She drew and fired, drew and fired, almost quicker than thought, focusing on her duty. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the grotesque winged creatures, its skin gray and appearing as hard as stone, swoop down within ten feet of her. Its batlike face snarled in glee as it reached down and, as easily as she might pluck ripe fruit from the tree, snatched Vor’athil and bore him aloft. Its fingers dug deeply into the scout’s shoulders, and blood spattered on Sylvanas as the thing swooped upward with its prize.
Vor’athil struggled in the creature’s grasp, his fingers finding and freeing a dagger. Sylvanas turned her aim from the groaning undead below her to the monstrosity above. She fired, right at the creature’s neck.
The arrow glanced off harmlessly. The creature tossed its head and snarled, tiring of toying with Vor’athil. It lifted one hand and raked its claws across the scout’s throat, then dropped him carelessly and circled back for more.
Grieving silently, Sylvanas watched her friend fall lifeless to the earth, his body striking the pile of dead cultists her rangers had slain moments earlier.
And then she gasped.
The cultists were moving.
Arrows protruding from their bodies, sometimes over a dozen brightly fletched missiles in a single corpse, and yet they stirred.
“No,” she whispered, sickened. Her horrified gaze went to Arthas.
The prince was looking straight at her, grinning that damnable grin. One powerful, gauntleted hand grasped the runeblade. The other was lifted in a beckoning gesture, and as she watched, yet another slain human stirred and shambled to its feet, pulling out the arrow from its eye as if it were plucking a burr from its clothing. Her attack had cost Arthas nothing. Any who fell would be raised by his dark magic. He saw the realization and the anger in her eyes, and the grin turned into a laugh.
“I did try to tell you,” he cried, his voice rising above the din of battle. “And still you provide me with new recruits….”
He gestured again, and another body twitched as it was hauled upward and forced to stand on its feet. A body that had been slender but muscular, with long black hair swept back in a ponytail, with tanned skin and pointed ears. Blood still ran in red rivulets from the four scores in its throat, and the head bobbed erratically, as if the neck had been too badly damaged to support it much longer. Dead eyes that had once been blue as summer skies sought out Sylvanas. And then, slowly at first, it began to move toward her.
Vor’athil.
At that moment she felt the gate beneath her shudder, ever so slightly. So distracted had she been by the slaughter and reanimation of things that ought to stay dead that she had not noticed his siege engines maneuvering into position. The ogre-sized things that appeared to be comprised of various different corpses were battering away at the gate as well. So were the enormous, spiderlike creatures.
Then something hit the wall with a soft, plopping sound. Wetness spattered Sylvanas. For a fraction of a second, her mind refused to accept what she had just witnessed, and then clarity broke upon her.
Arthas was not only raising the corpses of the fallen elves. He was hurling their bodies—or pieces of them—back at Sylvanas as ammunition.
Sylvanas swallowed hard, then issued the order that a few moments ago she never would have dreamed she would utter.
“Shindu fallah na! Fall back to the second gate! Fall back!”
Those who were left—ai, piteous few there were still, at least still alive and fighting under her command—obeyed at once, gathering up the wounded and slinging them over their shoulders, their faces pale and sweat-streaked and reflecting the same forcibly contained terror that raced through her. They fled. There was no other word for it. This was no orderly, synchronized, martial retreat, but an all-out flight. Sylvanas ran with the rest of them, bearing the wounded as best she could, and her mind was racing.
Behind her she heard the once-inconceivable sound of the gate cracking and the roar of the undead as they howled their triumph. Her own heart seemed to crack in agony.
He had done it—but how? How?
His voice, strong, resonant, with that undercurrent of something dark and terrible, rose over the noise. “The elfgate has fallen! Onward, my warriors! Onward to victory!”
Somehow, to Sylvanas, the worst, most awful thing about that gleeful, gloating cry was the…affection…that laced through it.
She seized the sleeve of a young man racing beside her. “Tel’kor,” Sylvanas cried. “Make for the Sunwell Plateau. Tell them what we have seen here. Tell them—to be prepared.”
Tel’kor was young enough to let disappointment flicker over his handsome features at the thought of not standing to fight, but he nodded his golden head in comprehension. Sylvanas hesitated.
“My lady?”
“Tell them—we may have been betrayed.”
Tel’kor blanched at that, but nodded. Like an arrow shot from a bow, he raced away. He was a good archer, but Sylvanas did not suffer any illusion that one more bow would make a difference in the battle that was to come. But if the magi who controlled and directed the Sunwell’s energies knew what they faced—that might.
They were racing northward now, and as her troops crossed a bridge she suddenly stopped in mid-run, whirled on her heel, and looked back.
Sylvanas gasped. That Arthas and his dark army were coming, she expected to see. That would have been a horrific enough sight; the undead, the abominations, the flying batlike things, the grotesque spidery beings—hundreds, bearing down with implacable determination. What she did not expect to see was what they left in their wake.
Like a trail left by a slug, like a furrow left by a plow, the land where the undead feet had trod was blackened and barren. Worse; Sylvanas remembered the burned woods the orcs had left behind, knew that nature would eventually reclaim it. This—it was a horrible dark line of death, as if the unnatural energies that were used to propel the corpses forward were killing the very earth upon which they shambled. Poison, they were poison, it was dark magic of the foulest kind.
And it had to be stopped.
She had paused only an instant, although to her it felt as though she had been frozen in place for a lifetime. “Hold!” she cried, her voice clear and strong and purposeful. “We will make our stand here.”
They were puzzled only briefly, then they understood. Quickly she spoke instructions, and they leaped to obey. Many of them paused, shocked, as they caught their first stunned glimpse of the grievous wound to the land that had so horrified their ranger-general, but they recovered quickly. Time enough to worry about healing the brutalized earth later. For now, they had to stop that dreadful scar from spreading.
The stench preceded the army, but Sylvanas and her rangers now had a grim familiarity with it. It did not unnerve them as it had before. She stood on the bridge, her head held high, her black hood slipping a little to show bright golden hair. The army of the dead slowed and halted, confused by the sight. The ugly wagons, catapults, and trebuchets rumbled to a halt. Arthas’s skeletal horse reared, and he reached down and stroked the bony neck as if it were a living beast. Sylvanas felt a shiver of nausea at the wrongness of the tableau as the thing responded to its master’s touch.
“Goodness,” Arthas said, humor lacing the word with something akin to warmth. “This can’t be one of the oh-so-imposing elfgates I’ve heard so much about.”
Sylvanas forced herself to grin back. “No, not quite. But you’ll still find it a challenge.”
“It is but a simple bridge, my lady. But then again, the elves are very fond of putting paper manes on cats and calling them lions.”