Explosion

For two straight days that felt like an eternity in the Nine Hells, the eastern and northern walls of Stormwind City rang out with sounds that would make a banshee weep with envy—the bone-chilling symphony of war. However, the good people of Stormwind Kingdom would never have imagined in their wildest nightmares that such a gut-wrenching, pants-soiling war of apocalyptic intensity was merely the Horde's equivalent of kicking the tires on a used cart.

Yes! Just a bloody test run, like a butcher testing his cleaver on a practice pig!

During the absence of Duke and Anduin (who were probably off somewhere discussing the finer points of tactical retreats), Bolvar found himself holding the hot potato of Stormwind's defense. Although he knew full well that the Horde had only sent a measly thousand troops scattered like seeds in the wind to probe their defenses, Bolvar had to fight like his life depended on it—because, well, it absolutely did.

The gap in individual combat power was more obvious than a troll at a dwarf convention.

There were moats deeper than a dragon's greed, city walls that scraped the belly of the clouds, arrow towers that stood like steel sentinels, and towering hills bristling with catapults ready to rain down stone death. Such a masterpiece of three-dimensional defensive engineering should have leveled the playing field between the humans and these green-skinned juggernauts who could arm-wrestle bears and win.

The battle was still harder than trying to nail jelly to a tree.

Because even a 5-meter-high city wall looked like a garden fence to these absurdly tall, ridiculously athletic orcs who treated gravity like a mere suggestion.

Orgrim had given Blackhand a strategy that was both dumber than a box of rocks and devastatingly effective—a combination that immediately left Bolvar feeling like he was trying to stop a avalanche with a tea cup.

When you hit a river, fill it up. When you hit a hill, build over it. Simple as shooting fish in a barrel, American-style.

The tribal laborers—who looked like runts next to the hulking orc warriors but appeared as burly as prize-winning oxen to human eyes—hauled massive boulders like pack mules on a mission from hell. They charged forward under a deadly hailstorm of javelins that whistled through the air like angry hornets, hurled their rocky cargo into the moat with grunts that could wake the dead, then turned tail and high-tailed it out of there faster than a cat with its tail on fire.

In just one day that felt longer than a sermon on tax collection, nearly one-third of the hastily-dug moat was stuffed fuller than a Thanksgiving turkey.

Bolvar couldn't even begin to wrap his head around what kind of nightmare scenario would unfold when humans lost their home-field advantage and were forced to go toe-to-toe with these emerald-skinned monsters in the narrow streets—it would be like bringing a butter knife to a dragon fight.

The only silver lining in this storm cloud of doom was that Duke had finally returned, arriving like the cavalry in the nick of time.

His magical prowess alone could match most of the Royal Mage Corps combined—the man was a one-man magical army.

"You really won't jump into this fray?" Lothar asked Duke while they stood atop an arrow tower, watching the chaos unfold like spectators at the world's most violent sporting event.

Duke shook his head with the confidence of a man holding four aces: "Nope, we'll be better off if I keep my powder dry for now."

"Come again?"

"Because our real dance partner is Orgrim, the Warchief's right-hand man, not the big cheese himself."

Lothar recalled Garona's intelligence briefings about the Horde's who's-who of chieftains and celebrities. He remembered her saying that Orgrim's defining trait was being sharper than the average orc—'a warrior with the muscles of a champion and the brains to match.'

Duke laid it out straight: "If I had shown my hand too early, Orgrim would have spotted our defensive weak spots faster than a hawk spots a field mouse. Truth is, my ace in the hole isn't here on these walls. I'm counting on you to hold the fort right here."

Lothar was fidgeting with what looked like an iron doorknob attached to a palm-length wooden stick. "You're dead certain we can weather the storm for 10 days with these contraptions?"

Duke's voice carried the certainty of a man who'd bet his last coin on a sure thing: "I'd stake my life on it."

"Alright then, I'm all in with you."

Around the mountainous city walls, the thunderous pounding of tribal war drums echoed like the heartbeat of some colossal beast preparing to feast.

Old Dem was what you'd call a workhorse—all brawn, no brains.

Beyond his ability to lift heavy things without breaking his back, he was about as useful as a chocolate teapot. At over fifty winters, he'd only joined the militia because signing up earned his daughter and grandson early passage out of this hellhole on wheels.

Sprawled flat against the battlements, old Dem clutched a helmet that looked like it had been used for hammer practice—obviously pried off some poor bastard's skull—and peered out with hands shaking like autumn leaves.

