The watchtowers of the Bull-Horn Redoubt did not spot the Vanguard until the earth began to sing.
High upon the battlements, a sentry dropped his horn of mulled wine into the slush as the stone floor beneath his boots began to vibrate with a high, crystalline whine. Down in the outer ditch, three hundred yards of deep snow suddenly vaporized into a boiling sea of steam.
Through the mist stepped Aurelia.
She did not approach with siege engines or battering rams. She walked alone across the steaming kill-zone, five paces ahead of Lady Vespera’s armored vanguard. Her silver hair flared around her shoulders like a banner of pure light, her ancestral blade held loosely at her side, leaving a scorch mark in the frost with every step.
"Halt! In the name of the Regent—" an officer on the gatehouse bellowed, his voice cracking as he leaned over the crenellations. "Archers, loose! Light the mangonels!"
The wall erupted with black-feathered arrows and arcing pots of pitch.
Aurelia did not even raise her shield.
The Six Shards within her chest detonated into an invisible, dome-shaped gale of astral gravity. The rain of arrows struck the shimmering perimeter and sheared into splinters of kindling, while the blazing pots of pitch detonated harmlessly in mid-air, their flaming oil blown back against the stone face of the ramparts.
"My turn," Aurelia whispered.
She set her feet into the mud, drew the ancestral blade back with both hands, and channeled the combined fury of the Fifth and Sixth Shards—the crushing gravity of the earth and the unmaking hunger of the void.
A horizontal arc of silver-violet annihilation ripped from the edge of her blade.
It struck the Bull-Horn Gate at the center beam. The three-foot-thick ironwood timbers, reinforced with dwarven steel that had stood for four centuries, groaned for a fraction of a second before exploding inward like parched kindling. The concussive thunderclap buckled the archway above, sending thirty-ton keystone blocks crashing down into the courtyard in an avalanche of pulverized mortar.
"Forward!" Lady Vespera’s command cut through the dust like a whip. "Take the gatehouse! Clear the breach!"
Six thousand northern shock-marines surged into the maw of the ruined redoubt with a bloodcurdling roar, their halberds and boarding pikes skewering the dazed defenders before they could draw their sidearms.
Inside the lower bailey, the garrison was in utter disarray—until an iron portcullis slammed down across the inner archway, cutting off the Vanguard’s advance toward the High Citadel.
"Spearmen, form up!" a commander shrieked from the inner courtyard, herding five hundred heavy footmen into a bristling wall of steel. "Hold the inner gate! The Regent’s guard is deploying from the citadel!"
Before the spearmen could lock their shields, the heavy iron grating of the sewer sluice in the center of the courtyard exploded upward.
A geyser of black water and stone slabs flew into the air, followed immediately by the roaring silhouette of Malakor.
He did not clamber out; he vaulted into the fray like a demon uncaged, his great sword already spinning in a terrifying, decapitating circle. The two spearmen nearest the sluice were cleaved in half before their weapons hit the flagstones, their armor offering no more resistance than wet parchment against his enchanted dark steel.
Behind him, two hundred shadow-vanguard poured from the breach, merciless and silent, striking the garrison from the rear with brutal efficiency.
Malakor moved like a whirlwind of black plate and slaughter. When the garrison commander attempted to rally his men, Malakor closed the distance in two lunging strides, caught the man by his throat with a steel-clad hand, and smashed his skull against the granite wall of the winching house with bone-splintering finality.
Without pausing to wipe the blood from his visor, Malakor lunged at the iron winch mechanism. With a feral roar that echoed over the clamor of the fighting, he drove the point of his great sword into the counter-weight axle, snapping the dwarven gearing with pure, leveraged fury.
The massive inner portcullis groaned, its chains snapping like violin strings, crashing to the stones and throwing the inner passage wide open.
Through the dust and settling smoke, Aurelia walked through the breach.
Her gaze met Malakor’s across the bloody courtyard. He stood panting amidst a heap of fallen spearmen, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his blade, dark and feral.
As she approached, his jaw relaxed, a dark, wicked smirk curling his lips despite the carnage around them.
"You're late, empress," he rasped, wiping a smear of crimson from his cheek with the back of his forearm. "I had to kill the commander myself."
"I took down the wall, warlord," she countered, stepping up until the tips of their boots touched, looking up into his wild, fierce eyes. "You only had to turn a handle."
"Then let's go finish the job," Malakor growled, his free hand reaching out to clasp hers, their blood-stained fingers intertwining with fierce, unbreakable devotion.
Above them, the bells of the High Citadel began to toll in frantic, hopeless terror.