Oh. [i]It was on.[/i]

Brande considered himself an honourable swordsman, and lived his life by the swordsman’s code: take no innocent life, show no ill-will in victory, uphold the weak and undo the wicked - the standard, soldier-with-no-country spiel. 
He didn’t believe in sneak attacks, or unnecessary deaths. And although he might once have been young and foolish, wandering had tempered his spirit to the point he no longer saw his sword as a tool of vengeance, so much as it was the chisel with which he had shaped himself.
But nobody. [I]Nobody[/i] laid their hands on his blade. 
Orcs had taken everything else from him. They’d never take this.

He would kindly have given them the clothes from his back, to spare a young woman so severe a punishment for so meagre a crime. Nay, he would have taken a beating in her place, were it an option. Not for some ill-held sense of chivalry, but so another needn't suffer as he already had.
But the moment ‘Shuzug’ laid eyes on Esmeralda, any swordsman’s code became foreign to him. 
He met Zanna’s green eyes, and held her stare for a moment: the collected calmness of his own grey irises seemed to dissipate before her. No longer were they cool and still, pebble-like in their docility. Now they smouldered like fresh ash, as the fire in his belly grew. 
He exhaled, sharply. And smiled crookedly.

One sharp movement, a metallic uppercut which tore through the air with such sudden speed it was almost soundless: in an instant, Brande had Esmeralda’s tip pressing into the flesh of Shuzug’s throat, right beneath his chin. Not quite hard enough to pierce the orc’s flesh, but hard enough to make an indent where it sat, and no doubt make breathing very, very uncomfortable.
He hadn’t run him through, yet… but that was a simple mistake to fix.
"[color=#DC381F]If you so much as try to [i]think[/i] about moving, I’ll spot the migraine brewing on your face and cut your throat out like I’m gutting a fish,[/color]" he recited, accent thick, tongue fast. He’d heard his father say it once, perhaps it had been the very night Serafina Heights burned. 
His eyes darted to the other orc, Varfu, but his sword-hand didn’t waver.
"[color=#DC381F]You make an interesting suggestion, but here’s my counter,[/color]" he began anew, expression calm, but eyes alight,  "[color=#DC381F]You drop the lady, nice and slow, otherwise your friend might just get his wish. Because he’ll get my sword, alright. Right through his jugular and up into his brain stem. Understood?”[/color]"

[i]"[color=#DC381F]Nobody needs to die here, not today. I hope you're smarter than your cousin over here,[/color]"[/i] Brande thought to himself, pushing Esmeralda's tip in further, mutely, to illustrate his point.