A day later, Warlord Hurley, who had been entrusted with an important mission but arrived late, finally reached the former camp of the Filthy Claw clan. He brought more than six thousand main-force troops, made up of the Whiptail clan and elite warriors recruited from other clans, in addition to the more than two thousand gnolls still left in the camp. They were undeniably a formidable army.
And yet, in the war order of the Black Calamity, they were merely scouts and vanguard.
By rights, the Filthy Claw clan had just suffered a terrible defeat, and even its chieftain had been lost. According to gnoll tradition, they should have cut off a few heads to boost morale. Yet Warlord Hurley, always renowned for strict discipline, chose not to do so this time.
Instead, it used the Filthy Claw chieftain's death as an opportunity to break up and reorganize the clan, folding its losers into its own army as cannon fodder.
They probably wouldn't survive the next battle, but such "mercy" was unusual for an old warlord who had carved a path through the Dark Mountains by force.
The warlord even summoned the disgraced former Blackeye clan warlord Popok Blackeye, now saddled with the insulting nickname "Loser," to its tent.
Unlike the furious scolding at their last meeting,
this time Warlord Hurley treated the anxious Popok with what could only be called "warmth." In particular, when Popok presented the Filthy Claw chieftain's head, which he had "risked his life to retrieve," along with the decapitation axe Varm, a fleeting smile crossed the warlord's shaggy, ferocious face.
"What a magnificent weapon. You say you captured it on the battlefield?"
The warlord was a true gnoll warrior.
No warrior disliked a fine weapon. It ran a claw over the imposing barbarian axe, glanced