"Kristoff, I'm so sorry! This wasn't supposed to happen." Anna rested her forehead on his chest; her arms sprawled over his shoulders. He put a comforting hand on hers.
"It'll be ok, I'll be fine. Elsa will help– "
"Elsa can't help! Look what she did to you!"
"You know she was protecting you. I just got in the way." Kristoff was still lying on the floor, grimacing at the pain in his leg. He brought his head up to see the wound. Anna's bandage was already soaked through with blood.
"I'll be fine."
Anna was left unconvinced by his words, and began to search the cabin for bandages. Finding none, she tore off another strip of her dress and applied it on over the old one.
"We've just got to stop the bleeding," she told him. There was nothing but silence on the deck above them. Elsa must have taken care of things. Anna continued to press down on the wound to halt the blood flow, distraught at how much there was.
"Kristoff, I need to go get help. I'll be– "
A cannonball exploded through the cabin wall.
Anna screamed, throwing herself over Kristoff and shielding him from the shrapnel. Again and again and again, cannonballs violently entered the cabin at the opposite wall, destroying nearly all the furniture and sending the wooden remains ricocheting in every direction. They allowed no rest.
When the fire finally subsided, Anna's ears knew nothing but a tremendous ring echoing through her head. Her temples throbbed. Her body was covered in shallow cuts, delivered by repeated blows of shrapnel.
Men attempted to swing into the large opening that had been forced open with gunfire. She looked around for a weapon, but the room was now nothing more than a pile of hot obliterated wood and twisted metal. Bracing herself for the soldiers' attack, she reached out for Kristoff's hand, holding her head high.
But no one entered.
Instead she was met with the sight of men grasping at slashed ropes in vain, creating a symphony of splashes below. A blur of a frozen blades rocketed past. Elsa was still protecting them. Anna rose to her feet and ran to the door, hoping to pull Kristoff out of danger in case Elsa couldn't keep them all away.
The door wouldn't budge. She pulled at the knob again, this time kicking the debris away from the door and forcing it back with all her strength. Still, the door stayed rigid in its frame. She squinted to inspect the door. Ice had gathered around its handle, interlocking brass and wood. Her sister had locked them in.
"Anna!"
She barely heard her name called through the internal drum that still pounded in her ears. The princess turned to the voice, witnessing a Southern Isles soldier drag Kristoff through wooden shards. Another soldier approached beside him, trudging through the debris towards her. She had nowhere to go.
"Elsa!" Anna cried, kicking and screaming as a soldier wrapped tight arms around her and gripped a swinging rope to return to his ship. She could feel the late night wind howling past her already fragile ears as they swung across.
"Help, Elsa! Please!"
She could see Elsa on the far deck, getting further away with each passing second. Her sister, bent over, raising a weak hand, creating a weak bridge. Something was wrong. With baited breath, Anna watched as Elsa ran over her bridge with strained movement, noticing she was clutching her arm.
A sudden explosion devoured the sight of her sister, until it spat her out into the dark waters.
"NO! ELSA!"
Her feet had already landed on the deck of the other ship. Scratching and kicking mercilessly until the soldier let her go, she ran and climbed up onto the rail, watching the ripples of Elsa's splash disappear. Elsa never surfaced.
"ELSA!"
Just as she was about to jump in after her, she felt the metal handle of a sword hit the back of her head.
"Anna? Are you okay?"
Anna regained consciousness, waking up to excruciating pain in her head. Slowly sitting up, she rubbed the swollen bump beneath her loose bun with one hand and searched the wooden ground beneath her with the other, running it through some bits of straw. Bars were breaking up her view of the rest of her environment. She gathered she was in a cage.
"Where am I? What happened?" she asked the disembodied voice.
"I'm over here. Look at me." Her head turned to her left in the direction of the voice. Kristoff had been lying in a heap of straw next to her, separated from her with more bars. "We're in the brig of one of their ships. We're captured."
"No… but Elsa…"
"I don't know what happened to her. I'm sorry." He reached out his hand to grab hers, squeezing it.
Tears started filling Anna's eyes, but she blinked them away. She had to be strong. At least until she knew what happened to Elsa. Anna glanced down at Kristoff's leg, still wrapped tightly with the scraps of her dress.
"How's your leg?"
"The bleeding went down, but it isn't looking too good." Kristoff had no heart to lie to Anna.
"No, it isn't," said another voice. Anna looked around Kristoff to see yet another cell, occupied by Eugene. He was twirling straw in his hands, staring into the distance with melancholy eyes.
"Eugene, what happened to you?" Anna asked.
"Rapunzel and I were separated. She was with your sister." He rested his arm on his knee, looking down at the straw between his fingers. "I need to get out of here. We all do."
"And how do you suppose we do that?" Kristoff joined in. "Even if we get out of these cells, we're still on a ship. We can't run away."
"No, we can't. But we can row away. There are rowboats on the side of the deck. If we could sneak out while it's still dark, we should be able to drop one and row back unseen." Eugene turned away from his straw, facing them. "I think it could work."
"We'll need supplies," Kristoff added.
"Sure, for a two day's trip. We can sneak all that away too."
"I'm not sure about this," muttered Kristoff, motioning to his injury. "My leg is bad and there are soldiers everywhere. I can't sneak around."
"You don't have to sneak anywhere, Blondie. Leave it to me, I mean, I was a thief after all. Anna could come too; I bet she's probably light on her feet."
"Oh, I don't know. I can be kind of clumsy."
"Ah, nonsense. You'll just have to slip up on deck and uncover the boat. I'll get the food and help Kristoff out."
"Well... okay…" Anna reluctantly accepted.
