The tribal war horn possessed a complexity that would make even the most talented bard weep with frustration.
Naturally, your average knuckle-dragging human couldn't hope to decipher the intricate rises and falls of its haunting melody - it was like trying to read draconic runes while blindfolded and spinning.
But Duke had never been your garden-variety human - oh no, he was sharper than a freshly forged Stormwind blade!
All it took was systematically cataloging the Horde's verbal patterns, cross-referencing them with their tactical behaviors, and voilà - the puzzle pieces fell into place like dominoes in a perfectly planned sequence.
The dirty little secret was that Orcish grammar wasn't worlds apart from Common tongue - both followed the tried-and-true subject-predicate-object formula that even the dimmest recruit could eventually grasp.
Master that basic principle, and you'd unlocked the linguistic treasure chest.
The horn call now echoing from the human coalition, when translated into proper Orcish, bellowed a message crystal clear: "We're charging from the north - coordinate your attack, you green-skinned beauties!"
"By the ancestors' beards! That's not our war horn!" Orgrim roared, realization hitting him like a runaway kodo beast.
"Then whose is it!?" Thrall didn't need to finish his question - a trumpeter from the nearby ridgeline had already answered with a responding blast that asked in perfect horn-speak: "Which clan claims this battlefield, brothers?"
Silence stretched for several heartbeats, thick as molasses and twice as uncomfortable.
Then came the reply that made every orc's blood turn to ice water in their veins.
Another few seconds of stunned silence gripped Orgrim's forces. For one terrifying moment, the legendary warchief almost considered tucking tail and running faster than a spooked rabbit, consequences be damned.
This had to be some cosmic joke played by malevolent spirits!
Thrall's jaw dropped like a stone, and he nearly took Frostmourne's kiss across his throat for his trouble. He hit the dirt in the most ungraceful combat roll imaginable, barely avoiding the cursed blade's horizontal sweep that would have separated his head from his shoulders.
Not just the four Horde champions, but their entire battle line erupted into chaos louder than a goblin demolition gone wrong.
That particular sequence of notes hadn't graced any battlefield for over a decade, and it carried only one meaning - a meaning that struck fear into veteran hearts like lightning splitting ancient oaks.
It was a name whispered in the darkest corners of orcish war councils, a name that made even the bravest warriors check their weapons twice - Edmund Duke.
The complete message rang out with all the subtlety of a mountain giant doing ballet: "This is Duke speaking, you magnificent green bastards! Need a hand with your little undead problem, or should I pack up my toys and find more appreciative customers elsewhere!?"
Among the Horde ranks, those muscle-brained berserkers who lived by the motto "Lok'tar ogar - victory or death!" had long since been planted six feet under with grass growing through their ribcages.
Every orc who'd survived more than ten years of this nightmare possessed the cunning of a fox and twice the paranoia.
Especially these battle-scarred chieftains.
Orgrim and Rexxar had both tasted the bitter defeat of the Searing Gorge campaign, spending years as prisoners before engineering their daring escapes.
Grom had been hunted through Tirisfal Glades like a wild boar by the Windrunner sisters - first by Alleria and Vereesa working in deadly tandem, then later by young Sylvanas who'd proven just as relentless and twice as creative with her pursuit tactics.
Though Thrall had been raised far from traditional orcish lands, he'd endured years of brutal slavery as a gladiator, learning survival lessons written in blood and pain.
The humans' suspicious troop movements earlier, those holy-light-blessed siege weapons conveniently abandoned in their camps, the Scourge's perfectly timed assault, the impossibly powerful Death Knight commander leading the charge, and now Duke revealing his presence like a master puppeteer stepping from behind the curtain.
When you connected all these dots, any fool could see the bigger picture - this entire clusterfuck bore Duke's signature style written all over it in letters ten feet tall.
"Is that the same demon-spawned Duke who's haunted our nightmares!?" Grom snarled through gritted teeth, using Gorehowl to deflect Arthas's vicious overhead strike: "That shameless snake actually has the brass balls to suggest an alliance!?"
"Who else possesses such bottomless audacity!" Orgrim spat, his war hammer crashing against Arthas's guard with bone-jarring force, leaving a taste more bitter than week-old grog in his mouth.
"Spirits preserve us, what's our play here!?" Thrall bellowed over the clash of steel and the screams of the dying.
What choice did they have?
What options remained on this blood-soaked table?
Even knowing with crystal clarity that bastard Duke had dug this trap deeper than the Maelstrom itself, even recognizing that the entire Horde now dangled over the abyss like a side of meat over hungry wolves, what alternatives existed?
Could they possibly grovel before that inhuman death-mask wearing abomination?
