The air in the Eversong Woods, usually filled with the scent of ancient trees and subtle magic, was today permeated with the smell of blood and soot. The golden light, filtering through the foliage, reflected dimly from pools of dark troll blood.
"General! They are attacking again!"
A young ranger, whose elegant armor was spattered with mud, burst into the command tent. Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger-General of Quel'Thalas, tore herself away from the map on which she was trying to calculate the enemy's next move.
"Cursed savages!" — her voice was like a taut bowstring.
Without saying another word, she grabbed her silver-inlaid bow and swiftly headed for the fortification. There, on a hastily built structure of fallen trees and earth, her rangers were already meeting the new wave.
"Farstriders! In the name of the sun, hold the line!" — Sylvanas's piercing voice cut through the noise of the battle, instilling confidence in the hearts of her warriors.
A wall of dark-green skin, tusks, and eyes burning with hatred rolled onto their positions. The trolls, covering themselves with crude shields of solid wood, rushed forward with wild cries. They were the embodiment of primal fury.
Against them, on flimsy fortifications, stood the Farstriders. Their movements were honed by centuries of training, their faces maintaining an icy calm. Every arrow they released was a silvery streak, finding a vulnerable spot in the enemy's defense.
She herself entered the fray. Her arrows knew no miss. But she understood: her personal mastery decided little. The trolls, possessing an astonishing ability to regenerate, simply did not notice ordinary wounds. They sought only one thing—to reach the barricades and sink their claws and blades into the elves. In close combat, her archers would not have a single chance.
The elven defensive line, to tell the truth, was a pathetic parody of a fortress. It was just a forward camp, fortified with hastily knocked-together barricades and a moat with sharpened stakes. No high stone walls, no magical towers. Worse still, their supply of mana crystals, necessary to maintain the Ban'dinoriel protective dome, had almost run out.
Therefore, the precious barrier had to be activated only in the most desperate moments, conserving every charge.
This was what gave Sylvanas no peace. Because of all these factors, Sylvanas did not know how long her one and a half thousand rangers could hold the defense here. She could only hope that the so-called reinforcements would arrive faster, otherwise they would have to retreat behind the great barrier, which for the Farstriders would be the greatest shame in a thousand years.
The number of trolls, however, was even greater than the initial reconnaissance had shown. Sylvanas suspected that the number of enemies had already reached about eight thousand, and this number continued to grow.
The trolls seemed to know about their weakness. But instead of gathering all their forces for one crushing blow to break through the defenses, they had been waging this strange war of attrition for several days. Every day they threw thousands of warriors into the attack, lost hundreds, and then simply retreated.
'This is not their style,' the general thought, sending another arrow into the throat of a particularly zealous berserker. 'They are cunning, but not that patient. It looks like some kind of ritual... or are they waiting for something? Or luring someone out?'
Even she, who had fought trolls for many years, was at a loss. But there was too little information for analysis. Sylvanas had no choice but to keep her doubts to herself; right now, she needed to concentrate on the battle.
She habitually drew an arrow from her quiver, placed it on her longbow, drew the string, and released a precise and extremely destructive shot that pierced through both the shield and the head of one of the trolls standing in front. Thanks to her unparalleled mastery, the general easily shot down those who got too close and threatened the formation.
At that moment, her sharp elven hearing caught a short cry of pain. One of her rangers, wounded in the arm by a blade thrown by a dying troll, dropped his bow. He was immediately dragged to the rear. Every such wound was potentially fatal. Trolls often coated their blades with poisons or imbued them with voodoo magic—dark sorcery capable of causing flesh to rot or driving one mad.
And then, on the edge of the battlefield, among the teeming mass, her gaze snatched out what she was looking for. A hunched figure, leaning on a bone staff. The face was hidden by an ugly ritual mask made of wood and feathers. A witch doctor. The spiritual leader, the sorcerer, the brain of this headless army.
Sylvanas's hand instinctively reached for her quiver and drew a special arrow with a tip of enchanted silver, capable of piercing magical shields. She raised her bow, drew the string... and froze.
However, a moment later, she lowered the bow. Her perfect features contorted in frustration. Too far. The witch doctor, unlike the brainless cannon fodder, kept himself at the limit of her range. He knew what elven archers were capable of. From such a distance, she could wound him, but not kill him for certain.
'Come on, a little closer... Just a couple more steps...' she mentally calculated.
Leaving command to her adjutant, Sylvanas, like a shadow, slipped from the fortification and disappeared into the forest. A moment later, she was already sitting on a thick branch of a giant tree that hung over the battlefield. From here, she had a perfect view. She became one with the tree, her breathing slowed, her heart almost stopped. She transformed into a hunter.
