The Orc Wolf Riders stopped pursuing, and the elves ahead stopped fleeing. They watched each other from afar, like two old neighbors who would never have anything to do with each other again.
The Orcs Wolf Rider leader glanced back at the Wolf Riders following him, and his expression shifted slightly. There should have been over three hundred when the pursuit began, but now only a little over two hundred remained. At least sixty or seventy Orcs Wolf Riders had fallen behind. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
"What happened?" the Orc Chieftain asked the adjutant who had stayed beside him. "Why are we missing dozens of riders? Where are they?"
"I don't know! They should still be behind us," the adjutant said, looking at the Wolf Riders behind them.
"Behind us...?" The Orc Chieftain looked back the way they had come, but not a single Orc Wolf Rider was in sight. "That's not right! Even if they were slow, they couldn't have fallen that far behind, and not so many of them!" he shouted.
"Chief!" one Wolf Rider said. "Some of our fellow riders suddenly fell off their Worgs as they were running. Some Worgs slowed down after running for a while, then finally lay down and stopped moving. That's how a lot of our brothers fell behind."
The Orc Chieftain was startled. He looked around at the orc riders who had followed him and suddenly realized that neither the riders nor their Worgs had been hit by arrows. It had to be the arrows. They must have been poisoned! His heart sank.
"Which of you has been hit by an arrow?" he asked grimly.
The Orc Wolf Riders fell silent. Not one answered.
The Orc Chieftain understood. His suspicions had been confirmed. *Despicable elves. I'll tear them