Chapter 162: The Defense
Cerabrate's face had gone a shade redder.
"You two—" He took a slow breath and worked to compose himself. "I'm evaluating the tactical situation. Lucian Aindra has gone deep behind enemy lines and we have no idea what he's actually doing in there. If he fails, the front line is going to be under far more pressure. That is what I'm concerned about."
"Ohh~" Eda Alicia stretched the sound out in agreement, but her face clearly said she wasn't buying any of it.
Malcolm's expression still had the traces of an involuntary smile. "Captain, we all know you're not jealous of Lord Aindra."
"I'm not jealous." Cerabrate corrected. "I just—"
"Just feel like an opportunity to distinguish yourself got taken by someone else." Malcolm finished the sentence for him.
Cerabrate closed his mouth and adopted the bearing of someone who couldn't be bothered explaining himself.
"You're all being unreasonable. There's nothing shameful about having feelings for the queen." Glaxton, seeing that nobody was adding to the teasing, immediately emerged from behind his book and put on his most serious face to defend their captain.
Cerabrate's ears went visibly red. His cowlick shot straight up.
"What are you on about!" He leapt to his feet. His sword nearly slid off his lap — he grabbed it in a flurry. "I just — I only meant that, as a reigning monarch, demonstrating Crystal Tears' capabilities in front of a monarch would be extremely beneficial for the team's future prospects."
"Mm-hmm." Eda Alicia nodded earnestly, her expression entirely guileless.
Malcolm and Glaxton exchanged a glance. In each other's eyes they found the same shared understanding.
Cerabrate saw that expression on their faces — the one that said we already know — and the frustration inside him doubled.
"I'm serious!" he insisted. "I am not a lolicon!"
The moment those words left his mouth, the atmosphere on the wall shifted in a subtle way.
Malcolm raised an eyebrow. Glaxton buried his face in his book again. Eda Alicia tilted her head and blinked several times.
Cerabrate realized he had just said out loud the very thing he had been trying not to say. His face cycled through red and pale twice in quick succession.
"What I mean," he pressed on, making one last attempt at damage control, "is that I don't have a type. I just happen to have feelings for someone who happens to look a certain way."
Two seconds of silence on the wall.
Even Eda Alicia's natural vacancy couldn't hold. She laughed.
Malcolm's eyes creased into slits, a wide and entirely unrestrained grin on his face. He reached out and gave Cerabrate a solid clap on the shoulder.
Behind the cover of his spellbook, Glaxton couldn't keep the curve of his mouth down no matter how hard he tried.
Cerabrate opened his mouth to say something in rebuttal and found that every attempt was making things worse.
"I'm not—"
"Alright, alright." Malcolm waved a hand, still smiling. "Captain doesn't have a type. His tastes are just uniquely specific."
"It's not about specific tastes!" Cerabrate's voice went urgent.
But faced with the united front of his team's amusement, Cerabrate had no real option left.
"Fine." He dropped back onto the step, hugged his sword to his chest, rested his chin on the pommel, and looked out at the horizon being swallowed by the evening light. "I'm not dignifying this further."
The last of the sunset came through the gaps in the battlements and fell across the four of them, pulling their shadows out long across the stone.
Several Dragon Kingdom soldiers nearby had been watching with curiosity. Seeing the captain of Crystal Tears sitting there red-faced while his team surrounded him, expressions emerged on more than one face that were very clearly trying not to laugh.
"Crystal Tears really has great team chemistry."
"They really do."
"Uh, isn't this technically workplace harassment?"
"Idiot, you're too young to understand the romance of male camaraderie."
"Oh, like you're so much older."
"Right, I see, so you're saying I'm harassing you, is that it?"
A second later, the sounds of roughhousing broke out on that side of the wall as well.
Brief peace was the most beautiful thing the Dragon Kingdom's people had had in a long time.
The next morning.
The beastman army's camp was a completely different atmosphere — the kind that comes before a battle.
Horn calls sounded one after another, deep and long, echoing back and forth across the hills.
The mustering call for the full army. Since the campaign began, it had never been this urgent.
Every tribe's camp came alive at the same time.
The tiger-head beastmen of the Steel Fang Tribe came pouring out of their tents. They formed up quickly into battle formations, thick tails sweeping behind them as they checked their spacing.
The wolf-head beastmen of the Blood Night Tribe were more scattered — they had been on night watch duty and their rougher state of readiness could be forgiven.
The wild boar beastmen of the Fang Tribe finished assembling last. Their builds were the heaviest. Several of them hauled enormous wooden shields reinforced with iron plating, the metal clanging dully with every step.
The beastman king stood on the platform in front of his command tent, his golden-brown mane moving in the wind.
His gaze swept across the black mass of the army before him — one hundred thousand beastman fighters, stretching from the hills to the horizon with no visible end.
Fur of every color made up a mottled, shifting sea. Flags snapped and cracked. The cold glint of weapons covered the ground.
"Good." He murmured the word quietly, a gleam of certainty moving through his eyes.
He descended from the platform. The guard captain fell in immediately beside him.
"Your Majesty, all tribes are ready. Chief Jaka and the Swift Wind Tribe have already moved ahead as vanguard."
The beastman king gave a nod and raised one hand.
The army began to move.
One hundred thousand fighters, like a mudslide that could swallow everything, began their slow advance eastward along the valleys between the hills.
The beastman king held his position at the center. His gaze reached past the column ahead of him toward the distant horizon.
He wasn't counting on killing the dragon. He only needed to make it hurt — make it understand the beastman nation was not something to provoke lightly — and then come back to the table. That was enough.
At that point, all the beastman nation would need to do was make a few token concessions. Cut the annual hunting season by a month or two. Release a small portion of the humans — the old and weak ones, the ones that weren't worth eating anyway. Something to show good faith.
A dragon would accept those terms.
The beastman king felt certain of this. It couldn't possibly want to face one hundred thousand fighters alone.
The column had been marching for roughly an hour when the vanguard scouts sent word back: the target was on the hills ahead and hadn't moved. It looked like it was waiting for them.
The beastman king's brow drew in slightly.
He had expected the other side to avoid the main force, pull back a distance, look for favorable ground.
He hadn't expected the dragon to simply stand in the open and wait.
Foolishness? Or confidence?
He set the thought aside and ordered the full army to advance.
After another half-hour, a relatively flat valley opened between the hills. At the far end of it, a single solitary figure was standing in the middle of the road.
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