Sacrifice (The Snow Queen #2)(7)

The victorious battle roars changed to panicked shouts, and General Halvor barked, “Take up your formations! Stand strong! Charge!”

The Verglas squadron of magic users and soldiers whisked out of the hills, sweeping down on Begna. Several soldiers armed with bows took shots at the mercenaries. Eydìs—a clever woman who could manipulate rope—breathed panic among the enemy when twine, straps, and rope laying among the wreckage sprung at them as if they were charmed snakes, dragging them down.

Under Frodi’s direction, the fire crawled off the buildings and darted after screaming soldiers.

When they drew close enough to Begna that Rakel could have hit the nearest cottage with a snowball, she shouted, “I don’t see any villagers.”

Oskar’s green eyes traced the snowy ground and the food and materials trampled there. “There’s no blood, just spilled goods.”

“They must be hiding,” Phile said.

“How?” Rakel asked.

Shouts and roars came from the forest.

“Reform the lines. Brace for a second incoming!” General Halvor shouted to his men, who responded with calm, synchronized movements as they changed their formation.

Rakel gathered her magic, preparing to box in the forest invaders with an ice cage, but when the armed forces burst out of the woods, one of the front soldiers carried a light blue flag emblazoned with a white snowflake and an ash gray reindeer.

“For the Snow Queen!” they shouted as they swept down the hill, falling on the Chosen mercenaries.

“It’s the resistance!” Knut—one of Rakel’s original guards from Ensom Peak—shouted, his gap-toothed smile flashing.

“Push hard,” General Halvor said. “Run the mercenaries through Begna to the pass in the east.”

Rakel held on as the sleigh made a sharp turn. Phile galloped past, leaping off her horse and launching herself onto a mercenary soldier.

Frodi and Eydìs regrouped to push the mercenaries in the correct direction, and Rakel erected a thin wall of ice, blocking the west side of the village.

General Halvor glanced at the structure. “Will that hold?”

“Not if they bludgeon it, but I do not think they know that,” Rakel said.

Previously the black-and-crimson-outfitted soldiers were smug and relaxed. Now they fought with grim ferocity.

The resistance fighters joined General Halvor’s troops, creating a V-shape around Begna, pinching the mercenaries between them.

Phile popped out of the madness and wiped blood off Foedus’s blade. “They’re not running for the border like we hoped.”

“Tell our forces to stand down.” Rakel said.

“Fall back!” General Halvor shouted.

In the brief opening, Rakel forged a cloud of ice-made swords. They glittered in the light of Frodi’s fire and shrieked like shattering crystal when she released them. They sliced and stabbed mercenary soldiers and shattered when they hit the ground, raining blade-sharp shards of ice on anyone nearby.

Finally dislodged, the mercenaries began to run east. They shouted—one tried to throw a spear at her, but it fell pitifully short.

Rakel clung to the sleigh, occasionally brushing Oskar’s back as he directed their reindeer, staying in formation with Halvor’s men. Satisfied neither their forces nor the resistance fighters had ventured into Begna among the Chosen, Rakel created another cloud of ice swords and dropped them on the mercenaries.

Just as the swords—falling to injure, not kill—swung towards the soldiers, Rakel saw the female villager stumbling through the mercenary forces. She had been hiding under an overturned cart until two soldiers—running from Frodi’s flames—flushed her out.

The mercenaries were too concerned with their skins to bother her, but she had walked right into Rakel’s formation of ice swords.

“Look out!” Rakel shouted. She threw her hand out, creating a shell of ice to protect the woman, but one of the swords jabbed through her icy shield and shattered.

To Rakel’s shock, a Chosen mercenary darted forward, grabbed the woman by her arm, and yanked her away from the beautiful but dangerous shards. Rakel watched—baffled—as he dragged the woman to an uncharred house, shut the door after her, and then ran off after the rest of his compatriots—his short, black hair sticking up like wet feathers on a bird.

General Halvor pulled back until his sleigh was alongside hers. “Princess, what’s wrong?”

Rakel shook the incident from her mind. “Nothing, I apologize.”

“We’re doing well. They’ll soon find the pass and take it,” Knut predicted.

“Be steady,” General Halvor warned. “Tollak, Snorri, I want you two with the resistance fighters.”

Snorri vaulted over the side of the sleigh he shared with Knut and landed on Tollak’s.

“As you will, General Halvor.” Tollak nodded to Halvor and peeled off from the group.

“Frodi, smoke them out,” General Halvor said.

“Yes, sir!” Frodi saluted, and the fires under his control flared, roaring like angry beasts as they grew in size. Frodi nudged them forward and wolfed down his jerky, desperate to restore the energy he burned while nurturing the flames.

The raiding mercenaries fled Begna, running for the hills. As Knut predicted, they ran down the path that cut between the sloping mountainsides. There they regained a semblance of organization and stopped fleeing, making a stand in the pass.