Yu Lin Bloodhawk was utterly exasperated by Sylvanas's attitude toward war, treating it like a game. But the troops belonged to her, so all he could do was glare helplessly. What infuriated him even more was this: if she wanted to play, fine! Why did she always have to drag him to the front lines to risk his neck?
At the moment, however, the Orc company commander was even more furious than Yu Lin Bloodhawk, because he realized he had walked into an enemy encirclement. With so many Elves appearing here, there could be only one explanation: the force he had come to rescue was already finished. This was an enemy scheme, and that forty-odd-strong unit had merely been bait to lure him in. Those two Orc Wolf Riders who had supposedly broken out had actually been released deliberately by the Elves.
Six or seven hundred Elves surrounded his force of just over a hundred. Some Elf Rangers rode brightly colored Hawkstriders, but even more rode white frost wolves. There were at least four hundred of these wolf-mounted Elf Rangers, and one glance told the Orc company commander that they were the elite of the Elven elite. He desperately wanted to cut down the two Orc Wolf Riders who had brought the news and begged for reinforcements, right then and there.
The Elves had chosen an excellent ambush site: a dense forest. This terrain put charging Orc cavalry at a severe disadvantage, while greatly favoring the Elf Ranger archers. The Orc company commander had unforgettable, bitter experience of their archery.
When it came to archery, human archers could not begin to catch up with Elf Rangers, no matter how hard they tried. The Orcs knew this all too well. Fortunately, the Elf Rangers lacked courage and fled whenever they were