On the Horde side, Orgrim was chewing nails and spitting rust—frustrated beyond all measure.
Because a crucial piece of his master plan refused to crack like a tough nut that had been welded shut by the gods themselves.
That piece was Garona, a female half-orc who'd fallen into Orgrim's clutches like a gift from the devil himself. She was tougher than a two-dollar steak and twice as hard to break. Perhaps it was because Garona had been treated like a kicked dog since she could crawl, but the woman had more tolerance for pain than a saint had for sinners.
The straightforward orcs were about as skilled at torture as a bull was at needlepoint—all their interrogation techniques boiled down to the ancient art of "hit it until it talks or stops breathing."
If Orgrim wanted to squeeze the Shadow Council's location out of Garona like juice from a stubborn lemon, he couldn't exactly turn her into orc chow. Unfortunately, Garona wasn't just tougher than old boot leather—she seemed to have some mystical mojo flowing through her veins like liquid lightning. Whenever Garona's life force dropped low enough to make a corpse jealous, this mysterious power would wrap around her like a protective cocoon, making her harder to crack than a dragon's egg, even when Orgrim brought the Doomhammer to the party.
When the enigmatic half-orc's vitality and strength bounced back to fighting form, Garona became a sitting duck again, ready for another round of "let's see what makes you tick."
This maddening cycle was driving Orgrim crazier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
He was chomping at the bit to overthrow that damned Warchief Blackhand and settle the score for his fallen friend Durotan, but unfortunately, he couldn't lay a finger on the Shadow Council and that snake-oil salesman Gul'dan. Even if he knocked Blackhand off his throne, it would be like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound—a quick fix that wouldn't solve the real problem.
Once the Shadow Council, lurking in the shadows like a rattlesnake in tall grass, decided to strike, their mysterious curse-slinging voodoo would make Orgrim's skin crawl just thinking about the possibilities.
The only bright spot in this storm cloud of troubles was that the humans were starting to crack under pressure like ice on a spring morning. Every single day, more than one wave of orc commandos managed to leap that moat like it was a puddle and scale those walls like they were climbing a ladder to heaven. If the humans hadn't cobbled together a crack squad of elite warriors to beat back the orc advances with counter-attacks sharper than a serpent's tooth and enough long-range firepower to make the gods weep, the city would have fallen faster than a house of cards in a tornado.
Orgrim was still wrestling with his demons like Jacob with the angel. Stormwind was the first major foreign kingdom he'd encountered after stepping through that portal from hell, and capturing its capital would be a feather in his cap bigger than a peacock's tail. If this glory went to the current warchief Blackhand, then even if Orgrim won the challenge and claimed the throne, most of the Horde's knuckle-draggers would still remember the former warchief's golden touch.
Even if he seized power and racked up victories that would make the ancestors weep with pride, those simple-minded orcs would still think he was nothing but a glory-stealing copycat riding Blackhand's coattails like a tick on a dog's back.
So many spinning plates to keep in the air—it was enough to make a saint curse like a sailor.
As one of the "new generation" chiefs, besides being able to split a man in half with his bare hands, Orgrim's greatest weapon was the gray matter between his ears. He was rarer than hen's teeth among the orcs—a chief with the foresight of a prophet and the cold-blooded calculation of a snake oil merchant.
When he couldn't be dead certain he had all his ducks in a row, he'd choose patience over action like a poker player holding a weak hand.
However, on the twenty-fifth day of this siege that had dragged on longer than a preacher's sermon, Orgrim's keen instincts told him that the human fighting spirit had finally reached its breaking point like a rope stretched to its limit.
"You're telling me there's fewer than 100,000 humans left in Stormwind?" Orgrim's reaction to the scout's report was more mixed than a bartender's cocktail.
"That's right, Chief. When the weather's been smooth as glass, the humans have been shipping out about 10,000 people per day like rats abandoning a sinking ship. But we had a few days of storms that would make Noah nervous, and their evacuation efforts ground to a halt like a wagon with broken wheels." The scout captain delivered his report with the enthusiasm of a man reading his own obituary.
Orgrim felt like he'd been kicked in the gut by a mule. If the humans hadn't been craftier than a fox in a henhouse and only relied on that pathetic excuse for a wall, the Horde could have steamrolled into the city in two or three days flat. Back then, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians would have been ripe for the picking instead of this measly under-100,000 crowd. The Horde wouldn't have had to sacrifice the lives of more than 20,000 warriors and 70,000 to 80,000 orc laborers like throwing good money after bad.
