The Grand Imperial Highway unrolled eastward like an iron ruler laid across the fertile heartlands of Val-Mora.
Twelve thousand veterans of the Northern Vanguard marched in tight, rhythmic cohorts, their newly silvered mail catching the autumn sun in a blinding sheet of moving steel. Behind them rumbled thirty heavy baggage wagons bearing the iron shot, siege ropes, and flour casks of the imperial storehouses.
At the head of the column rode Malakor on the great roan, his great sword latched across his shoulder, flanked by Aurelia on her black courier mare.
The countryside here had not felt the bite of war in two centuries. Sprawling orchards of ripe russet pears and silver-barked olive groves lined the sunken roads; stone tithe-barns with slate roofs stood untouched beneath the rolling hills.
Yet the villages were dead.
The Archduke had stripped the eastern valley bare to feed his twenty thousand cavalry. The cattle had been driven behind the stone walls of the River Fortresses; the granaries were sealed under the ducal wax of Val-Mora. Along the roadside ditches, peasant families huddled in gray wool rags, their hollow eyes watching the silent, terrifying procession of northern spears with fearful awe.
"The Archduke feeds his horses while his tenants eat bark," Aurelia noted, her dark eyes scanning the shuttered timber houses of an empty market town.
The silver resonance within her veins hummed at a low, vigilant pitch, tasting the air. There was no Veil corruption in the east; the land was old, rich with ancestral leylines that had never been pierced by the Solar Concord's heretical pyres. But the air was heavy with the coming storm of steel.
"A duke who rules through blood-right cares nothing for the dirt beneath his feet," Malakor answered, his deep voice carrying the flat, merciless finality of an executioner. He reached across the space between their saddles, his broad, calloused hand closing over hers where her fingers rested on the pommel of her dagger.
His grip was warm, solid, and completely unhurried, his sovereign heat flowing through her gloves like wine.
"When we break his cavalry at the Silver Crossing," Malakor murmured, his amber eyes flicking to hers with dark, unmasked intent, "the tithes of this valley will feed the northern clans for twenty winters. His silk will line our boots, and his stone will rebuild our walls."
Aurelia’s fingers tightened around his, feeling the scarred strength in his knuckles. "And what of the Archduke himself?"
"He dies on the riverbank," Malakor growled softly. "A pretender who sends boys with severed heads does not deserve a scaffold."
By late afternoon, the flat highway dipped into the broad river basin of the Silver Torrent.
The river was a quarter-league wide, fed by the deep glacial melt of the Dragon’s Teeth mountains, its churning gray-green waters bridged by an ancient monument of white dwarven stone: the Arch of Twelve Crowns.
Across the river, sprawling across the eastern floodplains in a vast crescent of silk pavilions and timber palisades, lay the camp of the Archduke.
Twenty thousand heavy cavalry—the Pride of Val-Mora—had formed their lines along the water’s edge. Their azure-and-gold banners fluttered in the stiff breeze, their lacquered plate armor gleaming in the dying daylight like an ocean of polished scales. Three hundred iron trumpets sounded in unison across the water, a high, arrogant fanfare that dared the northern invaders to set foot upon the bridge.
Kaelen rode his battle-scarred mount up to Malakor’s stirrup, his hand resting on the hilt of his notched broadsword.
"They have fortified the eastern bridgehead with two lines of timber stakes and four batteries of scorpion ballistas," Kaelen reported, spitting into the roadside dust. "If we force the causeway on horseback, their crossfire will butcher our mounts before we reach the middle arch."
Malakor looked across the broad, rushing water, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a slow, savage grin that promised slaughter.
He didn't call for the siege engines. He didn't order the vanguard to halt.
"We do not fight them on the bridge," Malakor said, his sovereign aura flaring so brightly that the grass beneath his horse’s hooves began to smoke.
He turned to Aurelia, his amber eyes burning with an unholy, ancient fire that made her pulse skip wildly against her ribs.
"Aurelia," he whispered, his voice rich with dark devotion and the thrill of the hunt. "Show the Archduke how deep the water gets when the Veil decides to drink."