As she had done against the evil of the Nightmare Lord, the high priestess let the light of the Mother Moon burn away the goblins’ creation. Compared to the Nightmare’s monstrous fog and its frightening shadows, the Horde’s mist proved a weak foe. The moonlight ate away at it with no difficulty and within seconds had already cleansed the air above the river.
The defenders cheered. Those cheers grew even stronger as Elune revealed anew the forest beyond. The goblin mist faded as if nothing.
That did not mean that its creators did not try to fight back. Ahead of the light, the fog abruptly thickened. Yet, even then it proved no match for the Mother Moon’s gentle illumination. The light pushed on, moving even after there was no visible sign of the mist left to the Sentinels and their allies.
Although she could not see what happened so far away, Tyrande sensed a sudden ceasing of the goblins’ fog. Why waste such effort when it was to no avail? She should have felt confidence with this first, very obvious victory, but the high priestess could not shake the feeling that there was something amiss.
Next to her, Shandris screamed something unintelligible. The next moment the world around Tyrande exploded. What sounded like a roar accompanied the eruption, and her first thought was, Deathwing! Deathwing comes to fight for the Horde!
Even as she tumbled, a part of her knew that the thought was a foolish one. The huge dragon would not have bothered with such a petty spectacle. Deathwing, who abhorred all “lesser” life, would have preferred razing the entire area, combatants and all.
Her concentration broken, the prayer ended, and with it the light. She felt pain in her left arm and leg. When Tyrande tried to see what was happening, at first all she saw was more fog.
No . . . not fog. Dust. The air was filled with dust and even large fragments of rock and earth that rained down on not just her, but everyone else in the area. Tyrande made out at least three Sentinels nearby who lay either dead or unconscious.
A large, moist nose sniffed her. Tyrande’s nightsaber licked her leg, where for the first time the high priestess saw that a shard of rock stuck out near the thigh. Wincing, she seized the shard and tugged it free, then quickly prayed over the wound. The gap healed, leaving only bloodstains to mark it.
Touching her arm, Tyrande only found some blood. No longer concerned for herself, she looked for Shandris.
The first sign of the other night elf was one that made Tyrande shiver with anguish. Shandris’s nightsaber lay sprawled, its skull crushed in by a very large piece of rock.
“Shandris!” All else forgotten, Tyrande stepped past her mount and climbed over the dead cat. “Shandris!”
There were two individuals in her life who meant more to her than anything. Malfurion and the orphan who had become her daughter. Tyrande had never let Shandris know just how much she worried about the younger night elf’s duties as head of their forces. So many of the high priestess’s personal prayers had concerned Shandris’s continued safety.
And now . . .
There was no sign of Shandris on the other side. Tyrande looked farther on, fearing that her daughter had been thrown far away. Tyrande spotted another body—a Sentinel, surely dead, from the awkward angle in which she lay—but it was not Shandris. Even though she felt some shame in doing so, the high priestess gave thanks to Elune for even this momentary respite.
Then a groan from the direction of the dead nightsaber made her turn. Tyrande rushed to the area by the tail, a place to which she had paid little mind. There, a good portion of the cat was buried under the rubble of whatever had struck.
Shandris’s arm, the covering dust making it blend into the ground around it, lay just under one of the feline’s hind legs. It moved as Tyrande neared, and again she gave thanks to Elune for this personal blessing.
No sooner had she knelt to see what she could do than several other Sentinels rushed up to help. They had evidently seen what had happened but could not get to the two any sooner. With careful swiftness they hefted the dead nightsaber off of the general.
Tyrande put a hand to Shandris’s back and prayed. She did not know what injuries Shandris had suffered and did not care. She only hoped that Elune would heal whatever had happened to her daughter.
Shandris groaned again, but this time with more life. She glowed with the light of Elune as Tyrande finished her prayer. Only when the high priestess pulled her hand away did the glow fade. To Tyrande’s relief, Shandris’s breathing was strong and regular.
As the high priestess pulled back, it was as if the world had suddenly returned in all its chaotic fury. There were shouts coming from everywhere and the familiar hiss of arrows on their way to deliver death. She hoped the last sound had come from the bows of the Sentinels and not the Horde, but knew that it was likely a combination of both. Sentinels rushed past her, some mounted, and all of them with anxious looks on their faces.
A roar that reminded her of Deathwing thundered across the area. Belatedly, Tyrande recognized that it was not one roar but a multitude of voices shouting in unison.
She looked toward the river . . . and saw that beyond it, the forest was filled with orcs, tauren with massive totems, trolls—including more than one witch doctor—and more. The floodgates had opened and through them rushed the Horde.
“They . . . they were seeking you,” Shandris gasped as a pair of the Sentinels helped her rise. “They knew you were here and they used the damned mist to make you act!”
Tyrande peered at the area around them. Virtually all of the huge boulders that had dropped among them had been concentrated on the center, where, indeed, she had been situated. The high priestess suspected that she could thank luck as much as her patron for the fact that she had survived.
Actually, she could thank one more. “You threw yourself at me.”
“With all due respect, you are more important to our people than I am,” Shandris responded, straightening. “I did not know that I would land just where my mount would fall after the next strike!”
The horns sounded again. Another flight of arrows from the Alliance side flew over the river. The Horde forces held up their shields, creating a wall. Most of the arrows either bounced off the shields or stuck in them, but several still caught their intended targets. A number of warriors fell or pulled back with bolts sticking out of them.
“They have not managed to ford the river yet,” Tyrande noticed.
“It is deep and the current is strong, but that should still not be such a problem for them. They are testing us out; I know it!”
Denea rode up. “General, they did much the same when they attacked our main outpost! The commander thought that they were counting our archers!”
“Likely enough! It will do them no good. We have got far more than we are using. The others will be a nice surprise when they think they have got our numbers down!”
As the Alliance archers continued to fire—and the orcs on occasion fired back—more mounted Sentinels readied along various points of the line. Tyrande and Shandris had come to Ashenvale with a battle plan already in mind that did not need to wait for whatever the Horde intended to throw at them.
Four contingents of huntresses armed with lances now kept their mounts ready for the signal. With them stood double their number of Sentinels on foot, both those with glaives and others with swords. Accompanying them were dwarves of the Dark Iron and Bronzebeard clans, while farther back, Wildhammer dwarves waited for word to urge their gryphons skyward. Humans, draenei, and gnomes—the last armed with some especially vicious devices—intermingled with the first two dwarven clans. A few magi, mostly from Theramore, were also in attendance, their focus on their dark counterparts.
Tyrande’s priestesses had separated into two groups. One went about healing the wounded, while the second watched Tyrande expectantly. They were to assist in her own attack.