Attrition

Peering through the monocular, a grim, single eye fixed on the bloody, chaotic battlefield below, Anduin and Bolvar watched as Orc laborers, groaning like dying beasts, trudged towards their inevitable demise. They were utterly flabbergasted, their jaws practically on the floor.

"By the Light, this goblin gadget," Anduin muttered, smacking his lips nervously, as if suddenly parched, "makes me feel like all my decades of martial arts training have been for naught. What's the point of a fancy sword when a little metal ball does all the work?"

"Duke! How many of these infernal things did you order?" Bolvar, ever the pragmatist, cut straight to the chase, his eyes wide with avarice. "I want more of these Iron Grenades, and I want them yesterday! A truckload, if you can manage it!"

Duke merely smiled, a knowing glint in his eye, and handed over a price list. It was a masterpiece of goblin profiteering, detailing the unit price of the Iron Grenade and the truly astronomical cost that would kick in once those green-skinned gremlins had to work overtime. More importantly, Duke had meticulously marked that the misfire rate and the premature explosion rate – already terrifyingly high – would rocket into the stratosphere if they rushed production.

That's right, in this glorious age, where mechanized mass production was a pipe dream and everything was cobbled together by hand, what kind of quality control could one possibly expect?

As long as you were human, or a goblin for that matter, you were bound to screw up, get tired, and churn out products with the consistency of a half-baked loaf of bread.

The goblins, with their devil-may-care attitude and their penchant for cutting corners, meant that every single gadget these damn, whimsical little tinkerers produced was inherently a ticking time bomb.

Bolvar's conscience, as thick as it was, wouldn't allow him to put his soldiers and militiamen in such a perilous position. If they ended up blowing themselves to kingdom come instead of the enemy, he'd have no leg to stand on, nowhere to even shed a tear.

Anduin, ever the optimist, tried to put a positive spin on it: "Look, we should count our blessings. Hey, one box of these grenades is enough to arm an entire militia! Think of the savings!"

Duke chuckled. "A militia takes forever to train, but this little beauty? Half a day, tops, and they're ready to blow things up."

He wasn't wrong. Training ordinary infantry was a long, arduous slog, requiring endless drills and combat simulations to even make a dent. Even then, the survival rate of greenhorn recruits on the battlefield was low enough to give any commander a migraine.

And that was before you even considered the humans, who were already at a physical disadvantage. The strength, speed, and agility of human recruits were roughly on par with the hard laborers the Orcs used as cannon fodder. They were a far cry from a proper Orc warrior. And to top it all off, their opponents weren't just any Orcs. After fighting for so long, any human commander with half a brain knew they were up against the elite of the mighty Orcish clans – the Blackrock Clan.

Still, thinking about it gave Duke a splitting headache.

Bolvar let out a long, slow breath. "I swear, Duke, I feel like every single one of those grenades you're throwing out is actually His Majesty's gold coins exploding!"

Duke merely shrugged, a wry smile playing on his lips. "Wars, my friend, are fought with cold, hard cash. Always have been, always will be."

Anduin curled his lip, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. "I've noticed for a long time that your way of thinking is completely different from ours. Sometimes, I honestly wonder if you're even from Azeroth."

Duke remained noncommittal, his expression unreadable.

What could Duke say? "Oh, by the way, I'm a world-traveler from a distant future where magic is just a game and dragons are mythical beasts?" He'd be locked up in a padded cell faster than you could say "gnome."

To counter the Orcs' relentless moat-filling strategy, archers, who had long been considered about as useful as a chocolate teapot against the armored Orcs, were dragged back out of retirement. But archers had a fatal flaw: once night fell, their effectiveness plummeted, even with covering fire.

The arrival of Iron Grenades, however, had opened up a whole new playbook for human strategies and tactics. After all, archers needed to aim, but grenades? They just needed to be lobbed in the general direction of the enemy for a satisfying, wide-area explosion!

As time wore on, the Orcs, being no slouches themselves, began to figure out the Iron Grenades' weaknesses. These noisy iron lumps were a real pain in the neck for the Orc laborers, sure. But for true Orc warriors, especially those who wore more armor than a small tank, they weren't exactly a death sentence.

The shrapnel from the explosions struggled to penetrate the thick, corded muscles of these towering Orc warriors. Unless they got a direct hit to a vital spot, most of the injuries were just superficial, a mere scratch.

