“Most nobles would tell you that participants of a parley were considered sacrosanct, and that it would be a great disservice to do any harm to them. What they would not tell you was that such a treatment was only applied to those they considered their equal in standing, and not to their lessers.

Thus, beware nobles offering to parley.” - Hans-Bjork Loenvell, Veteran mercenary.

To everyone’s surprise, the gathered human army - over sixty thousand of them compared to the gathered horde of nearly eighty thousand prairie warriors as they had prepared for such an eventuality in the past decade or so - ceased their northwards advance a day’s distance from the fort the previous expedition had raised and now were in orcish hands, and set up their camps.

It was as if they awaited the horde to come to them, and while some wondered what the humans had in mind, the gathered chieftains agreed to advance towards the human encampment and see what they wanted.

The horde gathered by the fort not half a day after the human army came to a halt. They never really planned to make use of the fort defensively - that was more of a human thing and the prairie warriors waged war differently - but instead only used it as an observation post and denied its use to their enemies. Since it was already late in the day by the time they arrived, both armies just stared at each other across the distance while they passed the night rather peacefully.

Aideen was not resting though, as she climbed to one of the corner towers of the fort and peered through a spyglass at the human encampment from the top of the tower. Then she called out the regions from the emblems and sigils she saw in the flags and Celia jotted them down. It was not far from her expectations to see some of the participants in the previous invasion take part once more, including several more of the western and northern regions of the Empire, but some were also missing entirely.

For example, the flag of Ezram and the Holy Kingdom were absent. Those made sense as they were smaller nations, and probably still reeled from the losses of the previous campaign. They were not the only ones, however, as from the banners she saw, she had not seen one to represent Lavinja either. Instead, there were a half-dozen banners she had not recognized at all. From the height they were raised on and the size of the flags itself, she guessed they probably belonged to smaller regions or noble houses, which wouldn’t have been odd for her to miss in her travels.

After she climbed down from the tower, she passed on her observations to the gathered warchiefs. They nodded in assent of the things she noticed and pointed out. As for the numbers, the warriors of the prairie were not particularly worried. From all their observations the army arrayed before them was little different than the previous one.

Mostly a few noble lords, their respective retinue of knights and a larger group of men-at-arms, padded out by large amounts of conscripted soldiers. It was a very linear command structure, one prone to decapitation strikes, as without their noble lords the peasants would unlikely be willing to risk their lives any further on the field of battle.

When the morning arrived the next day, to their surprise, they found a letter tied to an arrow that had been shot into the fort’s wooden palisade. One of the younger orcs plucked it out from the wall and brought it to the chiefs, and then they called for Aideen and Andromarche, as the letter was in the Empire’s tongue and none of the orcish chiefs spoke that, much less read it. Some of them had taken the time to learn common from Aideen or their other human adoptees, since it had more widespread use, but the Empire’s tongue was another matter altogether.

Aideen duly translated the contents of the letter to the warchiefs. It was one written with pompous notes, pretty much what she would have expected from a noble, and pretty much demanded the “savages” to send their leaders to meet under the flag of parley with the leaders of the expedition. Needless to say, even the simplest of the warchiefs thought that there was something fishy to the letter.

“Smells like some sort of trap? Maybe they think we’re stupid enough to just walk there for them to kill?” proposed warchief Ragusa of the Grimclaw. She was one of the younger warchiefs who had just succeeded the position less than a year ago after the unfortunate passing of her predecessor during a thunder lizard hunt. She was also one of the orcs who were openly friendly to their human adoptees and supposedly even had dalliances with the one who joined her tribe before she was made warchief.

“I would say almost certainly so, honored Warchief,” replied Andromarche from the side. “I recognize the name that letter had been signed under. Marquis Voswort had many… unsavory rumors about him in my homeland, and that was something even I heard about despite his domain being far away from where I lived.”

“We had heard of such rumors as well during our travels, but had no idea it was that much of a common knowledge,” added Aideen while Celia nodded beside her.

“If they want to make it a trap, then I say we oblige them,” came another voice from the gathering. All the eyes turned to look at the source of the voice and saw that it was the elderly shaman of the Stonehooves. The old shaman was an orc deep into his graying years and probably had little more than a year left to live at best, as he was clearly on his last legs already.

“I concur,” said Warchief Buknug of the Redhorns. He too was one of the oldest in the gathering, and while his frame was still hale and hearty, the way his hair had begun to gray at the sides was a sign that he too was entering his graying years. Gray hair was a sign that an orc approached his last days, and their physical condition greatly deteriorated over the next five to ten years until they eventually perished. “If they truly intend to parley, then so be it. If it was indeed a trap on the other hand…”

“Then we get to die in glory and have our tales told to the children!” said another old shaman, clearly enthusiastic at the prospect. “I, Shaman-Chief Gekosi of the Snakeeyes would like to volunteer myself for this task.”

“So would I,” said Warchief Buknug with a genuine smile on his face.

“And I,” added the elderly shaman from the Stonehooves.