Chapter 181: Withdrawing
The night had gone deep and dark. The campfires along the perimeter had burned down almost entirely, leaving only dull red embers that flickered in and out in the wind, throwing off the occasional spark before it was swallowed by the dark.
Sebas stood outside Touch Me's tent, his eye at the gap in the flap, confirming that the boy had finally fallen asleep.
Touch Me had laid Leno's body on the small makeshift bed and fallen asleep sitting beside it, leaning sideways. His brow was still faintly drawn together, as though even in sleep he couldn't find rest. His lips moved now and then — saying a name, maybe, with no sound.
Sebas's gaze rested on the boy for a long time.
He thought about going in. Putting a blanket over him. But he was afraid of waking him.
In the end, he only let the tent flap fall quietly back into place and turned and walked into the dark.
Sebas moved quickly. The hem of his black tailcoat opened behind him in the night wind like a silent flag.
He had already made his decision.
Touch Me-sama had taken those injuries.
When Sebas had arrived at the camp, the first thing he saw was the boy collapsed in a spreading pool of blood, the [Innate Ability] spent and gone from him. His heart had nearly stopped.
He had thought he was going to lose Touch Me-sama again — right after finding him again, to lose him immediately —
Though it was precisely because of that moment that he had been able to find Touch Me-sama at all. That didn't change how Sebas felt about the one responsible.
The beastman king needed to answer for it.
A cold clarity settled into Sebas's expression. He quickened his pace, moving in the direction of the remnant beastman army's camp.
The wind swept through the valley between the hills, carrying dust and the smell of dry grass. In the distance, a faint reddish glow moved against the dark — probably the last light of campfires from the beastman camp, still faintly visible.
Sebas crossed the final ridge.
The remnant army's camp spread out below him.
It was worse than he'd expected.
Tents had collapsed and lay in heaps across the ground. The fires were few and dim, their light falling across beastman faces that had nothing left in them. From every corner came the quiet groans of the wounded, caught and carried by the night wind, turning the empty camp into something that sounded like grief.
Sebas slowed. He looked across the ruin of it. These creatures had once been apex predators as far as any human was concerned. Now they looked like a flock of sheep with no shepherd left.
But what caught his eye most was the flagpole at the center of the camp.
A thick wooden post had been driven into the ground at the camp's heart. At the top of it hung a head.
The golden lion's mane drifted faintly in the night wind. The eyes were closed — but not cleanly, the lids uneven, as though even at the end something in them had refused to let go. Dried blood had run down from the severed neck and left dark red lines along the wood.
The beastman king's head, hung on a pole.
Sebas stopped. He stood and looked at it in silence. He had only seen the beastman king from a distance across the battlefield, but that distinctive lion's head, large even among beastmen, left him with no doubt about what he was looking at.
He had expected to need to find him. Perhaps he would be in a tent, or he might have fled back into the beastman nation's interior. There was likely going to be some effort involved.
Instead, the head was already on the pole.
The one who had hurt Touch Me-sama was already dead.
Something complicated moved through Sebas's eyes. The anger he had carried for Touch Me's injuries found itself, in that moment, with nowhere to land — like a fist driven into cotton.
The main tent's flap was thrown open.
Bazel came scrambling out at something close to a run, as though he had been shaken awake mid-sleep — still no armor, bare-chested, an obsequious smile being assembled on the fly across that tiger face. In the dying firelight, the expression managed to be both anxious and faintly absurd.
"Sebas-sama!"
—
When Bazel finally straightened up, it was only after that black tailcoat had fully disappeared into the dark.
He let out a long breath. He looked around at the camp. He reached up and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
"We... made it." He said it quietly, mostly to himself. His voice carried the particular relief of someone who had survived something they hadn't been certain they would — and under it, a thin note of something bleaker that he didn't quite notice in himself.
The next morning, the first light just beginning to come through.
When Sebas lifted the flap to Lucian's tent, Lucian was already at the small campaign table, a map of the Dragon Kingdom's border region spread open in front of him.
"Lord Lucian." Sebas inclined his head slightly. "The matter with the beastman nation has been settled."
Lucian set down the pen in his hand and gestured for him to continue.
Sebas laid out everything he had seen the night before.
The beastman king had been killed by Bazel, his head hung from the flagpole. What remained of the beastman army had no will left to fight. Bazel was drafting a formal surrender — full withdrawal from all occupied Dragon Kingdom territory, release of every human being held captive, and legislation prohibiting humans from being used as food.
At the end, Sebas added: "The tiger-head beastman named Bazel will almost certainly become the new beastman king. He has promised me he will carry out all conditions as quickly as possible."
Lucian's brow moved slightly as he filed this away internally.
The internal collapse had come faster than he'd anticipated — but the outcome was the same, or better. It saved the time he would have spent managing repeated back-and-forth.
"Can Bazel be trusted, Sebas?"
"I confirmed it personally last night. The beastman king's head was there. Bazel's posture left no room for maneuvering."
