The Red King's movement felt strange. He didn't send in more orcs, he didn't send reinforcements or call back his advanced party. No, he simply laughed.
It was the wrong reaction for a commander watching three hundred of his own get shredded in the reeds and stone teeth. Ludwig expected a horn, a counter-charge, some ugly tactic meant to punish overextension.
Instead he got sound, an abrasive, grinding noise that didn't belong in a throat. It wasn't laughter the way living creatures laughed. It was like chairs and tables being dragged across stone, splintering and screeching, the kind of sound that made your teeth itch, and your spine tighten. It crawled under the roar of battle and stayed there, persistent and deliberate, as if the Red King was enjoying the rhythm of his own losses.
Ludwig, for a small second, was distracted by that laughter and took note of where it came from amidst the blood and gore he was covered in and was within.
