The descent through the drainage flume was a blur of slick moss, cold limestone, and the roaring thunder of the rapids fifty feet below.
Aurelia landed upon the wet timber footing of the north abutment without a sound, her knees absorbing the shock. Behind her, Varek and the thirty veterans dropped from the stone lip like shadows spilling from a ruptured sack, their recurve bows already drawn and nocked.
Above them, the Bridge-of-Ashes was engulfed in chaos.
A second flaming boulder smashed into the mid-span timberwork, raining burning pitch and pulverized oak down into the churning foam. Shouts of panic and the shrill orders of Concord centurions clattered across the bridge planks as the defenders rushed toward the southern barricades to repel the frontal assault.
None of them looked down into the dark flume beneath the northern timbers.
"The winch-house door is barred from within," Varek hissed, pointing his horn bow at the narrow iron hatch nestled beneath the bridge's main structural rib. "Reinforced oak, three inches thick."
"It does not matter," Aurelia replied, her voice cold and level as she drew her twin curved blades.
She stepped up to the hatch. The silver glyphs on her palms flared with sudden, blinding luminescence, casting a pale, unnatural sheen across the foaming torrent below.
Instead of slashing at the wood, she drove the tips of both daggers straight into the iron casing of the latch. The raw, unraveling magic of the Veil surged down the blades, pouring into the metal like liquid frost.
The iron grew instantly brittle, white frost blooming across the hinges with a sharp, sickening crack. Aurelia planted her boot against the center of the door and kicked.
The frozen lock shattered into a thousand jagged iron teeth. The hatch blew inward.
Inside the cramped winch-house, four Concord engineers spun around from their levers, their eyes wide with terror in the red glow of their coal braziers. One reached for a heavy iron spanner; another scrambled toward an alarm bell cord hanging from the timber rafters.
Varek’s men didn't give them three heartbeats.
A volley of black-fletched arrows hissed through the open hatch, punching through leather and throat with brutal efficiency. The engineers collapsed into the gears, their blood hissing against the hot iron of the stoves.
Aurelia stepped over the bodies to the central mechanism—a massive oak capstan wrapped in coils of heavy, grease-soaked anchor chain. The iron links were as thick as a man's thigh, pulled taut into the dark water outside to hold the river's great floating boom against any vessel trying to force the passage.
"Sever the counterweight pawl!" Aurelia commanded.
Varek stepped forward with two men carrying heavy iron sledges. They hammered the iron retaining wedge with four deafening blows.
On the fourth strike, the bronze retaining tooth sheared off.
The capstan groaned, then violently spun backward in a screeching tempest of sparks and smoke. The massive iron chain screamed across the rollers, its terrifying tension released in a fraction of a second, plunging into the black depths of the Red River with a hollow, booming splash that echoed off the canyon walls.
Outside, the great timber gates of the north redoubt swung outward, dragged open by the counter-balanced chains.
Across the causeway, the earth began to shake.
It was not the tremor of catapult fire. It was the synchronized, ground-splitting roar of heavy cavalry charging at full gallop.
Out of the southern fog, Malakor emerged at the head of five hundred mounted veterans. He rode the great roan like an engine of absolute ruin, his great sword drawn and wreathed in the blazing golden fury of awakened sovereign fire.
He didn't wait for the barricades to burn.
The roan jumped the flaming gap in the mid-span timbers, crashing into the disorganized ranks of the White Lancers like an iron meteor. Malakor’s blade carved through horseflesh, plate armor, and bone in broad, unstoppable sweeps, his terrifying roar drowning out the screams of the dying.
Aurelia stood upon the catwalk of the north redoubt, her dark hair whipping wildly in the wind, a fierce, untamed smile curving her lips as she watched him carve his path across the bridge straight toward her.
"The crossing is ours," she whispered into the smoke.
And through the blood-tether in her marrow, Malakor answered with the silent, savage promise of a wolf that had smelled the heart of the kingdom.