Stonetalon Mountains, Sun Rock Retreat.
This land had once belonged to the Night Elves, but as with most of Kalimdor, after the Well of Eternity exploded, the Kaldorei maintained only the lowest level of attention toward these lands with few usable resources.
In fact, they maintained only two token garrisons here. Before the Tauren migrated from Desolace, the Night Elves had never imagined that anything as untoward as war would break out in this land covered in sharp stone peaks.
The sluggishness of a long-lived race left them somewhat indifferent to such matters, but the situation actually changed far faster than the Elves imagined. When these long-eared fellows finally began taking the Horde's threat seriously, they discovered to their astonishment that Horde forces had appeared not only in the Stonetalon Mountains, but even in other regions under their control.
The Kaldorei were still far from recovering from the damage of the brutal Battle of Mount Hyjal. In the six years since that battle, their control over most of Kalimdor had continued to weaken. Thus, after a legion from Stormwind City secretly entered the Stonetalon Mountains, the Night Elf leadership tacitly accepted this third-party ally's operation.
Vanguard Camp was the Alliance legion's foremost position, less than three thousand meters from the Tauren's Sun Rock Retreat. This was where the conflict Cairne Bloodhoof had mentioned to Varian had occurred.
A unit of Stormwind City's Seventh Legion was stationed here, and General John Hawthorne commanded this front. For the past two days, General Hawthorne had been uneasy, and not merely because of the Tauren's relentless raids and insults. This veteran, tempered by the Orcish War and the Undead War, was more worried about something else.
Just a week earlier, some Orcs had moved into Sun Rock Retreat. Although the Orcs and Tauren both