Over the past few days, the gryphon riders had bombed the orc camp daily, but the raids had served more to intimidate than to inflict actual damage. The riders had been carefully conserving their bombs.
"So we haven't managed to stop the orcs from establishing effective defensive positions, have we?" Daelin asked.
"That's right. At best, we've only slowed the orcs' construction work," Alleria said. "We'll reach the Quarry in another three days. You can take a good look for yourself then."
"The entrance to the Quarry is a small valley. If the orcs build a wall there, it will indeed be troublesome," Daelin said. "But they don't have enough time to build one now."
"That area has been our main bombing target, but unfortunately, our aerial munitions are desperately scarce. In the end, the orcs still managed to build a wooden palisade and gate out of logs."
Alleria pointed to a spot on the map. "Here. This is their newly built defensive palisade."
There were few trees in the swamps, but the Quarry was not a swamp. It lay at the foot of the Impassable Mountains, surrounded by peaks, with only a small opening facing the marshes through which people could enter and leave.
Long ago, the Quarry had been Proudmoore's most important source of iron ore, but it had been abandoned for a very long time. No one had recorded exactly how long.
All anyone knew was that a road had once connected the Quarry's entrance to the main road. After the Quarry was abandoned, however, no one used that road anymore.
After years of rain washing over it, with no one maintaining or repairing it, the road had long since become indistinguishable from the surrounding swamp. Not a trace remained. Over time, trees had grown throughout the