Malakor did not wait for the enemy to mount the slope.
He vaulted the fractured parapet with a singular, fluid roar, his heavy boots striking the muddy scree fifteen paces below. The shockwave of his descent scattered the advance scouts, and before the front rank of the Black Watch could level their pikes, his great sword swept in a broad, terrible arc. Iron snapped like brittle kindling. The front line folded inward in a spray of mud and gore.
Aurelia followed his descent, lighter than mist, her body catching the updrafts of the mountain gale as the Veil-woven tether unspooled from her core.
She landed upon the rocky outcropping above the road, directly flanking the Concord’s archers. The wind-whipped bowmen were still scrambling to notch their black-fletched arrows when she crossed the distance. Her twin daggers became silver streaks through the rain. She did not waste energy on broad swings; her strikes were surgical, opening throats and severing bowstrings in a blur of motion honed through years in the mountain pits.
A heavy-set crossbowman spun toward her, leveling a primed quarrel at her ribs. Before he could squeeze the trigger, Aurelia leaned inside the guard, drove her left blade beneath his gorget, and kicked his collapsing weight into the soldier behind him.
"Hold the line!" Commander Vane screamed from the lower terrace, his warhorse rearing as the vanguard descended into utter chaos. "Surround them! Bring the chains!"
Ten armored footmen rushed the switchback, spears lowered to pen Aurelia against the cliff face. But Malakor was already there.
He carved his way up the embankment like an encroaching wildfire. His sovereign blood, supercharged by their ritual binding, poured into the dark steel of his blade, trailing embers of molten gold through the freezing squall. He shattered the spears with a brutal backhanded cleave, grabbed the nearest soldier by the breastplate, and threw him headlong over the precipice into the churning gorge below.
He planted himself at her shoulder, his back brushing hers as four more men charged with raised broadswords.
The heat radiating from him was blistering, a furnace in the storm. For a fraction of a second, the contact ground her focus down to razor sharpness. She felt the flex of his shoulders against her back, the rhythmic, lethal tempo of his breathing, the unspoken promise forged into the blood beneath their palms.
"You missed one," Malakor growled over the din of battle, parrying a descending axe and driving his pommel through the attacker's visor with sickening force.
"He's running," Aurelia breathed, slipping beneath a spear thrust to gut the man advancing on their flank. "Let him carry the news."
The Black Watch ranks began to fracture. They had marched up Mount Sorrow expecting to capture a half-starved captive and execute a disgraced lord; they had not prepared to face an apex predator backed by the living conduit of the Veil. Fear spread through their lines like frost across stagnant water.
Commander Vane saw the tide turning. Cursing the gods, he hauled on his reins, wheeling his charger around toward the lower supply wagons.
"Vane!" Malakor’s voice rang across the ridge, cutting through the thunder of the siege engines.
Without breaking stride, Malakor wrenched a broad-bladed spear from a fallen corpse, stepped into the throw, and launched the iron-headed ash shaft across the terrace with horrifying velocity.
The spear punched through Vane’s backplate, piercing through his chest and driving the commander straight out of the saddle to pin him to the timber frame of a supply wagon thirty paces away. The horse bolted, wild with terror, vanishing down the road into the dark valley.
A stunned, suffocating silence fell over the switchback.
The remaining dozen soldiers dropped their weapons into the mud, their hands raised in trembling surrender as the freezing rain beat against their armor.
Malakor stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving, steam rising from his soaked leather tunic and the dark steel of his great sword. He turned slowly toward Aurelia. His amber eyes were dark with the high thrill of slaughter, his jaw set, but when his gaze raked over her—checking for blood that belonged to her—the tension in his shoulders eased a fraction.
Aurelia wiped her daggers on a dead man's cloak and sheathed them, her breathing shallow as she stepped through the mud toward him. The wind tore her hair wildly around her face.
"The road to the capital is open," she said softly, stopping an arm’s length away.
Malakor reached out, his scarred fingers catching her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his with dark, possessive resolve.
"The road is open," he agreed, his thumb sweeping away a fleck of cold mud from her cheek. "And now, we take their empire."