The next day, the rising sun tore through the thin mist, laying bare all the bloody slaughter of the night before.
Liu Qian reined in his horse on a gentle slope, his gaze sweeping over the wreckage of the Lys men's camp.
Broken spears, scorched tents, congealed dark-red bloodstains, and riderless horses scattered everywhere, pacing uneasily across the scorched earth,
neighing.
At the sight of it all, Liu Qian smiled.
Last night, with the cooperation of Prince Janyi's Windblown, his surprise attack had succeeded.
Treg O'Morren, the governor of Lys, the Lys officers of the slave army, and the leaders and core mercenaries of the Maiden’s Men, the Broken Flag Company, and the Long Spear Company had all perished.
He had sent the remaining several thousand captured mercenaries under guard to the construction sites in Crown Town, for Qyburn to put to use.
But he had kept the twenty-five thousand slave soldiers with their blank stares.
They were herded aside and soon broken up into auxiliary units, awaiting the hardest, most exhausting work: hauling, digging, and building walls.
The most eye-catching spoils were the sturdy horses.
The Maiden’s Men had left behind a thousand ponies, and the Broken Flag Company another seven hundred horses.
None of these, however, was enough to move him.
Only the Long Spear Company's nearly two thousand warhorses truly caught his attention.
The Long Spear Company had only eight hundred men, but ensured that each had at least two horses.
Unlike the ponies of the Maiden’s Men and the Broken Flag Company, these heavy cavalry mounts stood tall at the shoulder and broad in the body, their muscles sculpted in sharp lines. They wore armor, with protective fittings over their eyes.
They were allocated first to his eight hundred finest Dragon Spirit Guardians. Clad in Valyrian