wry grin faded a bit. “All right. First, it is so thick out there, you cannot see more than a few feet in front. We do not go charging into it, it should be to our advantage.”
“So we stand our ground.”
“Unfortunately, it is moving toward us.”
Su’ura had already thought so, but hearing that fact verified still struck her now. “You could have said that right away. How fast?”
“Fast enough that it is good you have got everyone in position already.”
As bad as that, the commander thought. “You said you heard something?”
“Buzzing. Like a great mass of wasps. There is another thing: the more you go into the mist, the more it stinks of oil, as if someone lit a bunch of lamps and left them burning.”
Su’ura knew what that, combined with the buzzing, meant. “Goblins. There are goblins out there.”
Illiyana appeared unimpressed. “The night we cannot handle a bunch of goblins is the night Ashenvale should fall.”
“Be careful what you say,” snapped the commander, although she was not overly concerned about the goblins, either. What much more bothered her was what would be marching with them.
She peered upward at the tall trees ahead. The mist was not quite thick enough to obscure the tops. Su’ura had sent scouts high above to see if they could spot anything, but the forest below had been as if under a thick blanket through which the crowns popped like islands.
“Where are the others?” Illiyana suddenly asked her.
It was a question for which Su’ura had been waiting but had not wanted to answer. “You are the only one who returned.”
For once, Illiyana looked a little unsettled. “‘The only one’?”
There had been three others who had fanned out into the mist with Illiyana. Based on their destinations, Su’ura had expected them back earlier. The fact that they had not returned yet meant that they were not returning at all.
It also meant that the enemy was even closer than originally anticipated.
“You encountered no one, Illiyana?”
“I found some tracks that went deeper into the eastern mist, but they looked conspicuously visible and so I chose not to follow them.”
“Very likely a wise thing.” Illiyana was a seasoned tracker, more so than even the other three. They had probably decided to follow similar trails . . . just as the Horde’s own commanders had intended.
“Someone has gone through a lot of trouble,” Su’ura muttered, stroking Hutihu’s feathers.
The owl hooted agreement.
“Should I go and look for them?”
“No, I think that would be—”
She heard a slight buzzing from the forest. Illiyana, Hutihu, and the nightsaber all reacted with the same tensing of their bodies.
“That is what I heard,” Illiyana said.
“What is it?”
The dark-clad night elf sniffed the air. “Whatever it is, that oily stench comes with it.”
Everyone could smell the odor now. The nightsaber crouched, its nostrils flaring in disgust.
“Can goblins build nothing that does not stink?” the commander finally muttered. “Or that does not have evil purpose?”
“Fortunately, half the time, those contraptions either do not work or explode.”
“And the other half of the time, they wreak havoc on us.”
Illiyana could not argue with her there. Su’ura sent Hutihu to the trees, then stepped forward. “Archers to the ready! Lancers should mount! First lines form!”
In response to the last, Sentinels on foot took up positions just in front of the archers. Armed with glaives, they went down on one knee. Given the word, they would throw the deadly weapons simultaneously, cutting a deadly swath across anything in the glaives’ path.
Other Sentinels, some of them arming powerful ballistae called glaive throwers, stood ready behind the archers. In addition to the glaive on their gauntlets, several warriors also wore a second one slung on their backs. They were there to reinforce the front lines as needed.
A pack of armored nightsabers now stood awaiting the cue from their riders, whose senior officer watched Su’ura for the signal. Faces grim beneath their heavy helmets, the riders kept their long lances pointed skyward.
The buzzing grew stronger, more piercing. It was now accompanied by a grinding sound, one that Su’ura thought she now recognized. It said something for the stress of the situation that she had not made the connection earlier. After all, the goblins had been known to be cutting wood nearby. . . .
Then silence reigned again. The Sentinels stood uncertain. Officers looked to Su’ura, who watched and listened for the slightest hint of what was happening.
An odd, unsettling groan echoed through the forest. The night elves looked at one another, even Illiyana clearly perplexed