Sacrifice (The Snow Queen #2)(73)
General Halvor—barely visible above the tide of Verglas soldiers, even though he was mounted—turned his horse in a tight circle. Knut sounded a beautiful note on his ram’s horn, and all eyes in the Verglas army turned to Rakel.
Farrin, standing next to her, unsheathed his broadsword and crouched—ready to lunge in front of her.
Rakel gripped her magic, her eyes tracing the troops.
Crow shouted “Light ’em up, Princess—ack!” before someone—Bunny most likely—silenced him.
His outburst provoked the resistance troops, who started chanting. “Snow Queen, Snow Queen, Snow Queen!”
Rakel barely heard any of it. Her blue eyes traced a path to Tenebris—who was starting to raise his hands. Rakel threw her arm in front of her, and ice exploded, blazing a crystalline, sword-sharp trail of spikes from the edge of the Verglas army into the Chosen forces. It cut a path straight from Rakel to Tenebris, and split his forces in half.
Tenebris caught the ice before it could encase him, meeting it with a shadowy shield of darkness. Rakel threw more of her powers into her strike, but his shield held.
She pulled back, and up and down the Verglas line, soldiers sounded horns, beginning their part of the fight.
Then Oskar and the resistance opened fire on the Chosen, while Frodi and any of the magic users with long-distance fighting capabilities whipped their powers at the incoming forces. Lightning carved a short path among the Chosen magic users—Bluff’s handiwork—and Verglas soldiers raised their enchanted shields—blocking enemy fire until they met them.
Sword clashed against sword.
Tenebris set off his own attack. His vile magic streaked across the field, moving faster than any of the previous times he had wielded it against her. Rakel threw up a tree-sized shield of ice, blocking it, but she had to grit her teeth and push more power into it to keep it up as the acidic sensation of his magic clashing with hers burned the inside of her skull.
When his power buckled, she pushed forward—shattering her shield and dissolving his attack. She continued to press, creating a cloud of ice swords that sparkled in the bright sunlight and hovered above Tenebris. She threw them at him, creating a deadly rain. She had angled the swords at his back, driving him forward to escape the worst of the blow, even as she and Farrin started to edge into space the Chosen army occupied.
Darkness exploded out of Tenebris, blocking him from the rest of the attack.
I see, that one made him angry. He doesn’t like to be herded, does he?
She was aware of Farrin, whirling his broadsword as he fought off attackers. Often, he was barely visible as he tapped his speed magic. She heard his sword clang and felt several kinds of magic brush at her, but he always stepped in and reflected the attack away, moving around her like a shadow.
Rakel, trusting him to guard her, kept her attention on Tenebris. The cloud of darkness that had protected him swirled above him like an angry storm cloud and divided into two swirls which moved like twin lightning strikes. One strike was aimed at Oskar and the resistance archers; the other was aimed at the front lines where the Verglas infantry fought the remaining Chosen soldiers.
She had to strain to raise ice walls in time, and she shuddered when their magic collided. Her walls held, shattering only when the black magic burned out. Rakel yanked on her magic, her eyes stinging due to the coldness it radiated, and snapped an ice cage around Tenebris, making it thick and uncomfortably cold. She could feel him hammer at it, but it didn’t crack as she forcibly held it together and took a moment to glance up and down the field.
She and Farrin had ventured deep into the Chosen forces—but many Verglas magic users, and even squads of soldiers, had managed to follow them in.
Flames of fire that zigzagged across the field gave her a general idea where Frodi and Eydìs fought. A wolf’s howl echoed above the deafening clang of the battlefield, and Rakel caught a brief glimpse of Phile—easy to spot in her brightly colored clothes—throwing Foedus at a Chosen magic user.
General Halvor’s shouts reached her like a song, giving her an extra nudge. “Angry Owls, move forward—protect the princess’s back! Fourth Regiment, assist the magic users!”
Farrin kicked a man in the stomach, brained him in the head with the pommel of his sword, then flipped him over his back, and threw him to the ground. It took a moment for Rakel to recognize the man he had just beaten the stuffing out of as the magic binder from Kavon’s squad. Glancing back, she saw Kavon’s alchemist—slain—splayed in their trail.
She winced at the rampant shedding of blood, and her conviction built. This must end.
“Are you managing?” Farrin asked.
Rakel winced and reinforced the ice cage in which she held Tenebris as he pushed against it, spiking her mind with pain. “Yes.”
Farrin nodded and brushed blood from a small cut on his face. “Watch out for Kavon and his illusions. Most of the magic users attacking us are in his regiment.”
Rakel started to reply, but Tenebris finally broke through his icy cage. His dark powers puffed up around him like a snow cloud following an avalanche. That he REALLY didn’t like, she thought as she hoarded more and more of her magic.
Tenebris responded to his imprisonment by shooting his powers up and down the line like fireballs of darkness. The new assaults moved with the speed of lightning, and Rakel grappled to block all of them.
She caught the two strikes against the resistance fighters, the three fired at the magic users, and one of the two aimed at the Verglas troops.