"How many Death Knights are there?" Daelin asked.
"About sixty to seventy, but..." Sylvanas glanced at Daelin. "They found a great many humanoid skeletons at the Quarry and raised them as undead warriors."
"Why would there be so many skeletons at the Quarry?" Alleria asked with a frown.
Sylvanas shrugged and shook her head to show she did not know. "Perhaps Admiral Daelin would know," she said.
Alleria looked at Daelin, waiting for an explanation.
Only then did Daelin remember the bloodshed before the Quarry had been abandoned. He also understood why the orcs had marched northwest rather than southwest. He believed the vast number of skeletons buried deep underground must have drawn the Death Knights there.
He sighed, silently reproaching himself for not thinking of it. "Before the Quarry was abandoned, everyone working here was a prisoner of war or a convict, so... you know... their conditions couldn't have been very good," Daelin said haltingly.
Of course, he knew that these so-called prisoners of war were actually trolls they had captured in large numbers throughout the Wetlands. There had been very few human convicts, since most of those had been sent to the battlefield as expendable assault troops.
This had also driven the trolls of the Wetlands to the brink of extinction. What no one could have imagined was that these long-dead trolls would cause them trouble again.
Alleria and Sylvanas understood.
"Not very good" was a polite understatement. Who knew how cruel the reality had been? Once the prisoners held here died, they would be tossed into a pit like discarded rags and buried together. Over time, there was no telling how many bodies had accumulated here. Otherwise, the Death Knights would never have sensed them from so far away.
If the orcs had gone to the Quarry