Free Wrath Of The Medusa (Book 2) by T.O. Munro Page B

Tomorrow I cut down their half-breed general myself.”
    “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” De ma told him as she dismounted, closely followed by Barnuck.  “You’ll follow the plan exactly as I’ve told you.”
    “Redfangs not cowards,” Nagbadesh protested.
    “Of course not, but you want to kill humans and plenty of them?”
    “Yes, yes, lady.”
    “Then you’ll follow the bloody plan and I promise you, Chief Nagbadesh, you’ll spill enough human blood to swim in.”
    “How plan work again?”
    Dema sighed and shook her hooded head.  She turned to Willem and Kimbolt. “Give us a minute, maybe ten.”
    The outlander and the bed slave nodded their acquiescence and left Dema and her orcish lieutenant re-explaining the finer tactical details to Nagbadesh. Willem dismounted to exchange a few words with the handful of outlander humans assigned to serve embedded roles in the Redfangs tribe; their task was to ensure no ambiguity or misunderstandings at company level should impede the execution of Dema’s strategy. 
    Alone Kimbolt urged his horse onwards towards the Redfangs forward lines.  The orcs eyed him with a mixture of curiosity and hunger, but the discipline of Dema was armour enough to protect him against their vile instincts.  The grey green humanoids serving under the Medusa’s command had quickly learned to work with their human allies, rather than to eat them.    Kimbolt felt as safe riding through this tribe of three thousand orcs as he had been walking the corridors of Sturmcairn in times so distant as to be almost forgotten.
    The setting S un behind him lit up the slopes of the Palacintas.  Kimbolt urged his steed onwards, beyond the vigilant cordon of orcish archers, and walked his horse slowly up the Eastway.  The horse’s hooves clopped loudly on the smooth cobbles of the greatest straightest road in the Petred Isle.  A normal evening would have seen a bustle of traffic, carts thronging the road in both directions, particularly in the years since the fall of Undersalve had cut off the river route from Morsalve to the sea.  But now the busiest road in the Salved Kingdom, the road that never slept, bore but one solitary horseman. 
    Kimbolt hauled lightly on the reins to bring his cob to a halt, a little pressure from his knees and the horse turned full circle on the spot.  To the East lay Rugan’s lines, skirmishers and archers hiding behind boulders a nd trees barely a bowshot away lining the pathway into the hills with a honeyed trap.  To the West lay the Redfangs’ camp, their fires glowing, their own archers poised.
    For a long minute Kimbolt stood there, midway between the two front lines in the great battle that would be joined when morning rose.  He understood something of Dema’s exhilaration.  What soldier did not dream of such a moment, of a single day when the fate of a nation would depend on their generalship.  He shook his head ruefully, clicked his tongue and urged his horse back towards the Redfangs’ lines. 
    Willem was waiting for him, “where did you go, bed slave?”
    “To have a look at the enemy,” Kimbolt replied.

***
      Abroath was late, the last to join the council, but the other captains parted to allow the robed prior a place at Rugan’s campaign table.   The Prince had conjured a three dimensional image of the battleground more vivid and compelling than any map.  At his shoulder the Lady Kychelle nodded her approval as he recapped his dispositions.
    “Here is the great Eastway,” the half-elf was saying.  “The Redfangs have crept closer and closer to our outliers, without realising what steel jaws they have placed themselves between.  This salient they have created is a weak point in the centre of their line.  The main body of the enemy is too far behind away to the West just this side of the Saeth.  Tomorrow at dawn we launch our assault.  The Redfangs will break or be destroyed.  We will pursue their remnants.”
    “But sire,