Author's Note: You've been waiting long enough, so go ahead and get to reading!
Cover Art for the story is by the incredibly talented Trixdraws from DeviantArt. Thank you again, Trix! Please see Chapter 1 for my Standard Disclaimers!
Feel, Don't Conceal
by Jo K.
Chapter 11: The Cost of Nobility
Mine is yours and yours is mine
There is no divide
In your honor I would die tonight
Mine is yours and yours is mine
I will sacrifice
In your honor I would die tonight
-Foo Fighters, "In Your Honor"
Time had lost all meaning for Elsa.
She knew that she had been slowly, carefully accumulating wet snow on both mountain ridges forming Maiden's Pass for a considerable while, but she had no real idea how long she had been at it. She just knew her work wasn't complete yet, so she had to continue.
She could see that her position on the northern mountain ridge had changed appreciably, with the snowfall thoughtfully lifting her up to keep pace with the ongoing accumulation instead of simply covering her as it would have someone other than the Winter Queen or her new bride, but that was all she could see had changed. She had centered her attention on the area around her and used her powers to effect the same changes on the southern mountains as well, mirroring her actions in a way so as to essentially let her work in two places at once; it was incredibly efficient, a trick she had learned over the last month while practicing her powers with Anna, but it was doubly exhausting to her, physically and mentally.
The snow drifts on each mountain chain were well beyond what would have collapsed into avalanches on their own, and only Elsa's willpower and concentration continued to hold the heavy drifts in place atop the peaks. The cloud cover and snow flurries covering the upper portions of the mountain chains concealed Elsa's deadly work from their intended victims; the tens of thousands of Karelian soldiers occupying the valley below knew avalanche season was months away, so there was no urgency to their movements as they readied their camps and set up fortifications below.
I really don't want to kill tens of thousands of Karelian soldiers. Freya, I don't want to kill anyone. Not if some other way to avert this war existed. But she knew now that there was no other way. Arendelle's chance to take the pass through the mountains bordering their kingdoms, to take away Karelia's only direct route into Arendelle, had failed. Karelia had moved quickly, so quickly that there had been almost no warning of their army's approach, and something about that troubled Elsa.
She felt her control start to slip along with her focus; thrusting her analysis of Karelia's tactics aside, she brought her concentration back to holding the massive snow drifts in place atop the mountains while more snow and ice accumulated. She was reasonably sure that what she had already done would prove sufficient at their grim duty, but there was no room for error. She was already exhausted and would likely collapse when she finally allowed herself to release the accumulated mountains of snow and ice; there would be no second chance to do it again.
She kept up the steady snowfall across both mountain ranges, layering yet more snow as she focused on maintaining stability of the massive snowdrifts. What she truly wanted to think about was Anna, about how Anna was faring with the altogether more volatile situation in Arendelle. Elsa knew that Anna was capable of dealing with whatever was present, but she worried about Anna's ability to make difficult choices. However, just starting to think along those lines ran the risk of losing control of the snow packed atop the mountains, and she couldn't do that.
Not yet.
In Arendelle, Anna watched the flight of four more ice dragons dive out of the gray-green clouds swirling above the city. They bore directly for the Glavadian crusaders massed outside the city of Arendelle, but before they reached the ground, a massive blast of cold air to her left pulled her attention away. The dragon sitting on the parapet beside her had pushed forward, launching itself off the castle wall with powerful flaps of its great wings. As it flew toward a division of crusaders preparing to attack the city of Arendelle, its jaw dropped to open its maw, letting an eruption of ice and frost stream forth. It swept the lethal spray across the middle of the crusaders' formation, almost instantly killing a third of them before it was past them and flapping its wings to gain attitude again.
"Charge, you fools!" screamed Droclis as the battle-seasoned soldiers held their ground in fear. "As long as you're in the open, that beast'll annihilate you! Once you're engaged with the Arendellans, it would have to slay them as well were it to attack again!" His crusaders obeyed, sending a large portion of their troops forward into the undamaged parts of Arendelle, while a core group continued to hold the fortifications around the prisoners.
Anna turned to look down directly in front of the castle. She saw the formation of Arendelle's castle guards advance from the castle, all infantry and pikemen in the main group. The cavalry would be held back from the initial charge, to take the field when Glavadia's crusaders were either unprepared or unguarded and deliver crippling losses when the opportunity presented itself. But cavalry couldn't carry out the essential task of freeing prisoners from chains, cages and buildings, which was why the foot soldiers were critical to Anna's plan.
