Stormsong snorted. "You should have seen Gazlowe's face when he read the list. The matriarch and her followers will be in for a very great surprise."
The reinforcements from Sun Rock Retreat were not numerous, but they were apparently very swift. They were already waiting for Baine when he approached the path that led westward from the Southern Gold Road toward Mulgore. His heart lifted as a cry of welcome went up, and he could make out the chanting: "Baine! Baine! Baine!"
"Listen to them," Hamuul said to him quietly. 'You bring them hope. Your plan is audacious and risky." he admitted, "but that is precisely why I believe it will succeed. You have your father's steadiness and your own imagination, Baine Bloodhoof, and you will be victorious in this battle."
"I pray you are right," Baine said. "If we fail, I tremble for the fate of our people."
Thunder Bluff, once filled with the sounds of raucous celebration, was now silent. The first victory, won by stealth in the night, had been fairly easy, but the Grimtotem now were preparing to fend off an army headed by a very popular leader, not slaughtering slumbering victims. Thunder Bluff was an excellent place for defense, and they could handle a long siege. Still, Magatha was not looking forward to it.
It had been foolish for Baine to be so open about his approach. Perhaps it had won him a few more followers, but it had also given his enemy time to prepare. And Magatha had not wasted the opportunity.
Scaling Thunder Bluff was not impossible, but it was very difficult, especially for tauren and even more so if said climbers were expected. The lifts were key—and if they were rigged to explode at the push of a button, as the engineers of the tribe were working on doing, it would be a challenge for Baine's troops to do anything other than camp at the base and wait it out. And if things were timed correctly, the explosion might also take several of Baine's followers with it. Magical methods of infiltration, such as portals, were already warded against.
And it would be a long wait. The several days' notice that Baine had given them had enabled the Grimtotem to bring in a great quantity of food and other supplies. She had recalled all her people from Bloodhoof Village and the unsuccessful Sun Rock Retreat attack to defend this, the capital. Yes, the more Magatha thought about it, the calmer she grew. Baine would be defeated, as his father had been, and her stranglehold on the tauren would be certain.
She drifted to sleep in the lodge that had belonged to Cairne Bloodhoof. Her pleasant dreams were interrupted by a sudden flash of brilliant light and a roll of answering thunder that shook the very earth. Rain sluiced down on the lodge as Magatha bolted upright, snorting. Another blinding flash of lighting. A shaman and a tauren, Magatha was no stranger to storms. But this one had a powerful fierceness to it. She sniffed and listened, senses alert. Perhaps she was imagining things. Still, she had not lived this long by ignoring her instincts, and so she threw on some robes and a cape to guard against the torrential downpour.
Magatha squinted as rain pelted her face, peering upward. The sky was black and gray, with thunderclouds blotting out the stars. Nothing unusual. This place was called Thunder Bluff, after all. Satisfied that it was nothing more than a particularly violent storm, she reached to slip the hood further down over her face.
And then she saw it. It emerged from its cover, as garishly colored as the concealing thundercloud had been subdued, an airborne ship with a bright purple balloon hovering over it. Then came another… and another. She gasped with the crash of recognition.
"Zeppelins!" Magatha cried.
Twenty nine
No sooner had Magatha uttered the word than ropes were lowered from the sides of the zeppelins, and several tauren, ores, and trolls shimmied down them. Such was the surprise that many of the enemy were able to drop safely to the earth before the Grimtotem could gather guns and bows to defend themselves.
Once on the ground, the enemy rushed to attack. Three of them were heading directly for Magatha. Fully awake now, she frowned and reached into a small pouch she carried by her side. Her fingers closed on one of her totems. The elements responded—the sky was suddenly ripped open by jagged bolts of lightning, several of which shot like spears directly at the enemy. Many of them fell at once. But in the chaos that ensued, another zeppelin moved into position and unloaded its dangerous passengers.
Magatha snarled and lifted her hands to the sky. Lightning speared one of the zeppelins. It caught fire immediately, the blaze racing hungrily along, devouring the enormous rigid balloon frame in seconds. The pilot somehow managed to steer it so that it careened right into the flight tower.
Magatha swore. The wyverns trapped within would be of no use to them as burned corpses. The late goblin pilot had made the destruction of his ship count.
But there was no time to ponder the incident. A huge explosion rocked High Rise of Thunder Bluff. The remaining zeppelin was dropping bombs. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew up into the air, illuminated by the dim, incongruously pink light of dawn. Rahauro grabbed his matriarch and steered her back from the conflict. She struck him angrily and returned to the fray.
"Get what wyverns we have and attack from the air!" she cried. "We've downed one of the zeppelins; let's get the other one!"
"Other… two," Rahauro corrected.
A huge storm crow landed beside Baine. It shapeshifted, twisted, and Hamuul told his chieftain, "We lost one of the zeppelins. But all their attention is focused on High Rise. Stormsong's thundercloud worked perfectly."
Baine nodded his approval. The first wave was the most dramatic. They had the element of surprise, of shock and startlement, and Magatha and her best fighters were swarming over that level now. They were fighting the several dozen who had been lowered from the zeppelins to attack and distract them from the slower, but harder to stop, rogues stealthily moving to Hunter, Elder, and Spirit Rises. Baine was giving the Grimtotem a taste of their own medicine—cutting them off from one another. Except whereas the Grimtotem had slain the shaman, druids, and hunters, Baine's troops were merely cutting the ropes of the bridges that connected the smaller rises to the main rise. Some arrows, bullets, and spells would reach across the space between the rises, but the vast majority would not.
Several of the mercenary trolls he had hired were also hard at work. They were swiftly and implacably scaling the sheer bluff. Bombs had been carefully placed for just such an attempt; these were carefully defused.
The lifts, not surprisingly, were set to blow. These were more complicated and were taking much longer. For the moment the distraction on High Rise had worked, and no one had thought to blow the lifts.
Yet.
What wyverns were left were swiftly prepared for flight, and the Grimtotem took the fight to the zeppelins. Grimtotem hunters mounted on the winged, lionlike creatures were able to fire directly on the crew and fighters on the deck—even those druids who had assumed storm crow form and were swooping down for the fight. But the Grimtotem were met with equal force as guns and arrows were fired directly at them. Magatha watched as one Grimtotem hunter was sprung upon by a great horned cat that sank its teeth in the hapless tauren's throat. Druid and hunter both toppled from the wyvern, the druid changing into storm crow shape a scant few feet above the rise. The hunter struck the ground hard and lay still.
Corpses were everywhere. It was time to retreat. There were Forsaken magi in a cavern containing bodies of water known as the Pools of Vision; they could, if properly persuaded, create a portal to whisk Magatha away to safety. The traditional ramp that led down to each level had been bombed by a zeppelin and was still smoking. Magatha gestured, then turned and leaped down to the second rise. Rahauro and several others followed her, weapons in hand. Bloody hand - to - hand combat was rampant as well. A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up to see one of the two remaining zeppelins.