The gunships arrived over Icecrown like a declaration of war. Leylin watched them emerge through the clouds, their silhouettes cutting across the pale northern sky.
Even at a distance, he could tell them apart. Gnomish engineering favored precision. Every line, every mechanism, every movement of their vessels suggested that someone had spent far too long making certain that everything worked exactly as intended.
Goblin engineering was different. Goblin ships looked as though someone had asked how much punishment a machine could survive and then decided the answer should be tested during the construction process. Both worked and both were dangerous.
And now both were operating in the same stretch of sky. Leylin closed his eyes for a moment.
He had warned them. Three weeks ago, he had sent an intelligence report south detailing the obvious problem. Alliance and Horde gunships were being deployed into the same theater while their factions remained openly hostile.
It wasn't difficult mathematics. Put two armies that hated each other into a confined battlefield and eventually someone would decide the Scourge wasn't the most immediate enemy.
Nobody had listened. The first exchange of fire came less than an hour later. Leylin's monitoring network caught it before the reports could reach him.
One Alliance gunship broke formation. A Horde vessel turned toward it, cannons opened fire. The sound reached him seconds later.
Leylin stared at the sky. "You have got to be kidding me."
The exchange escalated almost immediately. One shot became three. Three became a broadside.
The gunships began maneuvering aggressively, each crew apparently determined to prove that their enemies were more dangerous than the Scourge.
Leylin tracked every movement. He had spent years watching Icecrown, years learning the habits of its defenders. Years studying the terrain, the patrol routes, the magical defenses, and the logistics that kept the Lich King's armies supplied.
And now, after all that preparation, the Alliance and Horde were shooting at each other. He wrote it down, not because he wanted to. Because someone would eventually need to explain why the disaster had happened.
The Death Gate was worse. Much worse. Leylin felt the battle building before the first reports reached him. Mord'rethar's magical signature began to rise.
The Alliance had moved first. Their assault was organized and deliberate. They had studied the gate and committed themselves to taking it, their forces advancing against the Scourge garrison with the confidence of soldiers who believed they had finally found a weakness worth exploiting.
For several minutes, the battle went exactly as expected. The Alliance pushed. The Scourge resisted. The gate's defenses began to buckle, then the Horde arrived from behind.
Leylin's eyes snapped open. "Oh, no." The entire engagement changed. The Alliance had been fighting the Scourge.
Now they were being attacked by the Horde. The Horde had attacked the Alliance. Now they found themselves trapped between the Alliance and the Scourge.
And the Scourge, which had been struggling to hold the gate, suddenly found its enemies killing one another. Three forces collided in the narrow battlefield.
The Broken Front earned its name that day. Leylin watched helplessly. Every report that reached him made the situation worse; a unit broke formation, another was surrounded.
The Horde pushed too far. The Alliance counterattacked. The Scourge surged into the confusion. People died.
Not because the Lich King had outmaneuvered them. Not because his generals had devised some brilliant strategy. They died because two armies that should have been fighting together could not stop fighting each other.
Leylin clenched his jaw. He recorded everything, every movement, every failure.
Every moment when someone could have made a different decision. The monitoring network gave him a perfect view of the disaster, and that was almost worse than being there.
Because he could see exactly what was happening and he could do nothing about it. By the time the Argent Crusade arrived, the battle was already over. Their presence changed the magical atmosphere almost immediately.
The Light spread through the valley as healers and recovery teams moved among the dead. Leylin read the incoming reports.
He stared at them for several seconds then he wrote the summary. Three sides mutually annihilated. He paused. The Scourge retains the Death Gate. The Crusade is recovering the wounded and dead.
He sent it, then he sat in silence. After several minutes, he reached for another communication crystal. This one was for Alleria.
People died at the Death Gate today who did not need to die. He continued before his frustration could soften the words. The Alliance and Horde killed each other while the Scourge watched. The Argent Crusade arrived afterward and found what remained. The Death Gate is still in the Lich King's hands.
Leylin leaned back. We do not have enough soldiers to waste on faction warfare inside Icecrown. He sent the message, his hand immediately moved toward another crystal.
Jaina.
If anyone could turn a military disaster into something politically useful, it was her. The Horde commander responsible for the attack has been reprimanded by Thrall and Garrosh. It isn't enough, but it matters. Their response suggests the Horde leadership understands the attack was strategically foolish, even if their soldiers believed otherwise.
Leylin stared at the crystal. Use that.He sent it, then he looked north. The Lich King had watched everything. That was the part Leylin couldn't stop thinking about.
Arthas hadn't needed to interfere. His enemies were doing enough damage to themselves already. The Shadow Vault was different.
For the first time in days, Leylin watched an operation and felt something approaching relief. The Ebon Blade had been preparing for the assault for some time.
Darion Mograine understood what his death knights needed. They couldn't operate indefinitely without a permanent base. They needed somewhere inside Icecrown where they could regroup, recover, store supplies, and launch attacks without constantly fighting their way back from friendly territory.
The Shadow Vault was perfect. It had already belonged to the Scourge, which meant it had defenses. Storage. Infrastructure. Most importantly, it was already inside the enemy's territory.
The assault began. General Lightsbane was ready. Leylin followed the engagement through the monitoring network, watching the Scourge commander throw everything available into the defense.
The death knights were not given an easy victory. They had to fight for every corridor, every tower, every gate. Lightsbane understood what losing the Vault would mean.
