A rumble echoes through Anna's ears and she stirs awake as the carriage bumps along the dirt track. With her vision too hazy to make out anything before her in the darkness, she tries using other senses to gain her bearings, but only perceives the smell of blood and the taste of metal in her mouth. Her heart sways with movement of the carriage sweeping through a bend, and the panic welling up within her stirs the other senses into motion; she stares at the iron shackles around her arms: twice as thick as her wrists and splattered with dried blood.
She lurches from her seat, only to find her ankles locked into the ground with chains normally used for anchoring ships. The volume of metal holding down her limbs renders her immobile; Anna opens her mouth to voice her rage, but an iron mask clamped around the lower half of her face jams her jaw shut.
A trickle of blood seeps from her nose and adds another damp spot of crimson to her dress. With her head spinning from the nausea, the slightest movement of the carriage tilts her chin back, and Anna gasps at the sight of another man sitting barely a foot across her. Bearing boyish looks and a smirk on his lips, he spits on the floor and tightens his grip on the bench. The glow of a lantern in the carriage lends a menacing aura to the boy, who otherwise isn't much older than Hans.
"Nice to see you've come to, your highness," he sneers, mocking her royal title. Sparse rays of moonlight fall through the curtains and land on his sword – illuminating the royal crest of the Southern Isles.
Anna's eyes widen at the bloodstains lining the edge; she snaps her gaze back at him and narrows her stare.
"They couldn't find enough of Hans's skull to fill a mug," he scowls, running his fingers over the sword's handle, "it's a pity you have to be kept alive – but perhaps that's a good thing, I can still have my way with you."
Whatever little blood left in Anna's face drains completely as the young prince picks up his sword and drags it over her hair. He presses the edge against her ear, and locks his gaze to Anna's.
"I think I'll spare your ears for now," he mutters, sheathing his sword, "you'll want to savour every word I have to say to you."
The prince jerks forward and slams his hand on her knee; he perks his ears up at the muffled scream from Anna's mask, and a smirk crosses his face.
"You might want to save your voice too, I love hearing whores like you scream," he whispers, sliding his tongue across his lips.
The sound of Anna's heart pounding in her ear drowns out the rumbling of the carriage as the prince slides his hand up her thigh. She clenches her fists until they turn white and yanks hard at the shackles. He leans forward and stares at Anna's eyes, screwed shut under the storm building up inside her. His breathing accelerates as he slips his fingers beneath her undergarments; Anna grits her teeth and exerts every ounce of strength her broken body can muster into the shackles. They bend slightly, but with every gruelling second ticking by and the further he ventures up her thighs – the shackles push back against her wrists.
"Fuck this," the prince spits and throws his body over Anna, "I've no time to play games."
A bead of sweat rolls off her forehead as he edges up the hem of her dress, Anna screams as hard as she can into the mask – but her muffled pleas serve only to heighten the prince's arousal pressing down between her legs. Despite the metal covering her face, the smell of his musky sweat manages to invade Anna's nostrils and she gags at his smell, barely a sputter against the noise of his heavy breathing in her ears. With a grunt, he pushes his hips flush against hers and fumbles with his belt buckle. Anna shuts her eyes and squirms beneath the imposing burden of her aggressor, but without warning, the weight lifts from her body, and she gasps in relief.
From a gap in the window, the end of a whip coils around the prince's neck like a snake; he struggles against the hemp tightening against his throat, cursing and sputtering threats.
"Lay a finger on her and I'll wring your neck," an older prince announces from the driver's seat, "our orders are to bring her back in one piece."
"Piss off," he yells at his brother, untangling the whip from his neck, "she killed Adolphus and Hans!"
"She's a fucking lunatic, so that doesn't change a goddamned thing, now behave!"
The younger prince scowls and crosses his arms; Anna thinks she can get away with a snigger – but the glint in her eyes gives her away.
"Don't be so snide," he hisses, "I'll tear you in half when we get to Weselton."
Anna cocks an eyebrow at word Weselton; she shoots a glance at the Olive branch insignia on the Prince's lapels and the Southern Isles' crest on his sword.
"What's the matter? I'm sure the Weselton folk don't take very kindly to-"
The carriage shudders to a halt with a screeching crunch. Southern Isles riders pull up alongside the carriage and peer in with spears drawn, before trotting off amidst a chorus of raised voices.
"What's the hold up?" the older prince yells from his seat.
"Sir, there're obstacles on the road," a calvaryman says, "the route was scouted yesterday and there weren't this many boulders lining the trail."
"For fuck's sake, get them off the road!" the younger prince yells, grabbing his sword and sticking his head out the window, "we're wasting time sitting here like this, and there's no-"
A vile gurgling noise cuts him off and Anna shuts her eyes as a warm liquid splatters her face. She snaps her eyes back to the silhouette of an arrow lodged into his throat, and a dark trail of crimson seeping through the curtains.
"Ambush!" voices cry out around the carriage.
Her eyes widen and she muffles a scream as another arrow slices through the carriage, shattering the lantern in an explosion of embers. The cabin plunges into darkness, before erupting in a crescendo of flame as the curtains catch fire. A shriek echoes through the shouting and the carriage lurches beneath the weight of a rider dragging his mount's reins into the door. Anna screams when she sees an arrow lodged into his eye, and the fiery curtains setting his hair ablaze.