The death of these common trolls was almost useless—it only helped the savages reduce the number of mouths competing for food. But the killing of one witch doctor could inflict heavy damage on an entire tribe. And in the last few days, Sylvanas had already destroyed two or three of them.
That witch doctor seemed not to realize the danger. He wandered in the rear of the battlefield with several trolls and did not even try to cast spells. After all, the arrows of ordinary elves at such a distance were not fatal to them.
However, Sylvanas's range was much greater than that of ordinary rangers!
She waited patiently. Seconds stretched like hours. Finally, the troll took the fatal step, entering her zone of confident engagement. The general's expression became cold and focused. The anti-magic arrow was firmly nocked on the bow.
At that moment, nothing existed in the world for her except the target.
A faint whistle—and the silver arrow flew from the bowstring. It, tracing an invisible line in the air, slipped through a tiny gap between two troll guards and plunged precisely into the center of the ritual mask.
Got him.
The satisfaction from the perfect shot was short-lived. The witch doctor collapsed to the ground, and his wooden mask split in two, revealing a face... on which an ugly scar-brand was burned. The mark of a slave.
'This is not a witch doctor...' flashed through Sylvanas's mind. 'It's a bait!'
At that same moment, a foreign, malevolent whisper woven from dark magic sounded in her consciousness:
"Got you, pointy-ear."
The general's heart felt as if it were squeezed by an icy hand. A sharp, tearing pain pierced her entire body, causing her to double over. A magical amulet on her neck, a gift from Silvermoon, flashed and crumbled to dust with a crack, absorbing only part of the blow.
She immediately realized that the trolls had deliberately set this bait for her, and had not even skimped on intentionally exposing several real witch doctors to her shots in the preceding days to lull her vigilance.
The voodoo magic was extremely powerful. Most likely, several powerful curses had been placed on the slave's body, which activated at the moment of his death.
And she, the Ranger-General, had been caught like a novice.
Weakness enveloped her entire body, and a cold sweat broke out on her forehead. Relying on the pendant made by the Archmage of Silvermoon, she had completely ignored the possible risk. This was a fatal mistake. By sacrificing hundreds of lives, the trolls had successfully inflicted heavy damage on the general of the elves.
As soon as the trolls discovered the death of the false witch doctor, the sound of drums rang out in the forest. Countless warriors poured out, forming a dark-green wave that rushed towards the front line.
"Hold... the line!" Sylvanas rasped, jumping from the tree and reaching her own with the last of her strength. "Activate... the barrier!"
A blue dome covered the outpost, but under the hail of blows from thousands of axes and clubs, it crackled like thin ice.
Arrows, like rain, fell upon the troll army, but these fearless creatures, stepping over the corpses of their kinsmen, continued to attack furiously.
Meanwhile, two nearby elves took the weakened general by the arms and carried her to the command tent. Sylvanas's face was distorted with torment, and on the snow-white skin of her neck, like a poisonous ivy, a network of ugly black patterns appeared.
A priest who ran in, laying his hands on her, tried to exorcise the corruption. But his spells of the Light, capable of healing terrible wounds and removing ordinary curses, bounced off this darkness as if from a stone wall.
"General," his face was pale with helplessness. "This curse... is beyond my strength. I can only temporarily soothe the pain with the Light, but not expel it."
"Thank you... I'm better," she managed, already trying to pick up her bow again.
"You can't!" the priest almost cried out. "Any use of force will only accelerate the spread of the curse! You need to go to Silvermoon immediately, to the archmages! Going into battle now is certain suicide!"
"My warriors are still fighting bravely! How can I be the first to retreat?" — Sylvanas's intransigence put her subordinates in a difficult position.
She, like everyone in the tent, understood that the fall of the outpost was only a matter of time. The question now was not whether to fight or not, but how to get away. But retreating through a forest teeming with trolls...
Although the trolls could not bypass their positions and set an ambush on the retreat path, in the forest, they moved no slower than the elves.
If they were caught, the rangers, who were relatively weak in close combat, would suffer huge losses. Sylvanas understood this perfectly well.
And at that very moment, when hope was almost extinguished, a new sound reached them through the roar of the battle. A deep, low, and rolling blast of a war horn. This sound belonged neither to the elves nor the trolls.
"What is that sound?" one of the rangers whispered. Even with the roar of the battle, they could catch this unique sound.
Sylvanas's eyes, previously clouded by pain, widened. Recognition, disbelief, and finally, a flash of fierce hope.
"That is... the war horn of Lordaeron!" her voice regained its former strength. "Our reinforcements have arrived!"
She had already lost hope for reinforcements and was just about to give the order to retreat.