For the Horde, the defeat at Stormwind City had dealt them a considerable blow.
It was not merely a blow to their strength, but even more so to their morale.
They had thought defeating those humans, who were nearly a head shorter than them, would be as simple as slaughtering a few talbuks, but reality had proved somewhat difficult to accept.
Warchief Blackhand was the first to take Gul'dan to task, accusing him, "Where were your warlocks when those human mages attacked the Horde?"
The orcs certainly did not believe that the powerful spell that had killed nearly ten thousand Horde warriors had been the work of a single mage... They believed that many human mages had cast that powerful spell together, and that if Gul'dan had sent out large numbers of warlocks to resist it at the time, they could easily have held it off.
Gul'dan was naturally furious that his own puppet had dared to defy him like this; however, he still needed Blackhand to control the entire Horde, so he could only endure it for the time being.
Meanwhile, Durotan, chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan, also seized this opportunity to expose Gul'dan's plot...
He accused Gul'dan of betraying their trust and striking a bargain with demons, with the Horde serving as nothing more than his tool for fulfilling that bargain... Even if the Horde won its war in this world, the ultimate outcome would be for demons to take it over!
Gul'dan flew into an even greater rage at this, and used Blackhand to exile the entire Frostwolf Clan to the distant Alterac Mountains.
At the same time, he also dispatched assassins from the Shadow Council to strike at Durotan, his wife, and their newborn child...
On the banks of the Blackblood River in the Black