Surrounded

Orgrim's hands weren't just shaking; they were trembling with the force of a thousand earthquakes, vibrating with the sheer, unadulterated rage coiling in his gut. Victory, he'd thought, was just a hop, skip, and a jump away! He'd practically tasted it, the sweet, metallic tang of triumph.

Originally, he'd pictured himself, after a few more days of glorious slaughter, storming the most important city of the Alliance, crushing their pathetic resistance, and turning them into scattered, whimpering dogs, running for the hills at the mere sight of a green skin.

Now? Now, the whole damn thing was going sideways, faster than a goblin on a greased pig. There was no chance anymore; victory was slipping through his fingers like sand. But in his heart, etched deeper than any runic inscription, glory always came first. An orc without honor was about as useful as a broken axe.

Killing the enemy? Glorious! Saving fellow countrymen? Honorable! Killing traitors? Absolutely honorable! Every single one of those boxes needed to be checked. But why, for the love of all that was green and spiky, was everyone so eager to kill the traitor first?

Orgrim's gaze swept over the little chieftains, and what he saw made his blood run cold: fear. Hesitation. Were these still orcs, or had they turned into a bunch of lily-livered gnomes?!

Just as Orgrim was about to blow a fuse, to unleash a storm of curses that would make a demon blush, his eyes snagged on something rising above the east gate of Lordaeron. A giant flag, as long and wide as the city gate itself, unfurling in the wind – it was the damn blue storm flag of that infernal Edmund Duke again.

The Warchief's massive body gave an involuntary shudder.

He understood! He got it! This wasn't just a setback; this was the mother of all explosions, the culmination of every single time he'd failed to get one over on Duke. It was a cosmic payback for all his past frustrations!

Most orcs were simple, bless their brutish hearts! They didn't have a thousand twists and turns in their minds, and they certainly didn't know a strategic retreat from a hole in the ground. All they knew was that their Warchief, their fearless leader, had never, not once, won against the owner of that damn blue storm flag.

In other words, win, lose, or draw, it didn't matter.

He refused to attack the city of Quel'Thalas, and he was once again being branded a coward, afraid of Duke. Or, worse, these small chieftains, who had suffered enough at Duke's hands to last a lifetime, had simply given up all hope of ever defeating him. They'd rather deal with Gul'dan, who, let's be honest, looked like he'd crawled out of a nightmare himself.

Orgrim felt like he'd been kicked in the teeth. This was an insult to his very being!

"Tomorrow, the entire army will march out to attack the camp north of the human city!" Orgrim roared, his voice shaking the very ground. "If anyone has objections to my orders, let Mak'gora resolve them! If not, then get your green hides in gear and prepare for battle!" He used the full, crushing weight of his Warchief authority to ram this offensive plan through, leaving no room for argument.

After barking out orders to his chiefs and deputies, leaving them scrambling, only Orgrim remained, a solitary figure simmering in his own rage.

The next day, although he still hadn't received any specific instructions from Orgrim – because, you know, direct communication was so overrated – Grom Hellscream saw the tell-tale smoke rising from the other side of Lordaeron City.

"One far away, two close, three smoke signals... yep, the signal for an attack is correct," Grom muttered to himself, squinting at the distant plumes. Smoke signals, a simple, old-school form of communication, could only transmit the most basic of messages. When Grom saw that the humans weren't stopping him from attacking their city, he subconsciously believed that Orgrim was simply putting more pressure on the soft-bellied humans, squeezing them from both sides.

From the very beginning, Grom launched a fierce, no-holds-barred assault with almost his entire army, a tidal wave of green fury.

In less than half an hour, the good news came, screaming through the ranks.

"We're about to take the city gate!" an orc roared, his voice hoarse with triumph, and a rare, savage grin split Grom Hellscream's rough, scarred face.

Victory was practically in his grasp, close enough to taste! Although before this, no matter how many warriors he'd thrown at it, he couldn't break through the thick, stubborn defense line on the border of Silverpine Forest and Tirisfal Glades, now, the tide had turned! The situation had flipped on its head like a pancake!

When passing through the defense line, now mysteriously abandoned by humans, Grom had seen with his own eyes a large number of fire-breathing iron lumps, siege engines, just left on the roadside. For orcs, carrying those heavy things was obviously no problem, they were built like brick shithouses. But it would be a nightmare for humans to drag these big guys on the narrow, muddy forest roads using horse-drawn carriages.

