It truly was ambitious.
"I know," Darion said to the senior knight, thinking now.
The obvious alternative was total destruction.
Kill Aldric, kill his officers and kill enough of the force that Valdenmoor couldn't threaten anyone for a generation.
Clean in one sense. Final in another. But even with what they had, with the compounds and the undead and the wolves and the Rops, two hundred of Valdenmoor's knights had just marched into Percvale and left with fifty-two of his people dead.
Valdenmoor's full strength was considerably more than two hundred. Killing everything in that barracks was not the same as killing Valdenmoor's capacity to retaliate.
And even if they killed Aldric, someone stepped into the gap. An advisor, a senior knight or a relative with a claim to the territory. That person would inherit the ledger. He or she would inherit the record of what Percvale had done to their barracks over weeks of infiltration and then to their king.