"Don't worry, you'll be fine," Eugene assured her. His mood seemed to have brightened over the prospect of his new plan. But Kristoff was still shaking his head.
"There's just one problem. We have to get out of these cells first."
"Well, that's no problem at all." Eugene held up a ring of keys, grinning at Anna's and Kristoff's shocked faces.
Kristoff pointed at the keys. "How did you just those?"
"Swiped them off a guard when he wasn't looking. Looks like I've still got it, huh?"
"And you didn't tell us this until now… why?" Kristoff asked.
"I was waiting for Anna to wake up to do this together. So are we gonna do this or what?"
Kristoff and Anna looked to each other. Anna shrugged. "Why not? Your leg is only going to get worse. It's probably the last bit of nightfall we have until tomorrow."
"True…" Kristoff closed his eyes, thinking hard. After a few moments, he finally opened them, leaning his face closer to the bars. "Be careful, Anna. Please."
"I will, Kristoff." She gave him a longing kiss. She could hear a click and the creaking of Eugene's opening cell door.
"Okay, you ready?" Eugene whispered to Anna as they waited behind a corner, listening to the soldiers talk in the hallway. "Give me something I can throw to distract them."
Anna searched the floor until her eyes settled on a sack of apples placed near a barrel. She snuck over and took one out, throwing it back into Eugene's extended hand.
"Thanks." He chucked the apple over the guards' heads and into a room far down the hall.
"What was that? Who's there?"
The guards ran to where the apple had landed, weapons drawn. Eugene reached out and tugged on Anna's hand. "Come on. Quick, before they come back."
As they ran down the hallway, Eugene surveyed the supplies that lay around the ship for what they might need. "I'll need that, and that, oh, and that axe would be a good for Kristoff, you think?" Anna nodded.
They stopped at the edge of the hallway by the stairs leading up to the dock.
"Ok, this is as far as I'll take you. I need to go get the supplies and Kristoff. Just slip up these stairs and through the door. Keep by the rail until you reach the rowboats, understand?"
"Yes."
Eugene smiled and sprinted back down the hallway, collecting everything on his mental checklist. She turned to face the stairs, leading up into blackness, and gulped. She lifted her foot up and onto the first step.
Then another.
Then another.
So far she hadn't made a sound.
She peered into the dark end of the staircase, the frame of a door and the shine of a handle now close enough to distinguish in faint light. She could make it. Another step.
Creeeeak!
Anna's body stiffened at the loose board that betrayed her. Her head whipped around, her ears alert, listening for the sound of soldiers that would come down the hallway and take her away.
But none did.
Wary of the next few steps, she continued slowly up the stairway silently, reaching her arms out desperately for the door. Her feet landed softly on the top floor.
Her heavy breathing seemed to echo off the door that stood so close to her, reflecting the wet warm air into her face. She pushed it back. At first, nothing but the clear evening sky and rustling sails welcomed her sight. Then she scanned the deck.
A group of three guards stood nearby, leaning against the railing opposite the rowboats, talking and laughing and perhaps too full of ale.
Anna crouched and scurried past the door, cautiously closing it behind her to avoid banging the wood. She hid behind a barrel sitting by the door. The soldiers still paid her no mind.
"I can do this."
She carefully moved backwards, shifting light feet across the deck and keeping under shadows cast by the sail, her eyes never straying from the soldiers. Once she was close enough, she stretched her arm out behind her until her hand came in contact with the smooth wood of the rail, letting it guide her down the deck. Her footsteps were muffled by the sound of waves rocking against the hull of the ship.
She soon found herself next to a rowboat hung over the deck, poised for a late-night escape. Anna briefly moved her eyes away from the soldiers to look at it. Its canvass cover was secured with knotted ropes. With thin agile fingers, she began to dig into the crusted knots, steadily making progress. The light of day began to emerge from the distant horizon, shining into Anna's face over the rough canvass. They had to hurry.
Eventually she loosened all the knots and carefully removed the canvass cover, glancing over her shoulder to find the soldiers were still preoccupied in their rowdy conversation. With a sigh of relief, she tugged the last part of the canvass off. Anna raised her foot up and over the railing into the rowboat. As she steadied herself in it, the boat rocked back, and its edge lightly bumped the side of the ship with a faint thud.
Anna snapped her head to watch the soldiers' reaction. They hadn't noticed.
She continued to slide into the boat, completely concealing herself within it. She couldn't believe it; her part of the plan was done. Now she just had to wait for the boys to jump in. The princess waited, her stare glued intently at the door. She could feel the heat of day start to radiate from the east. Their time was running out.
Suddenly, the door pushed open, and an apple was thrown from behind it to the other side of the deck. The soldiers heard it land and scrambled towards it, leaving enough room for Eugene and Kristoff to reach the rowboat undetected. Kristoff held the axe Eugene found earlier in his hand and the bag of supplies in the other. Eugene carried Kristoff's arm around his shoulder, supporting him as he limped across the deck.
Anna encouraged them with small movements of her hands, eager to pull them in and escape back to Corona, to find her sister and get help for Kristoff. She noticed Kristoff's leg, shaking under his weight and precariously moving over knots in the wood. Anna could feel her heart sink.
His leg gave way. He and Eugene fell down onto the deck with a large crash and a shout of pain.
"No!" Anna cried reflexively. She immediately gasped and covered her mouth with her hands, but it was too late. The soldiers turned to face them, realizing Anna was in the rowboat. They rushed towards her, swords drawn.
Before she could process it all, Kristoff pushed himself up from the deck and flung the axe at Anna's direction. It cut through the ropes that secured the boat up, embedding itself into a wooden post behind her.
Kristoff's anguished face was the last thing she saw before the boat came crashing down into the ocean water, trapping her inside
