The water seeped in through the joins of his armor and the breeches, shirt, and gambeson he wore beneath the metal plate grew wet and cold. Arthas did not feel it. A moment later Invincible surged forward, clambering out onto the opposite bank. The last of the meat wagons rumbled onto the bank as well, and what corpses were sufficiently intact slogged onto land. The rest lay where they had fallen, the once-crystal clear water flowing over and around them.

“Onward,” the death knight said.

The rangers had retreated to Fairbreeze Village. Once the shock had passed, the citizens did everything they could, from tending the wounded to offering what weapons and skills they had. Sylvanas ordered those who could not fight to head to Silvermoon as quickly as possible.

“Take nothing,” she said as a woman nodded and hurried to ascend the ramp to an upper area.

“But our rooms upstairs have—”

Sylvanas whirled, her eyes flaring. “Do you not yet understand? The dead are marching upon us! They do not tire, they do not slow, and they take our fallen and add them to their ranks! We have delayed them, little more. Take your family and go!”

The woman seemed taken aback by the ranger-general’s response, but obeyed, wasting only a few moments rounding up her family before hastening down the road to the capital.

Arthas would not be stopped for long. Sylvanas cast a sweeping, appraising glance over the wounded. None of them could stay here. They, too, would need to be evacuated to Silvermoon. As for those who were still hale, few though they were, she would need to ask yet more from them. Perhaps everything they had. They, like she, had sworn to defend their people. Now was the day of reckoning.

There was a spire close by, between the Elrendar and Silvermoon. Somehow, she felt certain Arthas would find a way to cross and continue his march. Continue to wound the land with the purplish-black scar. The spire would be a good place to mount a defense. The ramps were narrow, preventing the crush of undead that had been so disastrous previously, and there were several stories to the building, all open to the air. She and her archers could do a great deal of damage before they were—

Sylvanas Windrunner, Ranger-General of Silvermoon, took a calming breath, dashed water on her heated face, drank a deep draft of the soothing liquid, and rose to prepare the uninjured and walking wounded for what would no doubt be their final battle.

They were almost too late.

Even as the rangers marched on the spire that would be their bastion, the air, once so sweet and fresh, was tainted with the sickly odor of putrefaction. Overhead, mounted archers hovered on their dragonhawks. The great creatures, golden and scarlet, stretched their serpentine heads against the reins unhappily. They, too, scented death, and it disturbed them. Never had the beautiful beasts been pressed into such a ghastly service. One of the riders signaled Sylvanas, and she signaled back.

“The undead have been sighted,” she told her troops calmly. They nodded. “Positions. Hurry.”

Like a well-oiled gnomish machine, they obeyed. The dragonhawk riders surged south, toward the approaching enemy. A unit of archers and hand-to-hand fighters hurried forward as well, the first line of defense. Her finest archers raced up the curving ramps of the spire. The rest spread out at the base of the structure.

They did not have long to wait.

If she had harbored any faint hope that somehow the numbers of the enemy might have suffered from the delay, it was dashed like fine crystal falling to a stone floor. She could glimpse the hideous vanguard now: rotting undead, followed by skeletons and the huge abominations whose three arms each carried massive weapons. Above them flew the stonelike creatures wheeling like buzzards.

They are breaking through….

How strange the mind was, Sylvanas thought with a trace of macabre humor. Now, as the hour of her death doubtless approached, an ancient song played in her head; one she and her siblings had loved to sing, when the world was right and they were all together, Alleria, Vereesa, and their youngest brother, Lirath, at twilight when soft lavender shadows spread their gentle cloaks and the sweet scent of the ocean and flowers wafted across the land.

Anar’alah, anar’alah belore, quel’dorei, shindu fallah na…. By the light, by the light of the sun, high elves, our enemies are breaking through….

Without her realizing it at first, her hand fluttered upward to close on the necklace she wore about her slender throat. It had been a gift, from her oldest sister, Alleria; delivered not by Alleria herself, but in her stead by one of her lieutenants, Verana. Alleria was gone, vanished through the Dark Portal in an attempt to stop the Horde from visiting their atrocities again on Azeroth and on other worlds as well.

She had never returned. She had melted down a necklace given to her by their parents, and made individual necklaces out of the three stones for each of the Windrunner sisters. Sylvanas’s was a sapphire. She knew the inscription by heart: To Sylvanas. Love always, Alleria.

She waited, grasping the necklace, feeling the connection with her dead sister it always provided, then slowly forced her hand away. Sylvanas took a deep breath and shouted, “Attack! For Quel’Thalas!”

There would be no stopping them. In truth, she did not expect to stop them. From the expressions on the grim, bloodied faces around her, Sylvanas realized her rangers knew this as well as she. Sweat dewed her face. Her muscles screamed with exhaustion, and still Sylvanas Windrunner fought. She fired, nocking and releasing and nocking again so swiftly that her hands were almost a blur. When the swarm of corpses and monsters came too close for arrows, she flung her bow away and seized her short sword and dagger. She whirled and turned and stabbed, crying out incoherently as she battled.

Another one fell, its head toppling from its shoulders to be trampled, bursting open like a melon beneath the feet of one of its own. Two more monstrocities surged forward to take its place. Still Sylvanas fought like one of the savage lynxes of Eversong Woods, channeling her pain and outrage into violence. She would take as many with her as she could before she fell.

They are breaking through….

They pressed in, close, the reek of decay almost overwhelming her. Too many of them now. Sylvanas did not slow. She would fight until they had utterly destroyed her, until—

The press of corpses suddenly was gone. They stepped back and stood still. Gasping for breath, Sylvanas looked down the hill.

He was there, waiting on his undead steed. The wind played with his long white hair as he regarded her intently. She straightened, wiping blood and sweat from her face. A paladin, he had been once. Her sister had loved one such as him. Suddenly Sylvanas was fiercely glad that Alleria was dead, could not see this, could not see what a former champion of the Light was doing to everything the Windrunners loved and cherished.

Arthas lifted the glowing runeblade in a formal gesture. “I salute your bravery, elf, but the chase is over.” Oddly, he sounded like he meant the compliment.

Sylvanas swallowed; her mouth was dry as bone. She tightened her grip on her weapons. “Then I’ll make my stand here, butcher. Anar’alah belore.”

His gray lips twitched. “As you will, Ranger-General.”

He did not even bother to dismount. Instead the skeletal steed whinnied and galloped straight toward her. Arthas gripped the reins with his left hand, his right drawing back the massive sword. Sylvanas sobbed, once. No cry of fear or regret came from those lips. Only a short, harsh sob of impotent anger, of hatred, of righteous fury that she was not able to stop them, not even when she had given all she could, not even with her life’s blood.