Grash, his commanders and roughly half of the remaining army stayed outside the cave entrance, listening to the cries coming from within. The sounds carried surprisingly well through the stone, sometimes arriving as distant screams and sometimes as frantic shouts that suddenly ended without warning.
Every soldier standing nearby heard them. Some shifted uneasily on their mounts, others tightened their grips around their weapons, and a few repeatedly glanced toward the cave entrance as if expecting something terrible to crawl back out.
Grash noticed all of it, but he gave them no attention. His eyes remained fixed on the darkness ahead. He had known from the beginning that there would be casualties. Invading a cave occupied by another race was never going to be clean, especially when the defenders had the advantage of knowing every passage and corner.
