Chapter 198: What Was Owed and What Was Feared
Black Moon Manor, The Great Hall,
Torug's POV,
The air inside the hall usually carried the sharp, familiar scents of ironwood sap and fresh-planed stone, but today, a heavy smell of old peat and swamp-rot rolled in through the main doors ahead of our guest.
Outside, the afternoon chatter of the great hall had completely died down. In its place came a rhythm that made the stone floor plates vibrate against the soles of my boots—slow, deliberate thuds that sounded less like footsteps and more like a siege ram being dragged across the courtyard gravel.
I watched the two iron-clad orc guards flanking the entrance. These were veterans of the dregu skirmishes and the Greyeye war, warriors who had stared down charging warriors without blinking, but right now, their knuckles were turning white against the shafts of their spears.
They weren't stepping back, but their weight had obviously shifted like they were bracing themselves.