He fought accordingly. But the Ebon Blade had advantages ordinary soldiers didn't. They did not fear death in the same way. They had already experienced it.
They knew exactly what waited beyond it. And they had learned to fight without allowing that knowledge to paralyze them. The Ebon Blade pushed through, Lightsbane fell. The Shadow Vault belonged to Darion Mograine.
Leylin allowed himself a small smile. Finally, someone was doing this correctly. More importantly, the victory meant something. The Ebon Blade now had a permanent foothold in Icecrown.
From there, they could launch attacks against the Scourge's infrastructure instead of wasting men and resources on battles that achieved little. And they immediately began, jotunheim came next.
Unlike the undead, the vrykul were not mindless. That made them more dangerous. The people of Jotunheim had chosen their allegiance to the Lich King. They retained their intelligence, their strength, and their ability to organize.
Leylin had been watching them for years. He knew where their patrols moved. He knew how their supply lines connected to the surrounding Scourge infrastructure. He knew which settlements supported them and which commanders held the most influence.
When Darion's people requested intelligence, Leylin gave them everything he had. The Ebon Blade didn't waste it. Their assault on Jotunheim wasn't a single charge. It was a dismantling, patrols disappeared, supply lines were severed.
Command posts were destroyed, communications failed.
The death knights kept striking at the pieces that held the settlement together. Overthane Balargarde responded exactly as Leylin expected.
He tried to consolidate his forces, there weren't enough left. The Ebon Blade had already taken them apart.
By the time Balargarde finally faced them, he was isolated. Leylin watched his command signature disappear from the monitoring network.
For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the rest of Jotunheim began to collapse. Without Balargarde, the vrykul could still fight but they could no longe
r fight as a unified force.
The settlement had been transformed from a military asset into a collection of isolated warriors. Leylin leaned back. That was how you fought a superior enemy.
You didn't always need to destroy the army. Sometimes you simply removed everything that allowed the army to function. The Weeping Quarry was even better.
Because it wasn't about soldiers, it was about saronite. Leylin understood the importance of the material better than most.
The ore carried Yogg-Saron's influence, and Icecrown's enormous construction and military infrastructure depended upon it. The quarry wasn't simply another Scourge location.
It was part of the machinery that kept the Lich King's fortress functioning. The Ebon Blade understood that, so they attacked it.
Not with a reckless assault designed to create the largest possible explosion.
They targeted the operation itself, mining was disrupted. Transport routes were damaged, workers were driven away.
The flow of saronite began to decline, Leylin watched the quarry's magical signature change through his network.
It wasn't gone, that wasn't the objective. It was weakened and that was enough. A fortress like Icecrown Citadel didn't collapse because one soldier died.
It became vulnerable when enough of its supporting systems began failing at once.
The Ebon Blade was beginning to understand that.
Leylin smiled faintly. "Good." At the end of the week, Leylin assembled the reports. Gunship skirmishes. The Broken Front. The Death Gate. The Shadow Vault. Jotunheim. The Weeping Quarry.
He stared at the collection for a long time, there were two campaigns happening inside Icecrown. One was being fought by the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade.
The other was being fought by the Alliance and Horde against each other. The first was working. The second was becoming a liability.
The Ebon Blade struck where the Scourge was vulnerable. The Argent Crusade provided organization, manpower, healing, and a broader military structure.
Together, they were slowly cutting away the Lich King's advantages. The Alliance and Horde, meanwhile, were wasting soldiers.
Every skirmish between them gave Arthas information, every argument gave him another weakness to exploit, every dead soldier was one less person available when the real battle began.
Leylin picked up his pen. He wrote carefully.
The Ebon Blade is currently the most effective operational force inside Icecrown.
He continued. The Argent Crusade remains the most effective organizing force.
Then came the difficult part. The Alliance and Horde remain a liability while their hostility continues. They are not merely failing to contribute. They are actively creating opportunities for the Lich King.
Leylin stopped, he thought about the Death Gate. About the gunships, about all those people who had died because no one had been willing to put aside old hatred for long enough to remember who the real enemy was.
He finished the report. Someone must restore coordination between the factions before the campaign reaches Icecrown Citadel.
His pen hovered over the final line, then he wrote it. At the citadel's gates, faction warfare will not be a complication. It will be a failure condition.
He sealed the message, the crystal flashed.
The report vanished southward. Leylin stepped outside, then the cold struck him immediately. He looked toward the north.
The Argent Crusade had breached the cliffs. Justice Keep had been established on blighted ground. The Ebon Blade controlled the Shadow Vault. Jotunheim had been crippled. The Weeping Quarry had been disrupted.
For the first time in five years, the forces opposing Arthas were genuinely inside his domain. But Icecrown Citadel remained and Arthas was still there.
Leylin knew the Lich King had seen everything. The victories. The mistakes. The arguments. The deaths. The growing pressure around his fortress, Arthas was not panicking. Not yet.
That worried Leylin more than an army marching over the horizon would have. Because a desperate enemy could be predictable. A patient one was dangerous.
Leylin stood alone at the northern edge of the settlement. The wind swept across the snow. Somewhere beyond the mountains, the Scourge was moving. He couldn't see them. But he could feel them.
The campaign had changed, the front was no longer distant. It was broken. And through that broken front, the armies of the living were slowly approaching the one place where every mistake would finally matter, Icecrown Citadel.
Leylin pulled his coat tighter, five years of watching had taught him one thing above all others. Arthas could afford to wait, the question was whether his enemies could.