Everyone fell silent. None of them had expected those men to be killed so easily, and in such an undignified fashion.
They were Legion Commanders, after all, and direct members of the Iron Bone Tribe. To execute them, there should at least have been some form of Barbarians' punishment or Judgment ritual.
But Kuba had brought the Great Chief's orders: make examples of them so everyone knew what happened to those who defied military commands.
As the Great Chief saw it, this battle was no game. He would not allow anyone to disobey his orders or disrupt his plans. No one.
What did a handful of Legion Commanders matter?
The Iron Bone Tribe now had over a hundred thousand fighting men and a three-digit number of Legion Commanders of various ranks. Those eight were hardly important figures.
As for their supposed kinship with the Great Chief, Heshima had plenty of relatives. He could not even remember most of their names. Many had come forward to claim kinship only after he rose to power.
Shikele was glad to see the eight executed. All he had to do was carry out Great Chief Heshima's orders. Besides, Kuba was the one who had actually put them to death. If trouble arose, it would come for Kuba, not him.
With the eight men dead, what came next was simple.
The troops they had kept together had been split up for reassignment and were now in disarray, with their chains of command confused.
Gak, who was already prepared, soon led Shikele's personal guards and Kuba's troops to the temporary camps where those thousand-man squads were still assembling for reassignment.
Before they learned their commanders had been executed, he swiftly arrested the eight men's trusted subordinates and killed them on the spot without a trial.
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