Chapter 1412: The Ambush
Lord Pyrrhus had perfectly cooked this plan.
Eight thousand soldiers from the remnants of the Legions, bolstered by three hundred of his own Blue Orchid clansmen and the household cavalry he had kept in reserve since the start of this campaign. He rode at the front because that was where the leader of this march belonged. At the very front, where the men could see his blonde hair catching the early light and know that their commander had staked his body beside theirs.
He had lost people whom he counted on greatly, Zebelon, Colak, the crude barbarian of the Ashlands and Adelaide and the girl from the Wager House.
He had lost everything the Sixth Prince had given him, piece by piece, like a gambler hemorrhaging chips at a table he refused to leave.
But Pyrrhus was not a gambler. He was a strategist who had been fed incorrect intelligence, undermined by incompetent subordinates, and blindsided by an opponent who had no right to exist in a nation this small. That was what he told himself as he rode, and he believed it, because the alternative was that he had simply failed.
And failure was not something that Lord Pyrrhus of the Blue Orchid Clan entertained.
’When I take Ryugan, none of this will matter. The Prince will see only results.’
He turned the blue gem ring on his middle finger.
The canyon opened before them like a wound in the earth. Two walls of reddish stone rising on either side, narrowing the path to roughly forty meters across. It stretched for nearly a kilometer before widening into the plains that led to the Ryugan mountain base.
Pyrrhus studied it.