The wind kept blowing.
Lush green grass swayed in the breeze.
Sunlight streamed down from the sky, warming the earth.
Yet everyone in the Hauge Tribe was in a panic. Even the warm sunlight could not thaw the chill in their hearts.
The outcome of the great battle between the Hauge Tribe and the Arathi Tribe was already known. The final victor had not been the Hauge Tribe, but the Arathi Tribe.
Victory against a larger force was astonishing enough. More unbelievable still were the accounts of those who had fled the battlefield: their tribe's chieftain, renowned for his valor, had been killed outright without surviving even a single blow.
They had already been shocked, and this news made the outcome even harder to believe. But however much they doubted it, however unwilling they were to imagine it, this was reality.
They had lost. The Hauge Tribe had lost.
Their chieftain was dead, most of their tribesmen had been captured, and only a fraction had escaped.
Inside a building, just two men sat facing each other around a circle. Both kept their heads lowered, neither willing to speak first. A heavy silence hung between them.
An oppressive atmosphere filled the building.
After a long while, the younger man finally spoke. "What do we do? The chieftain is dead. What are we supposed to do now? If word gets out, the surrounding tribes won't let the Hauge Tribe off."
The older man was around fifty, his face covered in wrinkles. Humans in this era aged quickly. In their fifties, they looked as though they were over seventy. They had no proper means of maintaining their health, and their food and drink were vastly inferior to those enjoyed by the nobles of the future.
"We must keep a tight lid on the