She frowned as the Glavadians showed no signs of rushing forward to meet the Arendellan advance. She had hoped to draw them out of the cover of their barricades and camp, where the dragons could decimate them as brutally as they were the siege engines and troops outside the city. But the Glavadians held their ground, either through experience, wise leadership or both.
"Tyr's hand," Anna swore to herself. The castle guards would be subject to the Glavadian archers' assault for much of their approach when they attacked the crusaders, and even with their armor and shields, if enough arrows were put into the air, there would be injuries, even deaths from lucky shots. She seized her icy longbow again, stepping to the wall of the parapet as she nocked an arrow, aimed, then loosed it. When it struck its target several seconds later, evading the fortifications and their cover to send a Glavadian archer tumbling lifelessly to the ground, Anna looked down to see the castle guards hesitating, staying close to the castle instead of advancing to the Glavadian camp.
She looked to her left, seeing the crusaders advancing deeper into the city. They were being met with stiff resistance, Arendelle's city guards and citizens putting their own hasty fortifications to good use as they repelled the Glavadian advance. But Anna could see clearly that many more Arendellans were staying back from the fighting, seemingly content to hold their position despite having weapons, horses and numbers.
She turned to her right, toward the smaller section of the city which remained loyal to the crown. Here one of her dragons was savagely tearing into the smaller numbers of crusaders focused on that part of the city, with the guards and citizens running to and fro without any central direction. Some were finishing off crusaders left in ones or twos, while others were attempting to progress toward the crusaders' camp, but the majority of the Arendellans seemed to be moving randomly, with no clear consensus of what to do other than stay out of the ice dragon's way.
Anna shot another arrow at the Glavadian archers, smiling grimly when she saw another archer fall, despite him hiding behind a support beam; Anna's magical arrow had driven through the beam as well as the archer. But at this rate, it would take hours to reach and free the prisoners, giving the crusaders plenty of time to kill them all should they choose to do so.
A frown drew across Anna's face. She certainly wouldn't put it past them to do something so horrible, not after what they had already inflicted upon Arendelle and its inhabitants. It was brutally astonishing at what people were capable of doing when they could blame their religion and not themselves for their actions. "Ygrit!" she cried down to the castle grounds below her. "I need you!"
Just over a minute later, Ygrit came to a lumbering halt beside Anna. To her credit, she was no longer complaining about the multiple layers of clothing and armor Anna had insisted she wear. Two more Glavadian archers had fallen to Anna's arrows, but they were already reinforcing their numbers with others.
"I'm here, Your Majesty," Ygrit said, determined to not sound winded despite bounding up the stairs as quickly as her bulky layers of clothes and armor would allow.
"How do you get rid of archers?" Anna asked. "Military-wise, I mean. Militarily? Is that a word?"
"Cavalry, I think," Ygrit said, scrutinizing the battlefield as she spoke. "And I have no idea if that's a word, Your Majesty. I'm just a handmaiden."
Anna turned her head, quickly enough to catch a fleeting smile on the younger girl's face right before it disappeared. "I wasn't aware that we were equipping our handmaidens with swords and shields now," she said calmly.
The corner of Ygrit's mouth turned up slightly. "I do believe I'm the first, Your Majesty."
Anna reached out and patted Ygrit's heavily padded shoulder. "I'm glad you're here with me, Ygrit. Nothing against Idunn, because I adore her, but..."
"Idunn climbs atop a chair when she sees a spider," Ygrit finished. "I don't think she'd like arrows or crusaders much more."
Anna laughed without even thinking about the circumstances. The noise drew the attention of those guards around her, making her more than a bit self-conscious, but she had already decided to be herself. She drew another arrow and fitted it to her bow's drawstring. "Send two riders to those guards in the main part of the city. If we can get them and their horsemen to join us in an attack, we should be able to break the ranks of the crusaders guarding their main camp. Send two others to the other side of their camp. There might not be many people able to fight over there in that ruined part of the city, but we'll take everything we can get."
Ygrit nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty!" she said as she turned and hurried back to the stairs leading down the castle wall.