Beside him crouched his longtime neighbor Cana, a baker whose bread was legendary but whose nerves were currently shot to pieces. Cana kept whispering like a broken prayer: "Are they here yet? Are they here yet?"

Old Dem watched the endless tide of massive green figures charging toward the moat like a stampede of buffalo, and his heart hammered against his ribs like it was trying to escape: "Hold your horses, they're not close enough to spit on yet."

Staring at those emerald giants with faces that could scare a demon and tusks longer than dinner knives, old Dem felt his courage drain away like water through a sieve.

Just then, the Kingdom soldier playing shepherd to their ragtag militia bellowed loud enough to wake the ancestors: "Militia! Get ready to chuck those things! Don't you dare pull that bottom cap until I give the word, or I'll tan your hides!"

Old Dem and Cana suddenly got wound tighter than clock springs.

"Keep your shirts on! Wait until those damned green devils get close enough to smell their breath..."

Watching the signal flag atop the command tower like hawks watching prey, when that red banner dropped like a stone, every Kingdom soldier roared in perfect unison: "NOW!"

Old Dem followed his crash-course training and frantically yanked open the cap under the wooden handle, his fingers fumbling like a drunk trying to thread a needle.

Instantly, the wooden stick started hissing and sparking like an angry snake—most folks being unable to read couldn't have told you it was called a fuse if their lives depended on it.

"Heave those things with everything you've got!"

The commander's battle cry caused half the militia to lose their grip and launch these peculiar wooden sticks with iron heads straight down into the moat below like the world's most dangerous fishing expedition.

Several numbskulls accidentally dropped their contraptions right onto the battlements, but the quick-thinking supervisors kicked those explosive surprises over to the far side of the moat faster than you could say "duck and cover."

A few heartbeats later, when those terrifying green giants reached the moat hauling boulders the size of wagon wheels...

"CRACK-BOOM-BANG!" A symphony of explosions erupted that left both humans and orcs slack-jawed and bug-eyed like they'd just witnessed the gods themselves throwing a tantrum.

This day, this moment, would be burned into memory like a brand on cattle hide.

Because for the first time in all of Azeroth's long and bloody history, gunpowder weapons had entered the battlefield. Though these iron grenades were crafted by those unpredictable, half-mad goblins with their boom-first-ask-questions-later philosophy, this devastating weapon would be carved into the history books with letters of fire and blood.

No amount of ducking, weaving, or praying seemed to matter a lick against weapons that belonged in tomorrow's nightmares rather than today's battlefield. The orcs trapped behind the carnage could only watch in horror as their brothers-in-arms were turned into green confetti.

"BOOM!"

The relentless chain of explosions, accompanied by razor-sharp iron fragments flying like angry wasps from hell, carved through the lightly-clothed or completely naked laborers like a scythe through wheat. Even orcs standing nearly ten meters from ground zero found themselves with throats opened by flying shrapnel, dying with expressions of pure bewilderment.

The first wave of iron grenades didn't just kill every orc laborer on the riverbank—they obliterated them so thoroughly that even the grenades falling into the water sent geysers skyward like the world's most violent fountains.

Faced with such bone-rattling, mind-breaking thunder from the heavens, the orc laborers' resolve crumbled faster than a house of cards in a hurricane. They dropped their duties like hot coals, completely forgetting about the enforcement squads breathing down their necks, and scattered like startled rabbits, abandoning the stones that should have been filling that cursed moat.

However, most didn't make it more than a stone's throw before the orc enforcement teams cut them down like wheat at harvest time, their blades singing songs of death.

"What in the name of all the demons in the Twisting Nether was THAT?!" Orgrim shrieked, his voice cracking like a teenager's.

"Send in the next wave!" Warchief Blackhand barked, ignoring the question with the stubborn determination of a mule.

The second batch of laborers wailed and blubbered like babies as they were driven forward at sword-point by orc soldiers wielding cleavers and axes sharp enough to split hairs. But the green formation crumbled faster than stale bread when another volley of those mysterious wooden death-dealers came raining down from the city walls, exploding like the wrath of angry gods.

The laborers broke ranks even quicker than their departed comrades, and almost before the smoke cleared, the survivors were already running for the hills. In their desperate attempt to escape the deadly kiss of the enforcement squads, they even swung the boulders in their hands like clubs, trying to fight their way to freedom.

Naturally, without exception, they were chopped down and left bleeding out in crimson puddles that painted the ground like some macabre artist's canvas.

"What in the blazing fires of the seven hells IS that infernal contraption?!" Orgrim roared loud enough to rattle the mountains themselves.