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spat, casting a hideous flickering shadow of the orc against the stone walls.  Nagbadesh was one of his creatures, leader of a tribe he had brought haltingly out of the captured province of Undersalve.  The short but muscular orc was an unusual chieftain in a race where physical size was the foremost of virtues.  Still Nagbadesh had flung off many taller and broader challengers for his title.  With his rival Hulgrid of the Blackskulls reduced to a headless stone statue in the outer bailey of Listcairn castle, it seemed Nagbadesh thought the time ripe to assert his own and his tribe’s supremacy,
    Nagbadesh glared at the unresponsive gathering.  Odestus had noted the chieftain’s fondness for stan ding when others were sitting.  It gave him a rare opportunity to look down on them, an opportunity he exploited now.  His amber eyed gaze shifted from face to face while his grey green physiognomy twisted into a scowl of disgust. 
    Chief Porgud had killed five others in unarmed single combat en route to succeeding Hulgrid as leader of the Blackskulls.  But he found something of great interest in the inlaid edge of the council table, rather than return the Redfang leader’s stare.
    Vesten the pale human secretary , devoid of martial prowess or skills of command and present here only at Odestus’s insistence, gazed anywhere and everywhere but at the glowering orc.
    The nomad captains, comrades in arms of Nagbadesh from the victory at Bledrag field five years earlier, exchanged glances between themselves, in preference to any sign of fellowship with Nagbadesh’s stance.
    Only Barnuck and Willem, seated either side of the council’s hooded and masked leader would meet the short one’s gaze.  The former, chieftain of the Bonegrinders, glared back with a fierce intensity, his own grey lips curling in contempt.  The latter, a hardened career criminal and survivor of fifteen years beyond the barrier, eyed the angry orc with confident disdain.
    “ I see you cowards too.” Nagbadesh spat.  “We wait here when there is half breed flesh and human blood to feed on in the hills.  Your blood is cold, Rugan has stolen fire from your veins, or maybe…”
    He swung his gaze upon the council leader, braving the masked sparkle of her hidden eyes, intent on some further rejoinder.  The mood arou nd the table abruptly shifted.  Calculated indifference froze into breath holding expectation, as they perceived a line about to be crossed. 
    Nagbadesh was stopped short of any unwise utterance by Dema rising to her feet between Willem and Barnuck.  The hood slipped from her head so the crowning glory of snakes stirred into instant hissing wakefulness. Her right hand snapped up, not to the hilt of her sword, but to the gauze mask across her eyes.  At the gesture, Nagbadesh shut his own eyes and turned his head to the side. 
    “You forget to w hom you speak, Chief Nagbadesh, and by whose authority you are permitted to speak,” the Medusa barked.  “While you stumbled through failures in burning elven forests and the cloying swamp of the Saeth levels, I routed the army of Nordsalve with but three hundred soldiers.  We sit at council in the untakeable fortress of Listcairn, which my force captured unaided while yours floundered through marsh piss and shit. I am not used to having my judgement questioned least of all in my own council.  Perhaps I have made a mistake in having but a single orcish statue for my courtyard.   Should Hulgrid’s headless monument need a matched pair I see now where it will come from.”  
    Nagbadesh persisted but his challenge became a piteous whine.  “Why we wait ? Redfangs need battle. Battle and blood.”
    “That they shall have in plenty, when battle comes your place shall be in the vanguard , Nagbadesh.  But this foe we seek is no fool. There are tricks and traps he has planned for us in the hills.  We shall draw him down onto the plain but at a time of our choosing, time when it is our