Thinking about this waste made Orgrim feel lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut.
The humans had gone from being helpless as newborn kittens to fighting with the coordination of a well-oiled machine, making the Horde's losses pile up higher than a mountain of skulls. Although the thick-skulled masses in the Horde still thought humans were worth less than yesterday's fish, Orgrim knew better than most that if too many humans slipped through their fingers like sand, the Horde would pay through the nose—double or triple the cost—to hunt them down later.
Time to fish or cut bait!
No matter what it cost, they had to crush this rear-guard action right here, right now. If they couldn't truly break the human spirit, this battle-hardened unit would become a thorn in the Horde's side bigger than a sequoia tree.
With this realization hitting him like a lightning bolt, Orgrim stopped hemming and hawing. He was going to march up to the chieftain and demand they launch a full-scale assault tonight—time to put all their cards on the table.
Meanwhile, in the heart of Stormwind Keep, where the walls held more secrets than a confessor's booth...
The people holding Stormwind's fate in their hands had gathered like mourners at a funeral, but with considerably more tension in the air.
Duke spoke with the quiet confidence of a man who'd seen tomorrow's newspaper: "The Horde's final push comes tonight."
King Llane's head snapped up faster than a startled deer: "You're certain as sunrise?"
"I deliberately let some of the Horde's scouts slip through my defenses like minnows through a net so they could get a good look at Stormwind Harbor." Duke's casual tone carried the weight of a man who held all the aces and wasn't afraid to show it.
Lothar sucked in air like a drowning man reaching surface: "Truth is, these last fifty thousand men are the bare minimum we need to man the walls of Stormwind without leaving gaps big enough to drive a cart through."
Bolvar suddenly jerked his head up like a man who'd been slapped, looking from Duke to Llane with eyes that burned with desperate loyalty: "Your Majesty, I'm still begging you to catch the last ship out of here this evening! You're the king of Stormwind Kingdom, you're..."
"Enough! Bolvar!" King Llane's voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the air with the force of a thunderclap directed at his most faithful retainer: "Since Duke says he's got our backs when push comes to shove, then why should we lose our nerve like scared rabbits! I can't stomach the thought of abandoning my people who trust me and running off with my tail between my legs like a yellow dog! If you're worried about Stormwind Kingdom having a king, Varian's already been packed off to Southshore safe and sound."
Those words hit harder than a sledgehammer to the chest and stung worse than a slap in the face. Bolvar had nearly laid down his life to give counsel, and this response was clearly a vote of no confidence in Duke, who was keeping his final plan closer to his chest than a gambler's last ace.
"Forgive me, Duke. Bolvar's just..." Llane immediately turned to apologize to Duke after dressing down Bolvar like a drill sergeant with a new recruit.
"No, this mess is on me. I shouldn't have made Your Majesty a chess piece in my grand game."
"No—Duke, you're dead right! You've laid out every risk I might face clearer than crystal. The worst that can happen is that I, a king without a kingdom, will die fighting for my homeland like a true warrior should. Hell, I should say that if this plan goes belly-up, I'd rather die with honor than live in shame. I truly don't have the stomach to go begging for scraps from those lords like a mangy cur with its hat in its hand."
Llane suddenly raised his head and locked eyes with Bolvar and his other most loyal ministers, and everyone saw the resolve to die fighting burning in his gaze like a forge fire.
Wise and great—those had always been Llane's calling cards like a signature on a check.
But few people had imagined that Llane would choose death over surrender and be stubborn as a mule about it.
Perhaps many folks would reckon that losing to those powerhouse orcs wasn't such a shameful thing, but they were blind to the feelings of a king who'd dreamed of greatness but now had to give up his capital and the thousand-year legacy of his forefathers like a man watching his life's work burn to ash.
Duke couldn't help but reflect that in "history," it was Llane's assassination and Stormwind's fall that forced Lothar into exile with little prince Varian like refugees fleeing a burning homestead.
Now "history" had taken a left turn at the crossroads, but the orcs were still tough as nails and twice as mean. If it weren't for Duke's intervention, Llane might still meet his maker right here in these very halls.
"Well, as long as you stick to my playbook like glue, I can guarantee that even if Stormwind City goes down in flames, we'll still take a bite out of those green monsters big enough to make them remember us till their dying day."