“Yes, Commander.”
“Oh, and how soon will the full mounted contingent be ready?”
“We can ride first thing tomorrow.” Although Denea tried to maintain a steadiness in her voice, a hint of anticipation crept into it.
Haldrissa made certain that her own voice remained calm and in command. “If the scouts return with their report by then, we shall. We do not move until then.”
“With your permission, then, I will go get the scouts.”
Haldrissa’s nod was all Denea needed. She rushed off, obviously determined to see to it that the Sentinels did indeed ride off the next day.
I remember being so eager once, the senior officer thought . . . then immediately cursed herself for such maudlin notions. The only difference between Denea and her was that Haldrissa had the millennia of experience to know how to temper eagerness with caution. A commander’s trait.
A low rumble stirred her. From the west trundled in a short train of supply wagons guided by an armed Sentinel escort. The captain in charge of the escort anxiously peered around, not a good sign at all.
Haldrissa immediately headed to her.
The captain saluted. “Commander Haldrissa?”
“Yes. Did something happen?” She surveyed the wagons but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Nothing, that is, save that the last wagon had an extra burden draped out of the back. A large, winged form. The stench of decay, so familiar to the veteran officer, was strong even before Haldrissa reached the wagon.
“We found the hippogryph about a day out,” the captain reported as she dismounted. “Been dead for some time.”
Wordlessly, Haldrissa rushed to the huge corpse. She wanted to deny it for what—and who—it was, but as she neared, the distinctive markings verified the worst. It was definitely Windstorm.
And that meant only the worst where Aradria and the message for Darnassus were concerned.
“He had many wounds, mostly from arrows, but a great axe is what finally did him in,” the captain concluded.
Haldrissa peered into the wagon. Windstorm’s corpse was set against a number of barrels. Of Aradria Cloudflyer there was no sign. “The courier! Where is she?”
“We found only the hippogryph, not her, though there were traces of blood elsewhere that could have been from the courier. We did discover several dead orcs—”
“Never mind the orcs! What of the courier?”
Cowed by Haldrissa’s fury, the young officer blurted, “As I said, she was nowhere to be found, but—”
“‘Nowhere to be found’ . . . ” The commander took heart from that. She saw the scene playing out. Windstorm, sorely wounded in the sky, had no doubt brought his rider to the ground so that she could escape on foot with the pouch while he sacrificed himself to keep the orc scouts at bay.
That the orcs had penetrated so very deep bothered her, but Aradria’s escape made up for that. There were places en route where an expert courier such as Aradria could gain another mount.
The captain had been saying something, but Haldrissa had not been paying attention. “What was that?”
“I said that we also found this there.”
Haldrissa herself could not see it, but her expression must have been terrible to see, for the captain suddenly gaped at her.
The tattered pouches gave testament to the folly of the commander’s earlier hopes. Aradria had not gotten away. She would have never abandoned the missive. Either the orcs had disposed of her body or some beast had dragged it away.
And Darnassus still had no idea what was happening in Ashenvale.
Denea. Abandoning the confused captain, Haldrissa hurried after her second. Denea already had scouts preparing for the mission. However, rather than sending them ahead as originally planned, this time she would have all of them wait until she had had four more copies of the previous message written. Then the scouts would head to Darnassus. Denea would just have to bridle her eagerness to hunt down the orcs for another day or so. Matters could wait that long, at least, so Haldrissa believed.
“Denea!” she shouted. Her second stood with the four scouts, evidently just about to send them off. “Denea!”
Her voice did not carry enough. Eager to march off herself, the younger officer signaled permission for the four scouts and their hippogryphs to depart. The group quickly rose into the air.
Denea finally turned in response to Haldrissa’s shouting. “Commander?”
“Signal them to return! Aradria never made it! I want all four of them to head to Darnassus instead!” She had considered using owls to carry the messages; however, not only were the hippogryphs much faster, but the riders could also defend the missives.
The other Sentinel rushed to one of the signal horns set aside for summoning the warriors to action. It was their only hope of recalling the hippogryph riders in time. Denea put the curved horn to her mouth and blew as hard as she could.
The blare caused every Sentinel to pause in what she or he was doing. Too late, Haldrissa realized that many of them, already preparing for the deadly march, might think the call to action had come sooner than expected.
But if the horn stirred the post for the wrong reasons, at least she saw that it served its other purpose. The lead scout glanced over her shoulder, saw Denea gesturing, and had the party turn about.
“Praise Elune . . . ” Haldrissa moved forward to meet the descending hippogryphs. She had a few instructions to pass on to the scouts before hurrying to write out the new messages to Darnassus.
A cry above made her stumble. Near her, Denea let loose with an oath.
One of the scouts dropped limply from her mount, plunging to the ground as the other night elves stared in horror.
The fletchings of two arrows thrust up over her back as she landed. Haldrissa had fought too many battles not to recognize the Horde markings.
The sky was suddenly filled with arrows. At first the commander thought that the archers had miscalculated the distance, for the bolts flew too high to properly descend upon the Sentinels below.
Only when one of the other scouts and her mount were struck several times did Haldrissa see the terrible logic: it was not the encampment that was the immediate target; it was the scouts.
The Horde was already prepared for her plan.
As the arrows brought down the second scout, other shouts arose ahead. Haldrissa saw several warriors pointing to the east.
Smoke rose from two other locations. She did not have to guess its origins. Two of the outposts lay in those directions.
“Sentinels, form ranks!” Denea cried out. “Prepare for imminent attack!”
As Sentinels—including blue-armored huntresses with shields and glaives—raced to obey, Haldrissa stirred in frustration. Those were orders she should have given. She eyed the forest beyond, wondering how the Horde had gotten so near in such numbers. They had clearly made several forays into the area to have such an excellent understanding of their surroundings.
But she also knew the terrain well. “Denea! Twenty to the southeast edge of the post! They will have to come from there! I want a mounted force of huntresses with shields and lances readied!” With the Horde presence in Ashenvale having grown over the past months, General Shandris had decided to include lancers—a seldom-utilized aspect of the night elf armies since the end of the War of the Ancients—in the Sentinels’ arsenal of weapons. “Get the other—”
A hippogryph’s squawk cut her off. Another of the winged creatures dropped. Her rider, a shaft through her arm, managed to jump off before the creature hit.
The last of the scouts managed to land. However, even the ground proved no sanctuary. More arrows flew, these designed to target those within the encampment and, Haldrissa saw, especially the area where the hippogryphs were kept. Worse, the landing scouts had given the archers a fairly good notion of just where that was.