Flames blazed, driving back the surrounding darkness.
It was late at night now, and the hazy darkness shrouded the land, coiling like mist and obscuring everyone's vision.
Crackle, crackle, crackle.
The burning firewood crackled. A circle of people sat around the fire, looking relaxed and speaking quietly among themselves. The smiles on their faces made it clear how much more at ease they felt.
Rex watched it all with an expressionless face, but he, too, felt relaxed.
They had won a resounding victory over the Hauge Tribe's army that day.
That victory had given them a much stronger sense of unity within the Arathi Tribe and raised their morale considerably. They were no longer as dispirited as they had been at first, spending their days in brooding silence and barely speaking.
Of the Hauge Tribe's five hundred soldiers, more than forty had been killed on the spot during the day's battle, over three hundred had eventually surrendered, and only around a hundred had actually escaped.
The Arathi Tribe's losses, meanwhile, had been negligible. Only four unlucky men had died, all from attacks to their faces. Their armor remained intact.
Using standard-issue equipment from a thousand years in the future to bully tribes that barely possessed any iron implements, a victory like this had never been in doubt.
After daybreak tomorrow, the three hundred-odd prisoners would all be sent back to the Arathi Tribe.
Just over thirty men would escort them, each guarding ten prisoners. Despite those disproportionate numbers, Rex was not worried at all.
Rex had deliberately inspected the prisoners. They were utterly docile and showed no signs of causing trouble.
That reassured Rex. There were no troublemakers among them at all.
Unlike a thousand years later, when the concept of a nation had taken shape and captives would still