Chapter 169 - 169: Ambush Point Two

While Kamel and Ali were dying on the imperial road—while their small patrol was being erased behind the curve—the same work was being done elsewhere, all along the frontier.

Dozens of forward scouting elements, six men here, fifteen men there, fanned out ahead of the columns like feelers. They were meant to taste the ground before the main body arrived, to report villages intact, roads clear, bridges usable—small facts that kept an army from walking blind.

Instead, they vanished.

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