Chapter 153: The Old Man in the Road
Grik the hyena-beastman felt a jolt of alarm, and his mind immediately began working through the numbers.
I only came here for a steady supply of human flesh. I have no interest in fighting for my life. If it actually comes to a real war and we lose, everything I've built for myself is gone.
And even if we win — once Urgov becomes the new beastman king, there's no guarantee he'll still listen to me the way he does now.
With that settled in his mind, Grik made his decision.
"My lord," Grik said, choosing his words carefully. "The timing presents a difficulty. The beastman nation's forces are committed to the Dragon Kingdom campaign right now. The tribal coalition at the front is in the middle of fighting the Dragon Kingdom's people."
"If my lord were to strike the beastman king's tribe at this moment..."
He paused and watched Urgov's expression. At the first sign of anything going wrong, he was ready to shift direction immediately.
Urgov's brow was furrowed — but he hadn't interrupted.
Grik let out a quiet internal breath. He pressed on, keeping his tone careful.
"My lord would likely earn a name for treachery."
"The beastman nation rules by strength, that is true. But marching under the beastman king's banner against the Dragon Kingdom was something every tribal chief agreed to. If my lord moves against the Iron Fang Tribe now, how will the other tribes see it?"
Grik found his own argument getting more convincing as he spoke.
"They would see my lord as someone who breaks faith. Even if my lord won, bringing the other tribes to heel afterward would not be easy."
The uncertainty on Urgov's face was becoming visible.
Grik saw the hesitation and pushed while the opening was there.
"And my lord knows better than anyone what the Iron Fang Tribe is capable of."
"Even with many of their fighters drawn off to the front, the warriors left guarding their territory are far from few. If my lord were to actually move — it would not be easy to bring them down quickly."
"And if things dragged out, and the beastman king seized the chance to pull back from the front and hit us from behind..."
Caught between two enemies.
The phrase surfaced in Urgov's limited mind, and his brow knotted into a tight crease.
His round bear eyes settled on the grey smear of the horizon ahead, his gaze drifting to some point in empty air, and his pace slowed. The column behind him slowed with it.
The force moved on in silence for a long stretch.
Finally, Urgov spoke.
"Hmph." A sharp breath through his nose. "You're right."
He picked up his pace again, thick arms folded across his chest.
"Not yet."
Grik's shoulders relaxed slightly.
"For now," Urgov's voice had leveled out, "let's clean up these flies in the rear first."
He raised one hand and pointed in the direction the column was heading.
"Once I've dealt with these nuisances and gone back to the front, let's see what excuse that old bastard has to keep me at the back this time."
Grik nodded quickly, his face assembling into a warm smile.
"My lord is absolutely right. Once my lord has made his mark, the prestige will follow naturally. From that point, the beastman king's position is only a matter of time."
Urgov bared his teeth at that, breaking into a satisfied grin.
In truth, Urgov had a fairly clear sense of his own abilities.
He had total confidence in his physical strength. His mind, he was somewhat less sure about.
The reason he kept this hyena-beastman strategist so close was exactly because he knew his own thinking wasn't always his strongest suit — and the rest of his tribe were, if anything, worse. Hyena-beastmen weren't naturally as strong as bear-beastmen, but they were considerably more nimble in their thinking.
Which made a weak, non-threatening outsider who could do the thinking for him exactly what Urgov wanted.
Urgov was still daydreaming about his future as beastman king.
Then a human figure appeared in the road ahead, blocking the column's path back.
That solitary shape stood in the middle of the dirt road between the hills, like a dried branch that had blown into a crack in the stone.
Behind him was a grey smear of a horizon. In the distance, a few vultures circled low, making the entire scene feel even more absurd than it already was.
A human old man stood there, dressed in a black tailcoat, his hair shot through with grey and white.
He stood in the middle of a dirt road in the beastman nation's interior, facing the full breadth of a marching column of bear-beastman warriors, and there was not one trace of fear on him.
One of the bear-beastman warriors near the front of Urgov's column registered what he was seeing.
He spread his jaws wide, showing two rows of yellow teeth, and a low growl came rolling from his throat.
"What is this old trash doing here — looking to die?"
He tightened his grip on his iron axe and charged at the old man.
Beastmen nearby turned to look. Several of the closer ones stopped walking and crossed their arms, getting comfortable for what they assumed was going to be an amusing few seconds.
To their eyes, this frail old man probably couldn't even survive one swing of the axe.
But —
"Hold."
Urgov's voice came from behind.
The bear-beastman warrior's feet stopped dead. The iron axe hung frozen in the air. He turned his head, his dark brown face full of confusion.
"Chief?"
Urgov pushed through to the front in long strides, his enormous frame moving like a walking wall of flesh, the ground trembling slightly under each step.
The bear-beastman warriors around him parted automatically, lowering their heads in deference.
His bear eyes traveled over the upright figure standing in the road, looking him over from top to bottom.
Black tailcoat. Grey-and-white hair. No weapons of any kind.
Not the cavalry riders the intelligence described.
Urgov's brow drew in. He had seen plenty of the two-legged livestock that got kept in pens — the ones who shook so hard they couldn't even raise their heads. Even the human soldiers who occasionally showed up angry-looking tended to go weak in the knees once they saw one of his bear warriors up close.
But this old man...
Those eyes were looking directly at him. Completely calm. Not one trace of fear in them.
Urgov found himself unexpectedly interested.
"Nobody move." He raised one thick arm, holding back several of his warriors who had been itching to act. "Let me have a word with this old man myself."
The column came to a halt.
Several thousand bear-beastman warriors stood packed across the dirt road between the hills, a wall of dark bodies as far as the eye could reach.
Urgov walked up to the old man and looked down at the human from his full height. He stood nearly twice as tall as his opponent — and deliberately took half a step forward to let his shadow fall completely over the man.
"Old man." Urgov's voice rolled out from deep in his chest. "Where do you come from? Do you know whose land this is?"
Sebas looked up at him. His expression was perfectly composed.
"I come from the Baharuth Empire. I am here to discuss a matter with whoever holds authority in the beastman nation."
"Discuss a matter?" Urgov blinked — and then laughed out loud.
The bear-beastman warriors behind him joined in. Laughter rolled through the column in uneven waves, rough and overlapping.
Sebas paid the laughter no attention. He turned his head slightly and let his gaze pass across the dark mass of the bear-beastman column behind Urgov.
"It may be unlikely, but I would still like to ask." His voice was level. "Would you be willing to surrender?"