Realizing he was no longer needed here, Alaric immediately turned around.
He lowered his head and descended a short staircase built into the city wall, passed by a small guard's suit of armor, and followed a narrow path along the wall.
At the end of the path was another staircase; climbing it brought him once again to the top of the wall, this time, above the main gate of the city.
Even before he reached the edge, he could already feel the heavy impacts. The shocks were strong enough to make soldiers' teeth rattle and the stone wall quiver.
He looked down. The orcs were using a massive log to batter the main gate.
Even from this height, Alaric could see that each blow made the men below tremble.
"Reinforce the gate," he ordered a young lieutenant standing nearby. "Get some men, reinforce the front gate."
"With what, sir?" the young officer asked.
"Anything you can find," Alaric replied.
However, before the soldiers could act, the gate groaned under the next blow, the sound making everyone wince.
"Careful! The gate's about to give, " one of the soldiers trying to brace it shouted.
The orcs outside roared in triumph.
Panic and unease instantly swept over the defending soldiers atop the wall.
They had held their ground so far with the protection of the city walls, and dared to confront the Horde. But now that the gate was about to fall, some of the more timid soldiers were already preparing to flee.
Still, many who had fought fiercely for days, their courage forged in blood, silently began wiping their swords, preparing for a last stand.
Alaric shook his head, then leapt from the inner wall. With the help of Feather Fall, he landed gracefully.
"Let me handle it," he said, parting the tightly packed soldiers near the gate.
Seeing their commander arrive, the soldiers instantly cleared a path.
After days of battle, they had witnessed Alaric's formidable magic firsthand and now had unwavering faith in him.
Alaric pointed his staff at the city gate, which was now on the verge of splitting apart, and before the Horde could strike again, he cast a spell never before heard of in Azeroth.
"Reparo."
Thanks to the magical groundwork he had laid long before the guardian dragons had appeared, the magic of the Harry Potter world could now be fully unleashed.
Before their eyes, the gate underwent a reversal, as if time itself were flowing backward, an effect utterly impossible with the magic of this era.
In an instant, the gate was fully restored, with no cracks or dents at all. It looked as if it had just been built.
Now it was the humans inside the city who cheered, while the orcs outside shouted in confusion and rage.
The gate would now hold for a while longer.
Alaric nodded in satisfaction and returned to the wall, arriving just as Liadrin was dispelling curses afflicting the soldiers around her with the Light.
"I'm back," Alaric said to the paladin. "Thank you. Leave Gul'dan to me."
However, right after Alaric returned, the warlocks' attacks ceased, and chaos spread among the orcs.
Alaric peered over the wall. Countless orcs still swarmed around, attacking Caer Darrow.
In the distance, he caught a glint of metal. He knew Lothar and his forces had arrived, launching an assault on the orcs from behind.
He immediately ordered the catapults into action and told the archers to fire at full strength, coordinating a pincer attack on the Horde.
Up until now, in order to conserve supplies, the catapults had only been used sparingly, and archers had been ordered to ration every arrow.
But now that reinforcements had come, the key to victory, there was no reason to hold back.
Faced with the Alliance's pincer attack, the Horde split their forces.
Orgrim had to personally lead the assault on the front and had no choice but to dispatch Gul'dan to drive off the human cavalry.
Among the orcs, aside from Orgrim himself, only Gul'dan, the chieftain of the Stormreaver clan, possessed any real command ability.
As it turned out, Gul'dan did not disappoint.
He led thousands of orcs and successfully repelled the Alliance cavalry, forcing them to retreat again and again.
Perhaps due to overzealous pursuit, both the cavalry and Gul'dan's troops soon vanished from sight.
Orgrim wasn't concerned.
He had ordered Gul'dan to use his magic to assist the army in eliminating those pesky cavalry.
Orgrim had recognized Lothar and believed that if they could kill the Alliance's supreme commander here, it would deal a severe blow to their morale and provide a huge boost to the Horde.
Still, since Lothar had the mobility advantage of cavalry, Orgrim hadn't expected much. Sending Gul'dan was more of a gamble than a calculated move.
Now that Gul'dan had driven off the reinforcements, the orcs resumed their siege of Caer Darrow with renewed intensity.
Perhaps the arrival of reinforcements had spurred a sense of urgency among the Horde.
Their attacks were fiercer than ever, wave after relentless wave gave the defenders no chance to breathe.
Orgrim even braved the storm of arrows and rocks to appear at the frontlines himself, inspiring his warriors.
...
By evening,
"We're going to take them!" an orc bellowed, and the Doomhammer's lips curled into a grin.
"Victory is in our grasp!" thought the Warchief of the orcs.
Though no matter how many warriors he sent, the city's walls still stood firm, the soldiers atop them had grown weary under the unending assault, and their defensive machinery was starting to fail.
The moment the walls were breached, his warriors would pour into the city, deal with the remaining defenders, and seize the supplies stored there.
Once they took Caer Darrow, the road out of Alterac would lie before them. They would break through the encirclement and regroup with the main army in Arathi Highlands.
Then, they would cross Thandol Span and retreat to the far side, ending this doomed war with some measure of dignity, and begin anew.
"Clearly the orcs had the upper hand," Orgrim thought bitterly.
"So how did we get here? How did the invincible Horde come to this point… even I, the Warchief, have to fight to the death just to escape."
"If only the ogres were here," he thought again, leaning on his warhammer and watching his warriors launch yet another assault on the gate.
"They could have climbed these walls, or smashed a hole in them with their clubs."
But thanks to those damn humans and their magic, more twisted than any warlock's, the foolish ogres were driven into civil war.
As a result, the orcs could not risk using that powerful force again anytime soon.
Speaking of ogres… their master, Gul'dan, had been gone a long time. Why hadn't he returned yet?
A sense of unease stirred instinctively in Orgrim's heart.