Minutes later, two pairs of horsemen raced from the castle gates, one pair riding to Anna's left and the main part of the city, the second pair to the heavily damaged corner of the city to her right. She hoped they would be enough to spur the remaining Arendellan horsemen into action.
Across the country of Arendelle, Elsa was finding it increasingly hard to ignore the cries of the snow. It was pleading with her, begging to be released from her steadfast grip. Both mountains were crying out, the whispers their soft voices had started as now grown into loud cries for mercy. They told her how they longed to be free, how much relief it would be when the massive accumulation of snow and ice upon their peaks could be released, but Elsa refused to listen.
When her father started talking to her, however, it was enough to make her pause.
At the sound of his voice, Elsa halted what she was doing, freezing everything in place: every flake of snow hovering in the air, each drift groaning in place, the wind silent as it held its place. "Father?" she said with a voice trembling with exhaustion and worry. Had the strain of her task been much? Had her mind broken?
She cast her focus inward, not daring to breathe lest everything, not just the mountains, crumble. I am Elsa. I am Queen of Arendelle. I love my sister Anna, whom I married not yet a month ago. We are saving our country from those who would destroy it, which is why I am here upon this mountain. When this army is no more, I will find her and focus again on love, not violence.
She again turned her focus outward, secure in her identity and her purpose. And when she heard her father's voice again, she was prepared.
"Elsa, my dear Elsa, what have you become?" came the voice, strange but disturbingly similar to that which had begun to fade into nonexistence years ago. As Elsa looked into the eerily still clouds of snow and sleet in front of her, she saw her father's ghostly figure slowly emerge.
She held her ground, not daring to move as she continued to hold the thousands of tons of wet snow packed onto the peaks on both sides of the valley in place with her will alone. "Hello, father," she quietly replied, looking directly at his transparent visage, unsure if his spirit was truly standing before her or if it was some subconscious manifestation of her guilt or worry, brought to life by her powers.
"You have failed Arendelle," he said sadly, disappointment visible despite his face's blurry features, seeming to move in and out of focus with each second. "You have given up on producing an heir, you have abandoned your country out of desire for your sister, and now you give up on your ideals of protecting the lives of others. You do not deserve to be queen!"
His words stung, more than Elsa had expected. She had always hated to disappoint both her parents, but displeasing her father had always devastated her. She had wanted to make him proud, to honor him and his example by becoming a perfect daughter and a perfect ruler. Nothing else had come close in her quest to please him; in fact, everything else had been shoved aside in her single-minded devotion, including her freedom, her dreams, her self-worth, her happiness. Even Anna.
She shivered once, the first time that had happened in over a decade, and the sensation wasn't a pleasant one. "You have no right to lecture me," she replied in a voice as cold and cutting as the arctic winds held in check around her. "All I ever wanted was to please you, to make you proud of me."
"You never did," the specter answered grimly.
"No," Elsa agreed. "I never could. Because you never could be pleased. I tried to be perfect... and you let me! You let me torture myself, chasing some unattainable goal!"
"You pushed yourself relentlessly, because you wanted to be the best ruler Arendelle had ever seen. That was your choice."
Elsa shook her head sadly. "No," she replied, "I didn't want to be the best. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be something that I could never be, something impossible and unrealistic. And when I couldn't be perfect, I punished myself and told myself that I was worthless for not achieving my goal."
"You should have known better! You should h—"
"You should have told me!" she shouted at the spirit. "You should have told me I couldn't be perfect! You should have told me I was hurting both myself and Anna for shutting her out! You should have told me that my love for her was something to be embraced, not hidden away in fear or shame! 'Conceal, don't feel,' you said, in all your supposed wisdom, and I believed it!" She closed her eyes, squeezing her fists even tighter to maintain her grip on the storm and the slopes. When she was certain she still held her control over the wintry elements, she looked at her father's specter once again, now just steps away from her but curiously silent.
"You were a fool," she said sadly. "And I was a bigger fool for believing you."
The sadness in the ghost's eyes was palpable, and it struck Elsa deep in her heart. "The death of all these soldiers will weight heavily on you, Elsa. There could still be a way to negotiate a peaceful solution, to prevent all these deaths."
"Perhaps," Elsa replied, her face guarded. "But there's no time left for such measures, not before even more lives are lost."
