Chapter 164: "Escape"
The beastman king's hand hung suspended in the air, a flash of conflict moving through his eyes.
In that moment of hesitation.
The Blood Night Tribe and the Steel Fang Tribe had already completed their encirclement of Sebas.
Wolf-head beastmen swept in from the left rear, their curved blades catching the light.
Tiger-head beastmen surged up from the right rear, their orange-and-black stripes flickering in and out of the rising dust.
They were following the pre-battle deployment: use the Swift Wind Tribe as bait, and once the dragon was "occupied," close in from both flanks and complete the encirclement.
The plan was perfect.
The reality was not.
Sebas's rhythm was not disrupted by so much as a fraction.
His right foot came up high — a wolf-beastman charging in from the side felt the world go dark, and Sebas's kick drove him straight into the earth.
Sebas's hand blade swept horizontally. The tiger-head beastmen's weapons came apart together with the arms holding them, cries of pain rising from every direction.
The only thing that changed on the battlefield was the addition of many new varieties of debris.
Beastman bodies piled up. More and more vultures gathered above the valley, circling, waiting for the fighting to end so the feast could begin.
Blood ran through the valley floor, collecting into dark red streams that soaked into the cracked earth.
The beastman king looked at the scene before him — something close to hell — and the last thread of his hope broke.
"..."
His voice came out rough. In that despair, he gave the order.
The guards beside him swung the signal flags hard. The horn-blowers filled their lungs and sounded the retreat.
But it was already too late.
The army was packed into this narrow valley, the vanguard already in rout, the center column only just receiving the order, the rear having no idea what was happening.
By the time the retreat call reached the back ranks, the fleeing soldiers from the front had already crashed into them.
"Move! Get out of the way!"
"Run! We can't win this!"
"Stop blocking the path!"
The fleeing beastman soldiers slammed into the rear ranks that hadn't yet engaged. The formation collapsed in an instant.
Wolf-beastmen trampled over fallen leopard-beastmen. Leopard-beastmen squeezed through gaps in tiger-beastman shields.
Weapons were thrown down and left underfoot, stamped by wave after wave of running bodies — things that couldn't hurt the enemy were only slowing them down now.
Screaming and cursing blurred together into one sound.
A young tiger-head beastman was knocked down by the surge behind him. He hadn't managed to get back up before the steady, enormous feet were coming down on his back.
At first he could still curse. But as the life drained out of him, even that was swallowed by the noise. He couldn't believe he was dying at the hands of his own people.
Scene after scene of this hit the beastman king where he stood.
He couldn't understand it.
Why hadn't the dragon come in from the start with that overwhelming, contemptuous presence?
If it had been more arrogant, more aggressive about it...
Then the beastman king would have had sufficient justification to convince the tribal chiefs to accept the dragon's terms.
But Sebas had not done that.
Sebas had, with a certain kindness, given the beastmen their chance to surrender.
The bitter irony was that it was precisely because of that kindness that the beastman king had chosen the path of destruction.
"Your Majesty!"
The guard captain had never sounded this rattled.
"We have to go! The routing soldiers are about to reach us!"
The beastman king clenched his jaw and pulled back under the guard captain's escort.
By the time the last formation with any coherence left had withdrawn from the valley, the sun had already moved well past midday.
The beastman king stood on a stretch of high ground and looked down at the remnants below.
A hundred thousand fighters had become roughly thirty thousand.
And that was only because the dragon had chosen not to pursue.
The tribal flags were scattered and tilted, some already gone entirely.
The sounds of the wounded rose and fell without stopping, mixing with the crying of those who had lost their comrades, carrying a desolate weight in the evening light.
The beastman king felt something between grief and exhaustion that had no clear outlet.
He thought of the conditions the dragon had set.
At the time, those demands had felt like an insult to the beastman nation.
Looking back now, it was clearly the dragon showing mercy.
The fox-head clerk came forward from the remains of the column. His grey-white fur was coated in dust. One lens of his crystal spectacles had cracked down the middle, but they were still holding on to his muzzle.
He stopped in front of the beastman king.
"Your Majesty... what do we do now?"
The beastman king was silent for a long time.
The evening shadow carved deeper lines across his face. The light in his eyes dimmed degree by degree.
This king, who had always carried himself with authority among his people, was showing his age now.
"..."
The fox-head clerk's body gave a slight start — but he recovered quickly and understood.
"Yes." He answered quietly, and began to move off to select an envoy.
Just then —
The sound of urgent footsteps came from the rear of the column.
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
The guard captain came striding from the back of the formation, a group of beastmen behind him caked in the dust of a long march.
Those beastmen were covered in travel grime, their faces worn with exhaustion. Among them were tiger-beastmen and bear-beastmen, their fur dull grey with dust. Several of them were still stumbling slightly — they had clearly come a long way.
The guard captain went to one knee in front of the beastman king, then turned and gestured at the beastmen behind him.
"Your Majesty. These beastmen escaped from a human prisoner camp."
The beastman king's pupils contracted sharply. He registered the unusual word immediately.
"Prisoner camp? What prisoner camp?"
The guard captain stood and waved the group forward.
The beastmen came up and knelt before the beastman king.
Many of them didn't know who the beastman king was — they simply felt the authority coming off this lion-beastman in front of them on instinct.
"Your Majesty," the guard captain spoke for them. "These beastmen escaped from the human cavalry camp. They say the old-looking dragon and that cavalry unit are together — the dragon cleared the way at the front and the cavalry followed behind, keeping several hundred of our people under guard as prisoners."
The beastman king's eyes moved to the bear-beastmen in the group.
Only now did it come back to him — the original reason he had sent the bear-beastman force back to deal with the rear. To wipe out that human cavalry unit that had been raiding through the beastman nation's interior.
At the time, he had thought of it as nothing more than a few annoying flies. Sending Urgov to clean them up was all it would take.
But Urgov had run into that terrifyingly powerful dragon halfway there.
The beastman king had never instinctively connected the dragon to that human cavalry unit. He had naturally assumed the dragon had shown itself and destroyed Urgov because the beastman nation was trying to destroy the Dragon Kingdom — that this had driven it out.
After all, the strength of that human cavalry unit and the damage they had caused were nowhere near the same level as a dragon. It hadn't even occurred to him.
But now it was apparent that the relationship between those humans and the dragon was nowhere near as simple as he had assumed.
These humans... how did they manage it?
To have a dragon charging out at the front doing the hard work for them?