Arthas would cheerfully transform every last one of them into shambling corpse-puppets for his twisted amusement.
The Horde possessed enough spine to tell Duke to take his offer and shove it where Ragnaros keeps his summer home. Perhaps the humans would eventually figure out how to handle the extra hundreds of thousands of orc zombies that decision would create - maybe, possibly, if they were feeling particularly clever. But if the humans decided to abandon this battlefield, the Horde would be kneeling in unmarked graves.
The Horde needed to live, to fight another day, to rebuild from these ashes - not to make their final stand in this cursed place!
Orgrim ducked low and grabbed a dying orc warrior, using the poor soul's body as a grisly shield against Arthas's Death Coil: "Thrall, my boy! You must understand - as a leader, your decisions will inevitably be soaked in pain and compromise!"
Pain? Oh, there was pain aplenty!
Ever since childhood, Thrall had built Duke up in his mind as the ultimate adversary, the final boss battle that would define his destiny as a leader.
After struggling for years, clawing his way up from slavery to leadership, this legendary villain who should have been rotting in some forgotten tomb had materialized before him like a bad dream made flesh.
Who could have predicted that their first actual encounter would see Thrall trapped in Duke's web like a fly in amber, forced to beg for salvation from his greatest enemy?
The nauseating sensation of being outmaneuvered, outthought, and utterly humiliated by Duke's superior intellect coursed through every fiber of Thrall's being like liquid fire.
However, Thrall possessed both iron determination and the wisdom of ages beyond his years. After locking eyes with Orgrim, he reached his decision with the speed of lightning striking...
Five kilometers northward, the Scarlet Crusade had regrouped after their relatively manageable skirmish, looking like victorious heroes rather than battered survivors. They couldn't claim to be completely unscathed, but by the Light's grace, this counted as a rare and decisive triumph.
Over 200,000 shambling zombies, tens of thousands of razor-clawed ghouls, and thousands of cave-dwelling crypt fiends and stone gargoyles had been reduced to rotting meat and scattered bones. Dalaran's infantry regiments were systematically mopping up stragglers and carefully gathering corpses, preparing the mother of all funeral pyres.
Duke had warned them with bone-chilling certainty that leaving these remains intact would be like gifting the Scourge with premium building materials - even dismembered parts could be reassembled into far more terrifying undead monstrosities.
Duke's vivid descriptions of Scourge capabilities had scared several Kirin Tor Council members whiter than fresh Northrend snow.
Privately, Duke exhaled with relief: Thank the Light this wasn't the fully matured Scourge yet. Those grotesque flesh mountains known as Abominations - sewn together from dozens of corpses into walking nightmares - hadn't yet been birthed from necromantic wombs. Similarly, the Blood-Bone Golems, those horrific fusion creatures blending meat and skeleton through dark ritual, remained undeveloped by the Scourge's twisted lich architects.
Apparently, Arthas hadn't yet secured the allegiance of the fearsome Frost Wyrms either.
The current Scourge was a pale shadow compared to its historical peak of power.
More importantly, Arthas himself was operating at reduced capacity. The original timeline's Arthas had endured the soul-crushing massacre at Stratholme's holy streets - a mental trauma that dwarfed burning down a simple orphanage. That had been a speed competition between him and the dreadlords to see who could "mercy kill" infected civilians before their transformation completed - a race against time that destroyed whatever remained of his humanity.
That kind of conscience-shredding torture was infinitely more damaging than incinerating a building full of orphans.
While he'd certainly become the most formidable Death Knight in existence, the flickering remnants of humanity buried deep in his corrupted soul significantly limited his access to the darkest powers.
That weakness was precisely what Duke intended to exploit like a master lockpick working a complicated mechanism.
With those battle-hardened Horde warriors serving as his shield wall, Duke calculated a solid 50% chance of bringing Arthas to his knees right here, right now.
After the horn call faded into echoes, Mograine shifted nervously, anxiety written across his weathered features like battle scars: "Will the Horde actually accept this mad proposal?"
Never mind the Horde struggling with this paradigm shift - the Alliance was having its own identity crisis.
Suddenly announcing an alliance with their ancient enemies?
If anyone other than the legendary hero and current Alliance supreme commander Duke had suggested this tactical marriage of convenience, his own generals would have staged a mutiny faster than you could say "For the Alliance!"
"If any of you brilliant tacticians feels confident about defeating a million-strong undead army led by a demigod of death using purely human forces, I'll gladly hand over my command staff and find a nice tavern to drink myself into oblivion," Duke silenced every dissenting voice with that single, devastating statement.
At that moment, a smile crept across Duke's lips - the confident grin of a gambler holding all the aces: "The Horde will accept. They have no choice but to dance to my tune."