The tide of undead swarmed toward Sylvanas and her rangers, their mindless, orderly movements reminding her of a nest of insects.
But the ranger-general had not been unprepared. The archers had already received their orders: kill the living first, then deal with the dead using flaming arrows.
The first volley nearly wiped out all the Cult of the Damned members mixed into the undead army—those very cultists who had spread the undead plague through Lordaeron, allowing the Scourge to spread so swiftly. Then the second volley of burning arrows fell among the skeletons and zombies.
Yet against these skeletal undead, the rain of arrows proved less effective than hoped. Unlike armies of the living, undead bodies were not driven by flesh and blood, but by death magic. Unless the body's structure suffered devastating damage, the piercing wounds from arrows could hardly prove fatal.
Compared to ordinary arrows, flaming arrows might have dealt greater damage to the undead. But while some arrow-struck corpses were dry and easily flammable, others were rotten and damp. Far fewer undead fell beneath the arrowstorm than the ranger-general had anticipated.
Worse still, there were simply too many undead and too few High Elf soldiers. The damage inflicted by the rangers was little more than a drop in the ocean against such an army. Sylvanas realized that even if every arrow her rangers fired killed an enemy, they might not eliminate even a tenth of the foes before them before their arms went numb with exhaustion.
Soon, their overwhelming numerical advantage began to turn the tide of battle.
As the defenders, Sylvanas's rangers held the advantage of terrain. They stood atop a high wall built from stone and earth, nearly vertical to the ground. Fortunately, some zombies were too badly decayed, their rotting, crumbling limbs making it