"You don't want to be a murderer, Elsa," the specter said, and Elsa could hear a hint of true emotion in the voice.
"No," she said softly, "I don't." She looked down at where she stood on the snow. "But we cannot help who we are. We can only accept it."
"And you accept you are a murderer?"
Elsa's head shot up, her gaze so intense that even the apparition might have flinched. "I accept I am a QUEEN," she said hotly. "And queens and kings have to be willing to do terrible things to protect their countries... and those they love." She closed her eyes and thought of Anna, risking her own life back in Arendelle. "Especially those we love," she added more quietly before opening her fists and releasing the massive drifts of snow on both sides of Maiden's Pass.
Anna watched the horsemen return at nearly the same time, both pairs returning by themselves, their sullen body language betraying the outcome of their requests for assistance. Her frustration approaching its boiling point, she shot another arrow at the Glavadian stronghold, then another. Two more slain crusaders brought no joy to her spirit; they were still no closer to freeing the Arendellans held prisoner within the hastily but solidly built fortifications, and each minute that passed brought them closer to the point where the Glavadians would decide the prisoners had no further value. Even the dragons' ongoing decimation of the Glavadian forces outside the city brought them no closer to saving the prisoners.
No more prisoners die today. No more children shot in the back. Whatever it takes to keep them safe.
"Your Majesty?"
Anna turned at the sound of Ygrit's voice. "Yes?" she said, unhappy with the note of frustration she heard in her own voice.
"The horsemen are back. They said that while there are several people who seem willing to fight, especially in the city proper, they seem to be holding back, waiting for the Glavadians to reach them before they join the battle."
"By that time the prisoners will probably be dead," Anna muttered. "I've got to save them."
"Your Majesty," Ygrit said, tentatively reaching toward Anna before deciding to gently squeeze her shoulder, "you're doing everything you can to save them. You're taking this city back by giving Arendelle a hope we haven't had for weeks. You can't ride out there and rescue them yourself."
Anna's ears began to ring and her head throbbed once, then again a few seconds later. She closed her eyes against the sensation and the sudden dizziness that went with it, staying that way for several seconds. It was long enough that Ygrit began to worry she had gone too far, somehow upsetting her other queen with her actions or her words.
Anna's head raised suddenly. She drew an arrow and thought briefly, then she raised her bow, aiming well over the crusaders' camp before loosing her arrow. She watched it fly over the Glavadians, over the city itself, until her eyes could no longer follow its flight toward its target, a target she had no intention of actually harming. She turned back to Ygrit. "Tell the cavalry troops to prepare for battle," she said, her face coldly serious. "And get our horses ready."
Just outside the wide inlet that narrowed into Arendelle's harbor, Prince Wilhelm of the Southern Isles stood as far forward as he could on the Dark Current without actually falling into the cold ocean. He peered intently through the telescope, watching the clutch of ice dragons brutally destroy the Glavadian crusaders outside the city of Arendelle.
"I never imagined that bitch queen had so much power," muttered the man standing beside Wilhelm. He was several inches shorter than his prince, but his weathered face and faint scars along his neck and chest suggested he was no stranger to the open seas... or violence.
"Oh, power she most definitely has," Wilhelm answered, never taking his focus from the way the dragons dove and struck at their victims. "But it has limits."
The weathered man snorted. "Tell that to the Glavadians. Those dragons are ripping them and their siege weapons to pieces."
"They're powerful, but they're slow," Wilhelm replied with a measured voice. "More than once they've gotten in each other's way, suggesting they're not being controlled directly. I've not seen any of them use that icy breath more than once, either, so there's probably a limited number of uses for it. Take that away and they have to close in to strike. The fact they're almost all concentrating on the Glavadians outside the city also suggests they're not good at limiting their damage to their enemies."
The second man lowered his telescope and turned to look at Wilhelm, incredulity writ across his face. "Please tell me you're not planning on us fighting those damned things. I'd prefer not to lose my ship fighting monsters from a fairy tale."
"Us? Hardly." Wilhelm kept his gaze on the battle over a mile away. "As fine a vessel as this is, Oleson, the cannons on this ship couldn't elevate high enough to even target them. But with the right weapons..." Finally he lowered his arms, letting the telescope drop to his side. "Big targets, slow moving, made of ice. Magical ice, but still ice. They can be destroyed."
