Chapter 165: The Gambler
Night had settled like ink, heavy over the open ground.
The routed soldiers had curled up in twos and threes across the dirt, their sleep broken by the sound of deep snoring or pained groaning.
Campfires were scattered thinly across the open ground. The orange-red light moved in the night wind, casting shifting light across the exhausted beastman faces around them.
Most of the fires had burned down considerably. A short column of blackened ash had built up beneath each, and the flames were considerably dimmer than before.
The beastman king sat on a relatively flat stone. His golden lion mane looked dull in the fading firelight. His eyes were half-closed, his gaze settled on the beastmen kneeling on the ground in front of him.
"You said... the dragon and that human noble are close?"
He was confirming something of critical importance.
The lead bear-beastman warrior raised his head. The long exhaustion of the march was still written on his dark brown bear face.
He answered in a rough voice: "Yes, Your Majesty. We heard it directly while we were in the prisoner camp, from the guards talking among themselves. That one called Sebas — the dragon — shows considerable respect for the human noble. He defers to him on everything."
Another tiger-head beastman added quickly: "And that human noble, the one called Aindra, is a noble from the Re-Estize Kingdom. He came here to support the Dragon Kingdom. The reason the dragon went to war with us was at his request."
The beastman king sat with that for a moment.
"At his request?"
"Yes... the guards said Sebas hadn't originally intended to get involved in this. It was because the noble asked for his help that the dragon agreed to—"
The tiger-head beastman paused, then added: "And it was also because of the dragon that the prisoner count got too large to manage properly. The guards were stretched thin, and that's how we found the opening to get out."
The beastman king's eyes sharpened.
"How many prisoners?"
The tiger-head beastman and the bear-beastman beside him exchanged a glance. "Several... several hundred. Most of them are still being escorted by the humans, moving slowly behind."
Silence for a moment.
A campfire flame jumped, sending a few sparks skittering off.
"All of you — step back." The beastman king spoke.
The guard captain gave the kneeling beastmen a look. They withdrew into the darkness.
The beastman king was alone.
He sat quietly on that stone.
But inside, the words he had just heard were churning violently.
The most essential piece of intelligence, stripped to its core, was this:
That dragon defers to the noble named Aindra on everything.
A wild thought surfaced from somewhere deep in his mind. At first it was only a faint outline — then it grew larger and larger until it had taken over everything.
What if—
What if he could capture that human noble?
Then he could use Aindra as a hostage. Force the dragon to serve him.
The beastman king's breathing picked up.
He thought about the combat strength he had just witnessed.
If that kind of power could be in my hands...
Something lit up in the beastman king's eyes.
He could push northwest, into the other human nations. Those nations were richer than the Dragon Kingdom, more densely populated.
With the dragon as a weapon, he could sweep away every obstacle.
He could even set his sights on the powerful nations in the central regions.
But then another thought came down like a bucket of cold water.
What if he failed to capture the noble — or what if the human noble wasn't as important to the dragon as he assumed?
The beastman king felt a slight tremor move through him.
What would the dragon do?
It might slaughter the beastman nation entirely.
The beastman nation would be erased from the map completely. As though it had never existed.
That thought made his throat tighten. He swallowed involuntarily.
He pushed the images away and pulled his thoughts back to something workable.
Two roads lay before him now.
The first: accept defeat honestly.
Take the dragon's conditions. Go home.
For an ordinary beastman, that was the best option.
When the risk of eating human flesh grows too great to absorb, any rational beastman would give it up.
That was true for common beastmen and for the powerful ones both.
Common beastmen didn't eat human flesh often to begin with — maybe a few times a year at most. They weren't going to gamble their lives for it.
The powerful beastmen, beyond eating humans, had plenty of other pleasures available to them. They weren't going to stake everything on the practice either.
But this logic didn't apply to the beastman king in the same way.
The firelight reflected in the beastman king's eyes.
After this devastating defeat, his authority had taken serious damage.
The original plan to finish off the Dragon Kingdom completely had been driven by the fact that he was growing older, his physical strength declining. He had wanted to use a grand victory to shore up his hold on power — and to pass the throne to his son cleanly.
If he simply accepted the terms of a defeat and went home—
The tribal chiefs would be the first to move against him. They would come together and drag him off the throne.
And then?
His son. His family. Everyone close to him would be purged.
His head would hang from some tribe's flagpole as an offering for the new king's coronation.
And his failure would become the most shameful chapter in the beastman nation's history — brought up again and again, spat on by generations to come.
The beastman king drew a slow breath and steadied himself.
The second road.
Throw everything on one hand.
Capture the human noble. Use him to force the dragon.
If it worked — everything he had lost would come back. And there would be more. The dragon's power would belong to him. He would be the greatest king in beastman history, and perhaps... not only of the beastman nation.
But the cost?
If it failed—
The beastman king closed his eyes.
Every beastman in the nation might go down with him.
He was silent for a long time.
The night wind came in from beyond the open ground, making a sound like something grieving. The campfires were burning lower and lower, the wood nearly gone.
Finally.
The beastman king opened his eyes.
Whatever had been uncertain in them was gone. What remained was a resolve that bordered on something unhinged.
"Someone come."
The guard captain stepped out of the darkness at a quick walk.
"Your Majesty."
The beastman king's voice was uncommonly steady.
"Bring me Gazok, the Fang Tribe chief. Him alone."
The guard captain blinked. "Your Majesty — you mean... right now?"
"Right now."
"As you command."
The beastman king watched the guard captain's shape disappear into the dark.
"With this gamble still on the table, there's still a chance to turn it around."
When the beastman king's own interests and those of his people had stopped pointing in the same direction, he had chosen to stake every life in the nation on his own hand.
He sat on the stone and looked past the wavering campfire into the black sky beyond.
The endless dark — as though it were waiting to swallow something.
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