ten clans, even the females, rarely stood shorter than two meters. But the warriors of the lesser clans? They were, at best, maybe 10% to 20% stronger than your average orc laborer – essentially, glorified grunts with slightly bigger axes.
On the crisp morning of March 29th, the Second Battle of Southshore kicked off. Duke's face was a thundercloud, dark and stormy. Not because Southshore's defenses were looking shaky, mind you. Quite the opposite; Southshore was an impregnable fortress. General Llane, the commander of the ground forces, even had time to swap pleasantries with Duke, as if they were having tea and biscuits. No, Duke was livid because Lothar, that audacious lion, had practically stripped Southshore bare, taking almost all of the Alliance's elite troops with him.
What was left behind in Southshore was basically the infantry, the backbone but not the sharp edge: eighty thousand troops from the Kingdom of Stormwind, thirty thousand Lordaeron infantry under General Abendis, Duke's own fresh-faced Stormwind Mage Regiment, and the woefully understaffed Lordaeron Third Cavalry Regiment, limping along with a mere fifteen hundred riders. Every other elite unit, including the formidable Grand Lord Mograine, had been pulled out, sent packing to the South and North Coasts.
"Damn it all to the Twisting Nether, how could Lothar pull a stunt like this on me?!" Duke roared, slamming his fist on the war table, making the maps jump. "Didn't I tell him, repeatedly, not to put all his eggs in one basket? Before confirming Orgrim's true intentions, he shouldn't have risked his elite troops!"
Llane looked a little taken aback, blinking slowly. "Well, Duke, I'm pretty confident I can defend Southshore. I don't see anything wrong with Lothar taking the other elites. Besides, when King Terenas and Jaina heard that two hundred thousand orcs were heading their way, they were practically sending magic messages ten times an hour, anxious as a cat on a hot griddle!"
Duke slammed the table again, harder this time, making the inkwells dance. "That's the whole damn point, Llane! I'll grant you, orcs aren't exactly known for their false propaganda. But Orgrim? He's as sly as a fox in a henhouse. He doesn't like trading a mountain of sacrifices for some flimsy 'glory.' Back in Stormwind City, it was him who suggested taking the long way around, detouring to the east and north."
Duke didn't want to dredge up the painful memories of the Battle of Stormwind, King Llane's eternal heartache. Llane's handsome face twitched almost imperceptibly, but he nodded. "Indeed. Ever since then, I've felt the Horde's actions were often contradictory. Sometimes they're as reckless as a bull in a china shop, and other times, they're as cautious as a gnome defusing a bomb."
"Blackhand was the bull," Duke clarified, his voice sharp. "Orgrim, his deputy at the time, was the gnome."
"Indeed, that explains why the first battle of Southshore played out the way it did." Llane frowned, a thoughtful crease appearing between his brows. "So, what you're saying is, the forces that went to the other side of the strait... those are the Horde's main event?"
"No, Llane, those must be empty ships," Duke declared with absolute certainty, his voice cutting through the tension like a finely honed blade.
"But... that..." Llane stammered, clearly struggling to grasp the implications.
"Once those ships slip through the strait between the northern and southern continents, past the Thandol Bridge, they'll loop back to a landing zone in the northeast corner of the Wetlands," Duke explained, his finger tracing a grim line from south to north on the military map. "And from there, they'll unleash the Horde, striking from the east coast of the Hinterlands."
Seeing that line, Llane, General Tom Seamus, and General Abendis all sucked in a collective gasp of air. The cold realization pierced their lungs, making them feel like they were spitting ice cubes with every breath. No general worth his salt was a reckless fool. They all knew, with chilling clarity, what this meant.
Under the relentless pressure from the front, and the incessant demands from King Terenas Menethil, Lothar had been forced to pull back most of the Alliance's troops to deal with the Horde's head-on assault. If they ignored that frontal army, the orcs could march straight into Lordaeron's capital within a week, turning the Alliance's core kingdom into a pile of rubble.
On the other hand, if the Alliance was tied up fighting the frontal assault, and the Horde landed in the Hinterlands from behind, they'd be caught between a rock and a hard place. In that wild, untamed region where the Alliance had no real control, if the Horde were allowed to run wild, the entire Alliance would come crashing down like a house of cards. In the Hinterlands, the Horde could exploit their mountain warfare advantages to the fullest.
Heading west, they could directly attack Alterac, the weakest link in the chain of the seven human kingdoms. If things went according to their twisted plan, they could even swing around, bypass the towering, impassable mountains between the Hinterlands and the Arathi Highlands, and launch a surprise attack on the Arathi Highlands. If they managed to breach the Thandol Bridge's defenses from the rear, they could shatter the land blockade between the southern and northern continents, pulling every last orc troop from the southern continent over.
If they managed to seize Alterac, the Horde would have more options than a goblin has schemes: they could attack the Stormwind refugee camp in Hillsbrad, then swing west to lay siege to Dalaran, the very heart of arcane power. With Lothar having pulled back most of his main forces, the Horde could treat the entire region like their own personal playground, a no-man's-land ripe for the taking. The more Llane and the others stared at the map, the more the cold dread seeped into their bones.
General Abendis, ever the cautious one, raised a question. "Sir Deputy Commander," he began, "didn't you order Admiral Trollbane to deploy a whole mess of catapults and crossbows along the strait early this morning? The strait's so narrow, the Horde can't easily pass, even with empty ships, can they?"
Duke pursed his lips for a long moment, a grim line on his face. "I know Orgrim," he finally said, his voice low and gravelly. "He's got a trick up his sleeve, a way to slip through that strait. I don't know how, but I've already put my strongest ranged troops there, ready to give them a warm welcome. If it comes down to the wire, I'll lead the Stormwind Royal Family Mage Corps myself and rush over."
Ah, the bitter pill of being a time traveler. Didn't Duke know exactly what Orgrim's trick was? Of course he did. The problem was, ever since Medivh went off the rails, Duke could explain away a lot of his uncanny foresight with a simple,
"I can just sense the evil." But he couldn't just waltz into Alliance command and say, "Hey guys, my gut tells me the orcs are going to do X, Y, and Z," without a shred of concrete evidence. The Alliance wasn't some private club founded by Lothar and Duke. It was, at the end of the day, a sprawling collection of kingdoms, each with its own agenda. Even if Duke had fought like a demon and proven his mettle, he couldn't just wave his hand and command every army in the entire Alliance based on "intuition" or "a hunch."
No, the game was to feint to the east, strike to the west, and herd the enemy exactly where you wanted them. It was a dangerous dance, but Duke was ready to lead.