Half  Face shoved his way to the corner tower which had, in the space of just a few brief hours, become the haunt of the witch. Tuskers rushing to their stations gave the mutilated commander a wide berth as he forced his way through the over-crowded castle, but whatever deference they showed him, they showed it doubly around the crone's chambers. A recruit in his cups had once joked that old Ten Braid shared Half Face's tent, since he was the only tusker in the Company ugly enough to have her. Rumor was, the recruit'd vomited blood and maggots for a week afterwards, and had died bent over in the mud, skin all pale and twitching with worms. That was the last time the footsloggers made any jokes.  
  
Half Face ducked through a narrow portal into the room where the witch was working, his lidless eye swiveling grotesquely as he surveyed the scene. It was a charnel house. Xozu was collecting corpses from the recent battle, it seemed, though for what purpose the devils alone knew.  
  
Xozu was as ever an orc apart from the rushing footfalls of pikes, spikes and blades, the old crone prescribing to her own indolent pace as she shuffled from one fallen defender to the next within the confines of her cluttered den. It was hard to tell if she'd chosen the chamber for it's inherent decrepitude or merely poisoned it with her presence, the stale air thick with cobwebs.  
  
"Neophyte" she lulled at the long-expected war chief, voice creaky and cold as she greeted him. The witch's eyes were even less obliging, pinned to the nearby corpse in bleak appraisal.   
  
"The pinkskins betrayed us, just as you said they would." Half Face said, the right side of his mouth curled in a frown, "They're marching on us now; they'll storm us by nightfall."  
  
Ten-Braid had merely raised a hand at this, signaling either a keen sense that he had said his peace or she had heard her fill.   
  
"Dung rarely cools before the flies gather." she'd tut indignantly, leveraging apart a rictus frown set in stark relief across a dead man's mouth. "Let them." crooned the withered hag, bowing at the waist to ply a deep embrace upon the lifeless levyman.   
  
Straightening she passed his tongue unceremoniously into a waiting bowl and thumbed away the evidence of her act "In the end they'll just eat shit."  
  
"Aye," replied Half Face "It'll be a pretty piece of work, though."  
  
"Surely you did not rush up all these steps just to tell what I already know, Neophyte."  
  
"No. These bunny women... Radush is keepin' awful mum." said Half Face, watching as the hag cut out yet another corpses' tongue,  
  
"Better to ask what the [i]girl's[/i] worth is to the pretender Ren Arad. It is Orenth blood that warms that thirsty throne, and he hasn't a drop to be wrung. Why would this man suffer allies such as we?"  
  
Half Face's right eye narrowed, and he stayed quiet a moment, head cocked to one side, as though listening for something.  
  
"What're the tongues for?" he asked at length, changing the subject.  
  
"What are all tongues for?" she answered, smiling the sort of smile that only showed teeth. "Away with you now Neophyte, concern yourself with your own tongue awhile. You've yet to wag it at Eye-Drinker, I see from the ugly glint in your eye."   
  
With that she waved him away like an odor that had lingered too long, barking a prediction at his back "That you will return after the sun sinks and banners rise portents gravely for our assailants. As do the twelve arrows you will bring me."  
  
Half Face snorted and turned away, his tattered cloak and furs billowing out behind him as he went. Outside, he grabbed the nearest porter by the lapels.  
  
"Ch-Chief?" asked the stunned tusker, green skin draining under the commander's unblinking glare.  
  
"The old bitch wants arrows." Half Face snarled, jerking one taloned thumb at the witch's tower,  "So get them."