The captain of the Dark Current had served the Prince on several occasions; Wilhelm valued the man for both his competence and his talent for nefarious deeds. In return the privateer respected the prince's cleverness and utter ruthlessness toward achieving his goals. He also paid very well. "Well, while you're plotting how to destroy magic ice dragons, I hope you're also working on a plan for scuttling the fleet of Corona, because I'm more worried about those warships than a half-dozen imaginary lizards."
Wilhelm smiled, the confident, calculated smile of a predator. "It's time to put that plan in motion. Send one of the boys to my cabin in twenty minutes. I'll have a message that needs to get back to Islandhall as quickly as possible. Once that message is en route back home, we can then make for our next destination."
Wilhelm had already turned and taken several steps away before Oleson realized what he was saying. He turned and said, slightly more loudly than he had intended, "You're not wanting to see who wins the battle?"
Wilhelm halted his stride but didn't turn yet. "My dear captain, I already know who's going to win this battle. That was never in doubt from the moment those dragons dropped out of the sky." He turned now, his demeanor calm and motions smoothly controlled. "There were two main reasons for this current conflict. First, I had to weaken Arendelle's military and cast doubt on Elsa's ability to rule. Second, I wanted to know how our good Queen Elsa would react when faced with a difficult choice: deal first with a smaller insurrection at her gates, or a larger invading army at her borders. And now, we not only know the answer to that question, but we also know that she hesitated to make her decision, putting her and her country in a very difficult condition as a result. Arendelle's capital city has been bloodied, her navy has been savaged, and Corona has shown its hand as Arendelle's heroic ally."
Oleson glanced back at the battle. It seemed the dragons were withdrawing, suggesting the tide had indeed turned in Arendelle's favor, or the Glavadians had somehow managed to call down a miracle from their Burning God to drive off their scourges. "But Arendelle still has their queen and her sorcery. Looks like she made short work of the crusaders."
Now Wilhelm chuckled quietly. "Oh, she's not there. I can guarantee it."
Oleson turned to look at the city again, the flickering of fires now standing out as the daylight finally threatened to dim. "She just destroyed the Glavadian army outside Arendelle!"
"No, her dragons destroyed that army. Her creations. Did you see her anywhere?" Wilhelm paused, not really expecting an answer but giving the captain an opportunity to reply If he felt like it. "My guess is that she's over at the border, dealing with the Karelians and their invasion. I expect she'll build an ice wall so massive that those mongrels couldn't breach it in a hundred years. They'll eventually give up and head home once they get adequately bored, probably after a year or two. Or maybe the Ruthenians will take advantage of the Karelians being stretched so thin and extract some revenge of their own. They do have a few decades of anger built up, you know.
"No, her creatures are likely here to soften up the Glavadians, to buy some time until she can get back to her capitol and deal with what's left of the crusaders and those mutinous Arendellans who supported them. Either way, the loyal Arendellans who remain will celebrate their great victories, thank their gods and rest happily at night, secure in the thought that their queen and her powers will keep Arendelle safe." He smiled and looked at Arendelle across the shimmering waters of the sea.
"And then, when we strike at the moment when she is most vulnerable, when her powers will fail her, Elsa will never see it coming."
Wilhelm resumed his walk to the lower decks. "Send the cabin boy in twenty minutes. I want this missive on the way to the Isles tonight, as time will be of the essence. And once the message is away, make for Corona."
Ygrit had just relayed the message for the royal cavalry to prepare for battle when the courtyard was hit with a sudden swirl of wind. Torches fluttered as she looked up, only to see the massive figure of an ice dragon hovering over the battlements, flapping its great wings to hold itself steady as it apparently listened to something Anna was saying to it. Then its great body surged upward, its wings and tail dangling beneath it as it shot back into the sky, arcing toward the other four dragons now slowly circling the battlefield high above the ground.
Anna hurried down the stone stairs of the castle wall, knowing that the little remaining daylight was critical to her idea. She had to hurry if this was to work. She jumped the last four steps, landing on her feet and immediately breaking into a light run toward Ygrit and the cavalry. Arendelle had the forces necessary to break the Glavadian defenses; they were already here in the city, just scattered and lacking direction. They just needed something to spur them fully into action.
