Chapter 357: Chapter 341 – Treachery Afoot

 

“It is one thing to break down negotiations out of excessive price or perceived insults. It is another when the other side clearly never intended to negotiate in good faith to begin with.” - Liang Si-Zu, famed general and tactician of the Huan Confederacy, after the infamous Red Tent massacre of 97 VA.

Aideen had always that the stories which claimed that certain personages from history died on the spot from excessive anger were mere exaggerations, but when she saw how the face of the Marquis turned as red as a monkey’s arse and how the veins on his forehead clearly protruded to the surface, she thought there might well be some truth to those stories.

 

After all, an older man in poor health might well have burst a blood vessel or two were they to display such excessive anger. If those blood vessels happened to burst in the wrong place, she could see them succumb to a massive hemorrhage of the brain or a fatal stroke, which would definitely count for the achievement of angering someone to death.

 

Nobody - not even the human soldiers - looked surprised when the Marquis spluttered out an order to “kill the savages”, while the orcs and Aideen just collectively shrugged their shoulders and went into action almost immediately. Even if there had been a genuine intent to negotiate from the start, having the opposite side’s representative so clearly holding them in contempt was something that ensured the orcs would have never accepted their offer.

 

The orcs exchanged no words as they simply brought out their weapons or began to wove together the magic that flowed through their bodies. The elderly figures were all entirely prepared - and all too willing - to die in one last blaze of glory rather than to decay away with old age. Aideen herself brought out her staff and held it at the ready as the soldiers and knights reacted to the order and prepared to attack.

 

Half the soldiers around them unlimbered crossbows from their backs and made to aim at the orcs, but a solid wall of earth suddenly sprung up in front of the group of crossbowmen to their left as the old shamans worked their magic. Those on the right never got the chance to shoot as the elderly orc warriors together with Aideen jumped on them like a pack of lions jumping on a herd of startled gazelles.

 

Her staff struck the arms of one soldier, breaking one of them and throwing his crossbow aside. Beside her, Warchief Buknug was far less subtle and straight up cleaved a soldier nearly in half with his paddle-like weapon which was studded with absurdly sharp obsidian blades on its narrow sides. Another of the old chieftains skewered through two soldiers with a spear that was mostly just a crudely sharpened one made of hardwood.

 

All the chieftain and shaman who volunteered for the “negotiations” had passed down their favorite weapons to their successors, and had brought only the most basic weapons usually used by young hunters and warriors with them.

 

Since they had expected the negotiations to be a trap from the start, they had also agreed with those who waited behind that should they not return within an allotted amount of time, or if a visible ruckus started at the negotiation site, those left behind should take that as a signal to attack. As such, one of the old shamans hurled a ball of flames towards the fabric at the top of the tent and set it afire.

 

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Despite the advanced age of the orc delegation, they charged with a ferocity that none of the humans seemed to have expected. It had taken them mere moments to have slaughtered half of the crossbowmen in the tent, even if two of their number fell with a multitude of bolts piercing their bodies. The rest had not even blinked at the losses and continued their headlong charge at the remaining humans.

 

Apparently some of the knights had been a mage as well, as shortly afterwards an opening formed in the stone wall the shamans made to cut off a portion of the humans from the rest. A group of crossbowmen used the opening and shot over a dozen bolts into Shaman-Chief Gekosi from Clan Snakeeyes. To their surprise, the elderly, frail-looking orcish shaman refused to fall, not even when two soldiers stepped forward and pierced him through with their spears.

 

Instead, in a feat of willpower that would likely haunt the nightmares of those human soldiers should they survive this day, the old orc pushed the spears through his body until he came close enough to lay a hand on one of the soldiers. The old shaman-chief perished shortly afterward, but not before he had choked the life from one of his killers.

 

That feat also brought time for the rest of the orcs to turn around and charge towards the soldiers and crossbowmen on the other side, while the rest of their numbers fought off the remaining soldiers and knights to their right. Aideen had not failed to notice that the portly Marquis had fled with his tail behind his back at the first sign of trouble either.

 

He left his retinue of knights behind to tackle the orcs however, and it was those well-equipped men and women who gave the orcs the toughest fight despite all their ferocity. The soldiers already had their morale teetering at the edge once they saw the ferocity of the orcish delegates, but it was a much more even fight against the knights, which was troublesome when the soldiers were also still present to help outnumber the orcs.

 

Warchief Buknug took on two of the knights at once, heavy blows from his weapon forcing them back and denting their shields even as they landed minor cuts on his imposing form which he entirely ignored. Aideen could have healed all the wounds the orcs suffered, likely even prevented the deaths they had suffered, but she had not done so, because the elderly contingent had asked her not to do so.

 

They wished for a glorious end and she chose to respect their choice.

 

In the end, Warchief Buknug eventually managed to land a solid blow against one of the knights, a blow so fierce that it not only swatted the knight’s sword aside, but it also made a great dent on the plate armor he wore as it crushed the man’s shoulder brutally. The blow also broke the warchief’s weapon but he paid no heed to it as he grasped the knight’s head with one hand and the man’s neck with the other.

 

Then he literally tore the knight’s head off his body with his bare hands even as the other knight’s sword pierced through his chest.

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