Lucian was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded.
"Then there's no reason to take the long route."
He walked to the tent entrance and lifted the flap.
Morning light poured in over the hills to the east, and the whole camp went gold.
Not far off, the Aindra cavalry had already straightened what the previous day's battle had scattered. To the eastern edge of the camp, several flat-bed carts stood in a line, covered in dark canvas.
The fallen soldiers were beneath the canvas.
Lucian's eyes rested on those carts for a moment.
To the western side, the prisoner pen had been broken open, and most of the beastman prisoners had gone. He didn't mind. They had been insurance, and insurance he no longer needed.
He raised a hand and called the adjutant over.
"Pass the word. We break camp at noon." His voice was easier than usual. "Straight line. We cross directly through the remnant beastman lines on the way back to the Dragon Kingdom."
The adjutant blinked for just an instant, then gave a firm nod. "Yes, sir."
The order moved through the camp, and the mood shifted with it in a way that was hard to name.
The veterans exchanged looks with each other, and something they'd been holding back worked its way to the corners of their mouths. The younger soldiers glanced at one another, not quite following yet.
Going straight through.
Only those who had bled through campaign after campaign understood what that meant. Every previous year they had been forced to take long, winding routes — threading through mountain passes, staying wide of the beastman main force, burning days just to get back in one piece.
This year, they walked the shortest road.
Germann was the first to break into a full grin. He brought one of those rough, heavy hands down on the nearest young soldier's shoulder with enough force to send the man stumbling half a step. "Hear that? Lord says we walk straight through!"
The young soldier caught himself. A smile found his face too, rare and unguarded. Their fallen comrades would be carried home by the soldiers still standing — and carried through enemy lines in the open. That was the only way the victorious got to walk.
At noon, the column formed up on schedule.
"Fall in. Follow the planned route."
A hundred cavalry and more swung up into the saddle, their electroplated mithril armor catching the morning light and running it into a river of silver-white across the valley. The horses blew and stamped, raising a steady drift of dust.
The Aindra family banner went up — a single upright black sword snapping in the wind.
The column turned toward the remnant beastman lines and moved out in full march formation.
No concealment. No detour. Straight through.
The riders at the front held their spears level, eyes forward, the beat of hoofbeats on the dry, cracked earth steady and unhurried, rolling across the ground like distant thunder.
The remnant beastman army's camp was ahead.
The beastman soldiers still there — men who hadn't yet recovered from the rout — saw that silver column coming from a long way off.
Pupils contracted. Bodies pulled tight on instinct. Some reached for weapons without deciding to.
Nobody moved.
Bazel came charging out of the main tent the instant word reached him — visibly more worn than the night before, but he'd managed a smile, and he arrived at the front of his lines with a handful of his trusted men just in time.
He recognized the figure at the column's head from a long way off.
"Make way! Clear the way!"
His voice cut through the wind, sharp and urgent. He waved his fighters back with both arms, his tiger face going an unnatural shade of red from the effort. "Nobody touches anyone! Get out of the way, all of you!"
The beastmen looked at each other. Then they fell back to either side, parting to open a wide corridor — like a wave split cleanly down the middle by a force that wasn't visible.
Lucian and Sebas rode at the front, side by side, without hurrying.
As they passed through the corridor of beastman soldiers, heads went down on both sides. Some of the soldiers knelt outright, foreheads pressed to the ground, their breathing carefully quiet.
Lucian's pale green eyes moved across the rows of bowed heads without stopping.
Bazel fell in alongside the column in a half-crouch, keeping pace at a run.
"Lord Aindra! Sebas-sama!" His tiger face arranged itself into every ounce of sincerity he had available. "On behalf of the entire beastman nation, I offer our deepest apologies. Yesterday's attack was entirely that dishonorable old beastman king acting on his own authority — none of us had any knowledge of it!"
He kept talking as he kept running, boots kicking up little fans of dust with each step.
"The surrender document is being drafted. The moment it is complete, I will personally deliver it to you."
Lucian kept his eyes forward. His horse moved through the corridor, hoofbeats leaving an even row of prints on the ground the beastmen had cleared.
The entire beastman defensive line was silent as the column passed through.
Those who had once taken humans as food were kneeling in the dirt now, without enough courage left to raise their heads.
The column went through the deepest part of the camp and came out the other side. Behind it, what beastman soldiers dared to watch at all looked at the figures of Lucian and Sebas at the front of the column with only one thing in their eyes — something that went all the way to the bone.
The sound of hoofbeats moved away on the wind, and faded, and eventually vanished at the edge of the horizon.
Bazel didn't take offense at being ignored. For someone who commanded a dragon of that caliber, not bothering to acknowledge a beastman chief was entirely understandable.
"...Finally." He let out the word with something like relief, then turned and looked at the flagpole in the center of the camp.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he told a soldier to bring the head down, and turned and walked back to the main tent.
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