"Your Majesty," Ygrit said, bowing her head as Anna drew near. She had her own shield in place on her left arm, and two spears were tied to the side of her mount's saddle.
"On your horse, Ygrit," Anna said as she pulled the hood of her hauberk from beneath her cloak. She lifted the ice mail over her head, tucking it into place but pulling her twin braids out from beneath the protective armor. She let them fall along her chest as she checked her sword belt, adjusting its position. She placed her longbow on a nearby table, then added her quiver of arrows beside it. "Make sure no one touches this, or it'll freeze their hand," she told one of the young squires, a boy who looked to be no more than ten. "Okay?" He nodded in acknowledgment, prompting her to smile at him. "Thanks," she said.
She hurried to the cavalry, the men already loosely formed into ranks to exit the castle. Ygrit was now atop her horse beside the formation, holding the reins for Anna's white horse. As Anna climbed into the saddle, Ygrit offered Anna the icy shield she had been carrying, now removed from its leather case. "The Glavadians have been weakened, while their troops outside the city have been routed. There should be no reinforcements for them," she reported as Anna took the bitterly cold device, its frosty surface glittering and shimmering in the evening light, the angle of the light revealing the crocus design standing out on its face. Anna settled the shield in place on her left arm, getting more than a simple glance from several of the castle guards.
"Your Majesty," Ygrit asked, a bit nervously, as Anna slowly walked her horse toward two of the castle pikemen standing beside the main gate, Arendelle's banners fluttering from their positions near the blades of the long weapons, pointed toward the sky in the soldiers' guard stance. "Why are you... wearing your shield?"
Anna stopped just a few feet away from one of the pikemen. To his credit, he never flinched at one of his queens and her horse looming over him, although the severe cold radiating from the magical shield was enough to make his breath frost. Anna turned to look back at Ygrit. "Isn't this the way you wear it?" she asked.
Ygrit nodded. "Yes, but... Queen Elsa wants you to direct the battle." Not charge into the middle of it.
"That's what I'm doing," Anna answered. "Open the gates," she said to the guards manning the wheel for the castle gates.
As the fortified gates slowly inched upward, the guards shifted into formation to exit the castle, four abreast, then they began to file out of the castle courtyard.
"Once everyone is outside, form a line," Anna said. "The cavalry will lead the attack, the infantry will follow." Someone handed her a boy's helmet; it fit, though it was a bit snug over the ice hauberk's hood. It would do.
She turned back to the pikeman and sidestepped her horse closer to him. She reached out and grasped the long pike a third of the way up its length. "Do you mind if I use this?" she asked him politely.
He nodded mutely, releasing the polearm as Anna took it. She carefully turned her horse, keeping the long weapon pointed toward the sky as she did so, the familiar green and purple colors of Arendelle with the gold crocus fluttering as the long banner flapped in the wind. She saw the look of concern on Ygrit's face as her friend approached her slowly; she looked away before Ygrit could question her again, gently guiding her horse into stepping forward.
Outside the castle, the cavalry was crossing the bridge, hurriedly forming a broad line before the Glavadian archers could find their range.
"Please tell me you're not doing what I think you're doing," Ygrit quietly said as she drew even with Anna, the two of them pacing to the the bridge, the ranks of infantry parting to let them through. Someone, likely one of Arendelle's guards, had moved the body of the boy killed by the crusaders off the bridge; Anna was relieved at not having to see his body brutalized further after his death.
Anna kept her gaze fixed firmly ahead as their horses' shod feet clacked across the stones of the bridge. "We have the troops we need. They're just scattered to our left and to our right. We have to give them something to inspire them, to draw them to our side so we can take that Glavadian stronghold and free the prisoners. Once that's done, our soldiers and the dragons can finish what's left."
"Your Majesty, I swore to your sister—um, to your wife..."
"It's okay, both terms are correct."
"...That I would keep you safe."
Now Anna turned to look at Ygrit, and her grin once again stretched across her face. "Then you'd better ride fast and stay close to me, because you're the only one who'll be able to once the fighting starts."
As Ygrit tried to determine what her queen's mysterious words meant, Anna nudged her horse forward, forcing Ygrit to react quickly to fall in place behind her. They trotted forward, with Anna leading her steed through the line of cavalry until she was several paces in front of the skirmish line, keeping the pike in position with its banner held high, so that all within sight could see the flag of Arendelle, furling and flapping in the cold wind.
