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[hider=Prologue]She had read stories of orcs, among all the other tales. And, of course, the scripture, which presented them as a base, evil people that only existed to inflict punishment on the goodly peoples. They were always cast as the louts and the thugs, disorganized killers, foot troops for malevolent demons in need of a mortal army or demented wizards addled by their spellcasting into desiring ambition above all other. They were lance fodder for the knights.

Well, Castle Vendal's knights went out with a small force of men at arms and conscripted peasants with their billhooks and bows, ready to repel the orcish raiders. 

None came back. In the distance, a day ago, the skyline glowed with the fires and the haggard messengers came back, wild-eyed and in blood-stained bandages, the stragglers of the battle telling tales of demon armies of wolves and armored killers that cut Vendal's defenders down like wheat. It was a chant she heard for herself when the orcs lay siege to what was left of the garrison, but it wasn't a prayer to demons -- it was the orcs carrying the standards, skulls and furs atop a pole, keeping the cadence of the march as they moved forward and into place. Little was there of the wild raiders of the tales, the easy prey for skilled knights, the witless buffoon minions of some warlord. These were green-skinned and fierce, the tales got that much right. But what the tales got wrong was everything else.

Vendal fell quickly, it was hard to say how or precisely where the breach occurred, just that it was terrible armored figures in red riding giant wolves that managed to find a place to vault over the walls and take the gatehouse. More marched in, figures in dull gray armor painted with blood red, festooned in spikes, fur and skulls, to join the fray in the courtyard, fighting with a cold discipline and inexorable strength; their swords were angled strangely, their weaponry wickedly forged in shapes alien to humans, and their use was callous, brutal and bloody, but it wasn't inept. These figures were brutes, but they were brutes that used it to their advantage, battering down their foes and then finishing them in a messy but efficient fashion.

Blood splashed the courtyard below when the human defenders of Vendal finally threw their arms up and gave surrender; surprisingly, they were gathered together rather than slaughtered outright, though there was clearly some sort of argument over it-- a darker-skinned orc than the others punched one of his own out in the course of an argument and bellowed something that sounded a lot like orders.

Adrissa wasn't the only one in the room; Osula and Avera were there, comforting each other and weeping in turn. Vel, the seneschal, had a sword, but he was well past his fighting prime. All they could do, in the chamber where they'd been put as soon as it was apparent that a green horde was laying siege to the castle, was wait out the screams, the howls, and the grunts, flinching with every loud noise. Flinching with every footstep that thudded up the stairs nearby, ominously closer and closer as Vel finally got his sword up and ready -- once a knight, he was long past the fighting prime of his youth and, in any case, never a warrior of great note, but he was tight-lipped, grim-jawed and determined to go down. [i]Dear fool,[/i] Adrissa thought.

The door opened, the sword came down and was caught in the flanges of a halberd; and the old man pushed back with enough force to knock the wind from him and leave the sword clattering to the ground; the figure before them wore plate mail, immense and red-lacquered, with the fur fringe and engravings of skulls and snakes and other things of mythology upon it -- well-wrought, beautiful. There was a helmet there, shaped like a snarling demon mask, though the tusks were real, and the thing was created to accommodate the fact that they jutted. 

One word came from that mouth, as those baleful, bloodshot eyes took in the opposition before them, "Hold." The halberd was lowered, the spearpoint aimed for Vel's ribcage, and there were others behind this immense figure, giving conversational grunts and harsh consonants in the course of whatever it was they spoke of amongst themselves when it was cut violently short with a battlecry and a death-rattle; the orcs turned to face their foes, also large, also wearing furs, though cruder, and wielding weapons similar to their own...[/hider]

The tuskers held Vendal for the moment, and they found out an unpleasant surprise -- it wasn't simply a damned strategic holding point that Lord Ren Arad wanted taken to secure the march route for his troops, Koloch the Butcher almost literally tripped some a roomful of bunnies who posed no threat, and then had to fend off a bunch of bunnies dressed as tuskers and wielding tusker weapons, big bunnies but bunnies all the same. The unpleasantness of the surprise didn't flap the Butcher, or the tuskers with him besides the one that got killed by a blade to the back, and they managed to saw through the assassins quickly. 

It was Dakgu that pointed out that the weapons were tribal tusker, variety of tribe marks, and so the ruse wasn't intended for any orc. Jagath added his two bits in; whoever arranged for a bunch of bunny killers to kill some other bunnies with tusker weapons was probably looking to set Nar Mat Kordh-Ishi up for something ugly. 

Radush Eye-Drinker added the kicker -- if you wanted to get rid of someone important and didn't want to take credit, who would you use? Why not a bunch of tusker mercenaries, throw them away because they're a liability to a man trying to gain the trust of the commons anyway. That went over well enough considering it was a room full of tuskers talking, which often involved someone getting the green smacked off them somewhere down the line, but it made a lot of sense here. The Company, right out of the gate on its first legitimate campaign, instead of just guarding caravans and scaring off bandits, found itself in the position of getting stiffed on the gold and set up as a bunch of killers.

"But Warlord," asked one of the Tuskers, "Whose the bunny girl they want dead?"

Then they found out. Koloch didn't just trip over some bunnies cowering in a tower; the Butcher found Stephen's bastard daughter and now she was in the hands of Nar Mat Kordh-Ishi. There was an argument over what to do with the girl, but the old Eye-Drinker pointed out that the entire setup was that they were going to be blamed for killing her, so they better damned well keep the girl alive so they could parade her for all the bunnies to see.

The company made ready for another siege, this time doing the defending, and old Radush Eye-Drinker went to have tea, of all things, with Adrissa, the last of the direct line Orenths. Though Stephen's bastard daughter with some woods witch, she was still, depending on who interpreted the law, a direct heir to the throne of Ceril. The whole damned war was about who was supposed to put their ass on the bunny throne and apparently Ren Arad's plan was to blame tuskers for killing the girl.

Plan B became apparent when the warhorns signalled the alert -- some of Ren Arad's forces were arrayed for a siege at Vendal, moving in to invest around the walls. The idea was probably a lot like plan A; kill the tuskers, kill the girl, blame the girl on the tuskers.

Dakgu could see from his vantage on the curtain wall what was coming; but it was hard for him to relay those things, and sieges weren't what he did anyway. But the bunnies were busy building something. The one down there that looked like he was doing the directing? Well, he sprouted an orcish arrow. Dakgu Elf-Scalper was never one to wait on the niceties of a fight, like letting the enemy notice him aiming at them.

The enemy's first siege engineer went down gurgling and pink-frothing, and the bunnies fired several crossbows at the Elf-Scalper, even as some new bunny started shouting to the other bunnies and went about reorganizing the ladder parties...