"So why aren't you telling Grot?" Sarel shouted as she leaped off of Merdon's back and landed in front of the witch. "Shouldn't he know?"

Verist huffed. "You expect him to make a rational call about his mate? Of course not. I wouldn't come to Merdon for advice about rescuing you." She looked at the knight coldly. "We need a plan, now."

Merdon hesitated for a moment as he considered what Sarel said. They should have told Grot, but it was too late for that now. Every second he stalled was more danger Shade was in, Thickhide, the other kobolds, the rest of their army in fact. There was no choice in the matter; they had to respond in kind.

In a blink, the knight turned his horse around and started hurling orders at the orcs with abandon. "I need the best front and center, now! This is not a drill," Merdon howled as far as his voice could carry. "Enemies have ambushed our third battalion. Move it!" He was galloping through their ranks as orcs peeled off the main force and gathered around Verist.

When she had the number she expected her and Red could carry, she signaled Merdon, who came thundering back over on his horse. Considering manpower and equipment, along with the healers that came over to join the warriors, it was going to be tight. She and Red would be winded at best when they arrived. There wasn't going to be magic to save the day here. None of the combatants expected it themselves. This was it, a fight with the actual enemy, not just props put in their way to slow them down.

"Defensive positions!" Shade shouted at the orcs that were still engaging the enemy. They were being surrounded and the assassins could only do so much out in the open. Nimble as they were, the Avantian's had positioning on their side. A few had lunged early into the fight and gotten picked off, their corpses stomped over, or even on, as the glimmering knights stepped forward in a death march. They had to hold out until help arrived.

"Where did they come from?" Ironhide asked after he'd pulled the armored kobolds back into formation. His troops had tried to save the assassins, but he knew it was too late just by looking at them.

"Dunno," Shade replied shortly, focusing on the immediate issue. A mage, she guessed. Avant must have had a court mage that moved these troops on top of them. As if nothing they did was a secret.

The orcs were ready to fight, as always, but they also understood orders. Shade had told them to get into positions and they were moving, though some went faster than others. The ambushers had a lot going for them, marching out of the surrounding area the way they were. Shade couldn't see a break in their formation for a retreat and they appeared heavily outnumbered. Not that either of those were a difficult feat with the size of her forces. Their only boon was that they'd been preparing to leave in two days to join the rest of the army, halting their progress. Shade's troops were dug in with some basic fortifications around them, though nothing for a long siege. At best, they could expect the enemies to swarm from several entrances to their camp, assuming the orcs did what they were told and fell back.

Begrudgingly, the orcs had moved back into the camp and were setting up defensive stands around the openings where the Avantians were likely to enter. Shade whistled sharply and the kobolds that hadn't gotten confident and jumped over the walls to assault the encroaching army to their deaths lined up and drew bows. She sounded again and a meager forty arrows peppered the surrounding area in a loose circle around their walls. The kobolds sprinted in a clockwise formation and readied a second volley. Changing the direction ever so slightly would, hopefully, catch someone off guard, and the fact that Shade no longer signaled the attacks would add to the uncertainty. Surprise maneuvers like that would only hold the humans off for so long, if at all. Their shields were easily raised to defend themselves, and the number of shots was exceptionally small. Delaying tactics at their lowest.

The orcs in the walls were getting rowdy, making noise, taunting the humans marching towards them, egging them to break rank and have a proper brawl. None of the Avantians did so. Their focus was to be commended, even as it involved preparing to slaughter their foes that they viewed as beneath them. For all the damage that had been caused by the orc's invasion, not a single human charged out of line, not until they were close enough for a proper clash at least. No one engaged out of formation, each human stood shoulder to shoulder and fought as a unit. Orcs were incredible warriors, every one of them equal to three humans in sheer power and ferocity, but they weren't the best soldiers. They lacked a great deal of discipline and strategy in the heat of battle and resorted to brute strength, turning every battle into a series of smaller skirmishes. In a normal situation, this would be detrimental.

Within the group they were aligned with, however, the orcs forcing the humans to splinter into smaller factions around the canvas walls made for opportunities. Shade gestured and the kobolds joined the fray. She and her assassins began weaving through the battlefield to find openings in armor and formations, their daggers seeking exposed flesh and causing the humans to shift into more awkward formations. They had to keep their backs to each other, limiting their mobility against the larger orcs, taking away some of their advantages. Ironhide joined in soon after with his group of armored lizards. While the newer recruits fought like kobolds, using their agility to out-move the humans, Ironhide himself stood his ground and fought much as Merdon would have. A shield in hand, he used his smaller stature to deftly re-angle blades as they came down, creating unusual openings for his counterattacks. The humans were used to fighting forces their size when it came to shields and swords, not halflings. Most of them didn't know how to approach the metal-clad kobolds.

Still, as Shade broke from the battle to climb a wooden stake and get a swift vantage point, it was clear how far behind they were. Casualties were slowly mounting on both sides of the fight. Assassins that missed their target or got attacked from behind due to poor opportunities could be seen laying in the dirt, dead or incapacitated, orcs that had tried to bite off more than they could handle, some impaled on their own defenses from the wall of humans closing in, and more of Ironhide's knights. All littering the field as the humans closed in, pushed them back. The arrows had run dry shortly after the fighting started, and few had sustained injury from that ploy. They were running out of cards.