The first arrow struck the dirt several paces in front of them, drawing Anna's attention. As she turned to look over her shoulder, she saw two of Elsa's ice dragons swoop down, coming to a halt twenty or thirty feet in front of the Glavadian lines and equally as high off the ground. Powerful flaps of their wings wreaked havoc with the archer's shots, both blocking the bolts directly as well as by sending them off course from the strong gusts of wind.
Anna turned back to her troops; a quick glance to her right showed that a small number of the horsemen from the city had now started riding in their direction. She silently hoped that the others would follow suit, as they needed all the experienced soldiers they could get if this was going to work.
She looked across the faces of the horsemen lined up before her, trying to establish contact with each man—and the rare woman—before she moved to the next. "Our goal is simple," she said. "We'll break the Glavadian defenses, destroy their archers and inflict as much damage as possible, both on their camp as well as that column of troops moving into the city itself. Those of you who make it through their lines, turn, reform and charge again. The infantry will follow us and rescue the prisoners. They're our main priority. The Glavadians will be driven away, but we want to save as many lives as possible while we still can."
She turned back toward the Glavadian crusaders and adjusted the helmet with her left hand. She raised her right arm, lifting the pike and its banner as high as she could and holding it there for several seconds.
"For Arendelle," she said firmly.
"For Arendelle!" came the shouted replies of the troops behind her, nearly two hundred strong counting the infantry and the cavalry both.
As Anna took a breath and prepared to start her horse into motion, a male voice rang out behind her and far to her right. "For the Queens!"
"FOR THE QUEENS!"
The thunder of the her soldiers' reply made Anna shiver, and Ygrit's voice had rang more clearly than any other Anna had heard.
Anna started her horse into motion, no rush, no hurry, as she let the horse slowly build up speed. She could hear and feel the pounding of hooves behind her as the group matched her deliberate acceleration. She looked to her left to see Ygrit pull alongside her, a long metal spear in her grasp as she rode. This spear was longer than the two wooden ones she had tied to her saddlegear, its purpose coldly clear to Anna as Ygrit positioned it for impact, their mounts approached full gallop. She saw the other riders draw even with them, several of them pulling slightly ahead as they charged en masse.
They were just seconds away from the Glavadian forces. Anna finally lowered her pike, settling it into position as she decided on a target, a crusader in the process of dropping a crossbow and trying to ready a sword. Once she was through the lines, she could then find her second target, who had to pay for the cruel death of a small boy. Her mind flashed back to playing at jousting on her bicycle when she was ten, and how her mother had chastised her as much over her behavior as the fact that she had chosen her victims from the suits of armor in the castle.
She blinked slowly. She wasn't a child anymore. She hadn't been one for several years.
As the roaring of the giant avalanche echoed across the peaks beneath her, Elsa fell to her knees. She sighed, her breath frosting into delicate crystals that sparkled as they blew away. She knew that Anna was being forced to make the same decisions, to face the same agony of ignoring her own nature for the duty of protecting others.
She pushed herself up from the snow-covered ground, slowly taking her feet. Maybe they had made a poor decision when they chose to run away from Arendelle and those opposed to their engagement, but it was their decision to make and their mistake to correct. And truthfully, Elsa couldn't say it had been a mistake, because she had done it for Anna, for the sake of their love, and nothing would ever be more precious to her.
Anna.
Elsa drew deathly still. Anna's still in danger, more than ever before. She was facing an army herself, and despite her cleverness and courage, despite the weapons Elsa had created with her and for her, Anna had gone into a war zone.
She forced herself to calm down, to take several deep breaths before she began walking to the edge of the peak. Anna is one of the most determined, capable people I have ever met. She will lead Arendelle to victory. She has Ygrit with her to watch her back. She'll be fine, because she knows we have to be together.
Elsa stopped at the edge of the cliff; she took a look down at the thick blanket of snow and ice which had now swallowed the entirety of Maiden's Pass. With a kick of her left foot, her icy shoe turned into a glistening ski; the right shoe followed suit immediately after. Flexing her fingers, she formed two ski poles in her hands, then she pushed off the edge of the cliff.
