The Spoils

Dudun's face was livid. He regretted bringing so few troops. He had never imagined that the Dragon King could muster ten thousand soldiers in just a few days, much less that the usually timid people of Shule would dare stand and fight against the Northern Court cavalry.

"Is the Dragon King skilled at warfare?" Dudun asked Li Man beside him.

Li Man had been pardoned, but among the prince's companions, he alone wore ordinary clothes, without armor or helmet, and he wasn't even allowed to carry a dagger. For a Northern Court man, especially the son of a general, this was a public humiliation.

Yet Li Man was still grateful for the prince's generosity, and even more convinced that he had to tell the truth. "As far as I know, the Dragon King isn't skilled at set-piece battles. The three thousand vanguard troops were defeated by themselves, not by the enemy."

Dudun snorted, though he partly agreed with Li Man.

The three thousand Northern Court cavalrymen who had served as the vanguard had suffered few casualties. They had fled before they were completely surrounded, in the most wretched fashion, utterly unlike the sons of the grasslands.

The first men to return described the battle as a terrifying ordeal. In their telling, the Dragon King seemed to command fifty or sixty thousand troops, and had used his overwhelming numbers to suddenly surround the Northern Court army, which had been caught completely unprepared. They claimed they were lucky to have escaped at all.

Soon, a second group of several hundred cavalrymen brought back a different account. After being taken prisoner, they had been released by the Dragon King. They had seen with their own eyes that the rebels numbered about ten thousand, most armed with swords and spears, with few archers. They