Obviously, Orgrim's attack on the Alliance's main city from the east had sent these humans into a full-blown panic, a complete meltdown. During the days of marching, Grom had seen a shocking amount of abandoned baggage, even wounded soldiers who had, in their despair, taken the coward's way out.

Humans were panicking. Grom believed it with every fiber of his being.

In fact, his judgment wasn't entirely wrong. Before returning to Lordaeron City, if Duke hadn't cooked up a brilliant plan, the entire Lordaeron army would probably have been chased by the Horde's western legion, and more than half of them would have been routed, scattered to the winds. Even if they hadn't been completely defeated, except for Mograine's hardened Scarlet Crusade, the other Lordaeron legions wouldn't have much fight left in them.

Now, the city gate had been severely deformed, battered and bruised by the relentless pounding of the orc vanguard. Once that gate was breached, his warriors would pour into the city like a flood, kill the remaining guards, and raze the city to the ground, leaving nothing but smoking rubble.

With this place as a base, they could quickly occupy the rest of the continent, drive the humans to the coast, and push them into the sea like so many lemmings. In the end, the continent would belong to the Horde, and they would finally end this long, bloody war and start a new life, a glorious future.

After being depressed for so long, feeling like he was dragging a dead weight, Grom finally saw a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel.

He hoisted his great axe, Bloodroar, a weapon famous in both the Alliance and the Horde for its brutal efficiency, and watched his soldiers attack the city gate again, a fresh surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

"It would be great if those two-headed ogres were here," Grom couldn't help but think, a fleeting wish. Those big guys should be able to climb up the city wall like angry spiders and use their massive weapons to dig a few gaping holes in the thick stone. But then, a nagging curiosity tugged at him: why did the shouting and killing sounds from the other side of the city seem to be coming from the north of the city? If they wanted to make humans unable to take care of both ends, to split their forces, wouldn't it have been better to attack the east gate? It just didn't add up.

But at this moment, a violent, ear-splitting whistling sound suddenly came from behind the city wall in the distance, cutting through the din of battle.

Wind?

Where in the blazes was this strong wind coming from?! There wasn't a cloud in the sky!

From afar, a large, ominous golden cloud gathered above the city gate at a speed visible to the naked eye, swirling and churning with raw power. Then, a golden lightning bolt, thick as a tree trunk, struck the orcs who were pounding on the city gate. Suddenly, the black oil that had, at some point, mysteriously floated onto the moat below was ignited.

The raging flames shot up into the sky, a fiery inferno, and almost instantly, the orcs who were foolishly crossing the river and climbing the city walls were transformed into screaming, human-shaped torches, their screams swallowed by the roaring blaze.

Fire?!

It's fire again?! What in the name of the ancestors was going on?!

The golden thunderclouds continued to grow larger and larger, drifting ominously towards the orcs. Several more bolts of lightning, like divine spears, struck the orcs' huge siege equipment, shattering them into splinters, and then exploded among the orc infantry who were foolishly gathered behind the wreckage, seeking shelter from arrows and javelins.

There were a few deafening bangs, like giants clapping, and blood and flesh flew everywhere in the terrified crowd, painting the ground a gruesome red.

Grom's heart wasn't just bleeding; it was being torn to shreds.

Those were the elite of the Warsong clan! His best! They had been through hundreds of battles, baptized by the very fires of Silverpine Forest, wearing the thickest armor in the entire tribe, and yet they were being electrocuted to death like common grunts?! It was an outrage!

The golden lightning balls had created several massive pits on the ground, craters large enough to bury dozens of orcs. The flying stones, the dismembered orc limbs, and the shattered armor pieces caused secondary casualties to the surrounding areas, and screams of agony were heard one after another, a symphony of pain.

At this moment, several huge red fireworks, like angry eyes, rose simultaneously from the north, west, and south of the orc army, painting the sky with ominous color.

Suddenly, loud, piercing trumpet sounds, like the trumpets of doom, rang out simultaneously from these three directions, shattering the chaos.

Those things that had previously looked like distant, indistinct forests three or four kilometers away suddenly became blurred, shimmering, and then what appeared before the horrified orcs were endless rows of human-shaped objects, clad in gleaming silver-white armor.

The silver wave, a shimmering tide of steel, surrounded the orcs' troops in a menacing crescent shape. It felt like there were countless human soldiers, their numbers stretching beyond the orcs' simple mathematical ability to calculate.

Ordinary orcs only knew one thing: there were many, many humans. Too many.