[Bêthberry]

A caw went out among Akaaw's muster as each company perceived the impending attack of orc, man and horse. The crebain circled the once green and grassy plain, weaving forth and back in response to the twisting currents of smokey, hot air from the fires. "Why did every battle site come to look like Mordor?" thought Pi'kha as he watched the ash and soot settle onto the plain.

Pip'kha always tasted an ominous sense of implacable doom whenever he observed orcs in motion, a sour taste rising in his beak and a hot hand squeezing his heart, a pain almost comforting as his strongest muscle beat faster and harder. Pounding orc feet battered the earth--what trees still stood shook in retort--as if mere sound would carry the battle. Sometimes it did, Pip'kha knew, for he had seen beast and man panic and flee even before the orcs had made contact in an assault.

But this was the orcs' sole advantage. Pip'kha could never understand why the only maneuver of the orcs was this one of relentless forward motion. They just roiled and moiled, a black avalanche tearing down everything in its path. Orcs never seemed to regroup and move around their foes, testing for weaknesses, feinting attacks, drawing off enemies to weaken the main contingent.

The strawheads on horseback could do this and often would. They gleemed and glinted as the sun reflected off their helmets and breastplates. Pip'kha had to squint and look away, so bright the men appeared to his dark-entrusted eyes. He wondered if this happened to the orcs, too. The horses would bank left and right with purpose; they seemed to understand the same point of movement and stealth and attack which Akaaw and Fingot had taught the crows.

Pip'kha shuddered and stalled in his epiphany. Maybe the men were as smart as crows.

Brak's voice called him out of his numbed reflection and he caught his descent, flew up, and positioned himself to the left of Akaaw, as he had been taught in practice past. The sky whirled around him as he considered for the first time ever the possibility of defeat at the hands of an astute, alert, naturally quick enemy.