She raced down the mountain without hesitation. She had always been one of the best skiers in Arendelle, and now she shot down the face of the mountain as fast as Skadi herself, her glittering blue gown whipping in her wake behind her. She aimed for the mouth of the Pass in Karelia's territory, where she could see a small number of soldiers had survived by virtue of not being close to the Pass when the snowy devastation fell upon their forces. As she drew close, she saw that several dozen soldiers were frantically digging at the snow, obviously trying to rescue as many of their comrades as they could.
She frowned at their efforts, both at them trying to dig out soldiers who had been invading her country as well as for what this meant she would likely have to do. She aimed her approach so that she would stop out of range of any melee weapons and far enough away from any arrows or bolts that she would have time to block them.
As she slid to a stop, the noise and her approach brought the Karelians' efforts to a sudden halt. Elsa changed her skis back to shoes without a thought as she kept her focus on the soldiers, well below her position atop the newly fallen snow throughout the valley.
"Soldiers of Karelia!" she called out. It was probably unnecessary, as they were already raptly watching her, but it felt like the right thing to do. "I am Elsa, Queen of Arendelle. Your ill-advised war against my country ends—NOW."
Instantly swords sprang into hands that previously had held shovels, helmets, shields, anything that could be used to move snow. The first twangs of bowstrings brought Elsa's left hand sweeping in front of her, encasing the missiles in coatings of ice heavy enough to make them plummet from their flight. She paused, casting her gaze from soldier to soldier. The next soldier who drew a bow against her, Elsa flung her hand at him, freezing him and his bow in a sheath of ice. As he slowly toppled over, the others paused.
Elsa kept her gaze icy—not exactly a challenge, granted. She wanted her demeanor to convey menace and finality, that any thoughts of violence toward her would be foolish and fatal. "Those of you alive to hear my words, return to your rulers and tell them that any further attempts to harm my country, my subjects, my wife or me, will be dealt with as quickly and coldly as the rest of your invasion force." She looked around. "There will be no further warnings. Arendelle is sovereign territory. Your religion, your beliefs may hold sway in your country, but here they most certainly do not."
Seeing a few soldiers quietly attempt to resume digging at the snow made her heart ache at what she was about to do, at what she had to do. But she refused to show them any tears or regret. They deserved neither.
She took several steps forward, to where the newly fallen depths of snow began to slope away, back toward the ground outside the pass. Seeing many of the Karelians withdraw reflexively at her approach brought a thin smile to her face, and she made no effort to hide this expression. She stopped, and even those who had started to resume their digging had now stopped again.
Elsa raised her right foot several inches before driving it down against the snow drifts, the impact making a solid crack instead of the soft crunch that would normally be expected from stepping on fresh snow. An icy fractal spiraled forth from beneath her foot, racing in all directions across and through the mounds of snow as they and everything in them turned into solid ice. There would be no rescue for the trapped soldiers. Elsa made sure they froze instantly, ending their terror and suffering mercifully instead of letting them die slowly from exposure or suffocation, but she expected the Karelians would see nothing merciful about her actions.
"Your fellow soldiers are gone because they dared to invade Arendelle," Elsa said, keeping her voice strong and unemotional despite the cry inside her own heart. "Don't cast your own lives away by doing the same." She looked around at the soldiers, shock and defeat battling for dominance across their faces. "Go home," she said simply to them, not wanting to take any more lives today. Or ever again, if she could help it.
She waved her right hand in front of her, creating a fierce curtain of a blizzard between her and the Karelians. The snow and strong winds obscured and shielded Elsa as she turned and slowly began to walk back toward Arendelle. Before long she would have the strength to create another mount and hasten her return to Anna's side, but for now she settled for slowly walking atop the mass grave she had created, kept company by only her quiet sobs and tears.
Author's Afterword: This chapter turned out much more emotional than I had planned. Obviously. But it should have been emotional, considering the events in it. For it to be anything less would be callous and simplistic. I hope I didn't turn anyone off, but we always need to remember the honorable, noble actions in war are forever balanced by the ugly, brutal ones. Next chapter will be sooner than this one took, I hope. These last two chapters really just took forever to get done. I guess it's more realistic to expect 2-3 weeks per update now, but I'll try to get ahead when things permit. I'm also revising the total story length to about 16-18 chapters now. Consider yourselves warned. Hope everyone stays the course, though, because we're over halfway through.