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It was fortunate that Verist's timely teleportation had paid off. Merdon's forces, the best he could rally, came charging over the hills, roaring with all the rage and vigor that only fresh troops had. The Avantian's advantage had been numbers and surprise. Now, they may have held numbers but they were sandwiched between two unique forces, and disengaging one meant opening themselves to the other. If they turned back to face Merdon's troops, they would have to pull off the entrances to Shade's camp to mount an effective defense. Trying to push into Shade's camp and take a tactical advantage would leave them exposed to the fresh faces charging their backline. Topping it off, the new arrivals weren't worn down by combat yet, despite their fewer numbers.

Merdon lead the charge on his mount, sword drawn and used to deadly efficacy on the unmounted soldiers. Archers that took shots at him found their arrows entirely nullified by his shield, the projectiles pulled magically off course to his one defense. The orcs in his command were just as frightening. They tore into the humans' armor, ripping it off to give themselves access to vitals if their weapons were found lacking, or for intimidation where appropriate. The Avantians had difficulty cutting through the orc armor, their blades bouncing off even the most direct hits, and what ones landed inside orc flesh barely fazed the battle-crazed beasts.

Signs of reinforcements pushed the ones within the camp to fight harder as well. In moments the Avantaians were turned and facing a two-sided battle they couldn't hope to win. A horn went up to sound the retreat and those on the sides of the camp found better luck at getting away. At least until Merdon spurred his horse on and gave chase. Those orcs in the camp followed suit soon after, ripping through their enemies as they struggled to get over each other in their haste to flee. There was no order, no chain of command there. It was a signal that every man was for himself, and before long there was no one left standing that carried the flag of Avant. The orcs let up a howling cheer while the kobolds slinked out to find their dead. Merdon rode into the camp and dismounted from his horse to find Shade and Ironhide, hopefully alive.

Ironhide was ordering the kobolds around, getting them to be more disciplined than the orcs they fought beside. He'd leave no bodies of theirs for the Avantians to find. Shade, on the other hand, was sitting on a stump and processing everything that had happened. The attack had been so fast she'd only reacted on her instincts. It was only now that the battle was over that she could think again. Merdon approached her first, removing his helmet and sinking closer to her level.

"Everyone okay?" he asked quietly. As quiet as one could over whooping orcs.

She shook her head. "At least six of my assassins tried to fight the legion head-on. They might have killed one or two of them, but they were overconfident."

The knight nodded. "Given their tight ranks, I doubt the usual tactics for a kobold worked." Ironhide's troops, however, seemed less impacted. The armored kobolds had, more or less, held their own in the onslaught. "We're going to converge our ranks," he told Shade.

The assassin looked surprised by that. "It's not time for-."

He cut her off. "I don't care. Your forces were wounded and the orcs that are still standing here will be too confident if the Avantians attack again. Besides that, they know your location, chances are they've got the rest of us too." Safety in numbers.

Shade chewed on that in silence for a moment before nodding. "You're right. We can't risk them attacking us again. Our numbers are too small to repel even an assault of this size." And it was far from the most soldiers Avant could pour out. "If they had attacked two of our forces at once, it could have been a slaughter."

"Assuming they can transport that many troops with magic," Merdon pondered. That was a limitation they had as well. Avant was sure to have more mages at their disposal, however.

"When Verist recovers we'll have her take us to Grot," Shade insisted. "You and your troops continue your march. We can't divide Avant's elite troops three ways, but we can damn sure split them in half."

Merdon couldn't argue with that, so he simply agreed and went to find Ironhide. The metal-clad kobold was helping the others gather the bodies for transport back to the orc lands for burial. It was only natural after everything that had happened that the knight asked if he was alright.

"This is war," the green-scaled kobold replied somberly. "Nothing but death and destruction on both sides." His innocence was long gone now.

"Force is the only way some people learn," Merdon told him in a grim tone. "They don't see reason or mercy, only absolute strength."

"And they'll fight to their last man," Ironhide suspected.

"Perhaps, or maybe not. The king is the one who won't give up. Severe the head of the snake and the body dies with it. It's more important to remember why you fight."

Ironhide thought about it before replying quietly, "For freedom. For all the kobolds that died. Not just these ones, but all of them, everywhere." After saying that, another thought occurred to him. "We're going to have to fight the other nations too, aren't we?"

Merdon couldn't bring himself to reply to that. The answer was obvious. The elves saw kobolds as monsters, the citizens of Rastar saw them as chattel. Avant was the nicest of the trio and if nothing else the rebellion displayed what happened when kobolds had too much freedom. "Eventually," Merdon said, distancing himself from his own thoughts. "Focus on what's in front of you right now. Getting lost in the future is as bad as being caught in the past."

Ironhide could feel the desperation in Merdon's words. Even his mentor was trying to avoid thinking about this lingering on any more than it had to. Yet, it must continue. Their freedom in Avant would mean nothing if thousands more were suffering just miles away. It was a rebellion that would blossom into a bloody war to ravage the entire continent if they won. And, as he considered that, Ironhide realized why it was so worrying the elves might join with Avant, regardless of what the king had done to their ambassadors. They would appear to be the greater evil by far. They had come too far to reconsider now. The armored kobold took a breath and started barking orders at the others again to get the bodies covered and ready for transport. Thinking wasn't his strong suit, he'd leave that to Verist and the others.