At Orgrim's shrewd suggestion, Warchief Blackhand gave the green light to better arm the Orc warriors assaulting the city walls.

So, in the following days, Lothar watched, grim-faced, as Orc warriors fashioned makeshift armor from vast quantities of cowhide, salvaged iron sheets, and even the armor stripped from dead human warriors. They crudely strapped these protective layers onto their bodies, turning themselves into walking, grunting fortresses.

With the Orcs now better protected, the Iron Grenade, once a formidable weapon, was rendered almost completely useless, becoming little more than a glorified noisemaker.

Lothar turned to Duke, his voice tight with frustration. "Do those goblins have anything with a bit more… oomph?"

Duke silently handed over a price list for the High Explosive Bomb, a truly terrifying device that required vast amounts of rare thorium to manufacture and came highly recommended by the notorious profiteer, Charlotte.

Lothar stared at the list for a good ten seconds, his eyes glazing over, before finally managing to stammer, "You know, it's a lovely day today, isn't it?"

Well, it was a hot, muggy, thunderstorm-ridden midday, and thanks to the downpour, all the bowstrings had practically lost their elasticity due to moisture.

It was a bloody, grinding dogfight, a war of attrition.

However, the scales of victory continued to tip in the Orcs' favor. When Orgrim ordered his Orcs to don thick leather armor or layers of heavy clothing and restarted his relentless moat-filling campaign, Lothar knew, deep in his gut, that they were in a heap of trouble.

On the seventh day after Duke had dealt with the Bloodsail Pirates fleet, the entire moat on the east and north sides of Stormwind City was completely filled in.

The Orcs, with their single-minded, terrifying efficiency, even used their laborers to pile up stones in numerous spots, creating straight, ramp-like slopes leading directly to the city wall.

The once-pristine, well-maintained city defenses had been transformed into a grotesque, muddy pit. Orgrim seemed to have developed a bizarre addiction to piling up dirt, continuing to send wave after wave of Orc laborers to the front lines.

"Throw the stones into the big pits of the humans! If you can't get them back, throw yourselves in too!" This was Orgrim's chilling death order to these "weak" and utterly expendable Orc laborers.

The direct result was a dramatic spike in the death toll of Orc laborers on the Horde side.

At first, the humans tried to undo some of the Orcs' work under the cover of night, or dig up some of the slopes. But Stormwind City was desperately lacking in heavy machinery. Not only was the rental fee for a goblin excavator extortionately expensive, but Sherlock, the greasy little goblin, was flat-out unwilling to let his men risk driving an "expensive" piece of machinery into this doomed city to dig.

Unless…

Sherlock, wherever he was, was probably rubbing his thumb, index, and middle finger together again, that unmistakable money-grabbing gesture, you know the one.

Duke found himself boxed in. Just as he'd anticipated, the Horde soon found Stormwind's chink in its armor: the area north of Stormwind, near Stormwind Harbor.

Unlike the impossibly steep valley cliffs to the south, the mountain road north of Stormwind City was a dead end for humans, but it wasn't a true dead end for Orcs, who were surprisingly nimble mountain climbers.

During the first two attempts, the Orcs had successfully managed to send down several scouts, causing a panicked commotion among Stormwind's soldiers and civilians. King Llane, with rare decisiveness, immediately dispatched Duke, the strongest fighter in Stormwind, to the mountaintop. This finally put a stop to the Orcs' flanking attacks from that direction.

The sea, however, remained the undisputed domain of Kul Tiran warships and Duke.

Even though an average of over 10,000 people could be evacuated every single day, the situation was still going downhill faster than a runaway mine cart. After the Stormwind soldiers and civilians had held out for more than 20 grueling days, the biggest, most terrifying problem facing Llane and the remaining defenders had finally arrived.

Excluding those who had been evacuated and those who had fallen in battle, there were still a hundred thousand souls left in the city. And according to Lothar's grim estimation, not a single one of the fifty thousand people left behind would escape. The Orcs, who had been simmering with rage for weeks, wouldn't allow the humans to evacuate safely at a leisurely rate of 10,000 people per day.

Unfortunately, there was no strongpoint like Stormwind Fortress near Stormwind Harbor, which was their only lifeline.