Not good, not good – Anna thinks, snapping her eyes left and right. The noise of clashing steel and neighing horses reverberate through her eardrums as she stares at the flames consuming the carriage and creeping closer to her clothes.
With Anna's mind fraying from the panic which has befallen her, she fails to notice a riderless horse driven mad by the ambush and running itself headlong into the carriage's side, tipping it over amidst the crunching of wood and snapping of reins. The hem of her dress catches fire, and she squirms under the flames searing her thigh. Smoke fills the carriage; despite the iron mask fastened over her face, she finds herself coughing up soot from her lungs.
Crunch, crunch, crunch the carriage shudders. A yellow glint at her feet catches Anna's eyes – the point of an axe pries apart the wood around her shackles. Crunch, another hacks apart the floorboards from the outside. Crunch, the floor gives way beneath her dangling feet and a pair of hands drag her out by the legs – shackles and all.
Anna lands face first into a puddle of blood and lurches upright to the sickening sight of dead men and horses littering the trail. The nausea overwhelms her stomach and she retches into the grass. Two pairs of hands grab her by the shoulders and drag her past a line of bound Southern Isles prisoners; eyes filled with defeat and contempt as they gaze upon Anna's limp body.
The men deposit her face-down by a pile of captured weapons. A tall, slender woman clad in a black cloak approaches and Anna's heart soars as she lifts her head and notices a streak of blonde hair peeking out from beneath her hood. An array of knives strapped to her side glitters beneath the flicker of torches held by the men, and a crossbow bumps against her hip as she strides to Anna. The woman pulls the hood from her head and Anna's heart falters as a pair of unfamiliar green eyes stare down at her with contempt. She gasps as the taller woman cocks a crossbow and points it at Anna's head, and the men hold her back from inching away.
"Pathetic," Anastasia mutters. Anna holds her breath as her captor hovers a finger over the trigger. She shuts her eyes, and all the air in her lungs empties in one long gasp as a snap tears through her eardrums. But the first thing Anna notices is the weight lifting from her legs as the Russian soldiers drag away chains and a broken lock from the shackles. The clasp on her mask comes undone, and she gulps at the fresh night air like it's the first time she's breathing.
"I think I'll leave these on for now," Anastasia scowls, pointing at the shackles around her wrists, "my men here tell me you're quite the strong one, even for someone of your frame. They don't understand English, but I do – so would you care to tell me why?"
Anna looks down and shakes her head, "I don't…I don't know. Why are you helping me?"
Sighing, Anastasia slings the crossbow over her back and whispers, "We believe that it is in the interests of the Russian empire for us to help the house of Arendelle. But maybe I, personally, owe it to your sister-"
The memory of Elsa's motionless body buried beneath a pile of leaves sends Anna scrambling to her feet. With her hands still shackled together, she loses her balance and crumbles to her knees before Anastasia.
"Oh god, please tell me you've seen Elsa," Anna pleads, grabbing her captor's hands.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Anastasia sneers, dropping to her knees and producing a scrap of cloth from her pocket. The slightest whiff of Elsa's scent from the dress sends Anna into a frenzy; she lurches forward and inhales deeply at the fabric until Anastasia yanks it from her face.
"She's a drug isn't she?" Anastasia says, "So potent, so intoxicating, so…addictive."
The sight of Anastasia keeping the scrap jogs her memory back to where she last saw the beige dress. The realisation slams into Anna's head and she screams out Elsa's name faster than she can comprehend why she's screaming it.
"You can't! You can't! What did you do to her? How did you find out?" Anna gasps, lurching towards her and getting pulled back by a pair of men. Their efforts fail at keeping Anna from dragging her nails along Anastasia's arms, and before long half dozen other soldiers pin her down on the grass.
"Rest assured your sister's safe," Anastasia scowls, shifting her face close to Anna's, "but if you want to keep your dirty little secret safe – you're going to want to listen to my…proposition."
Anna squirms beneath the weight of the men as she drags her shackles into the ground and heaves. A soldier jams his elbow into her neck, sending her face into the soil.
"I want her," Anastasia drawls into Anna's ear.
"Whore!" Anna spits, "you're that whore who kissed Elsa weren't you?"
A crack punctuates the sound of heavy breathing in the air; pain blossoms across Anna's cheek as Anastasia slaps her across the face.
"Anastasia!" a soldier exclaims, pointing at a map and uttering a sentence in Russian.
"Fuck," Anastasia scowls, marching over and exchanging a series of angry words with him. As the stars fade from Anna's vision, she sees them gesticulating wildly at each other and the map, and the soldiers' expressions change from determined to grim. In between the furious Russian syllables, she hears the word Weselton, and Anastasia loads a bolt into her crossbow.
"What the hell is going on?" Anna scowls at the soldiers holding her down.
"готовиться к битве!" Anastasia yells, and at once, the weight on Anna's shoulders lifts as they draw swords and form a circle around her, concealing her beneath their shadows. A zing punctuates the silence and Anna spots the silhouette of an arrow embedded in a shield.
"осталось!" a soldier yells, before he's cut off by an arrow to the face. Two more soldiers take arrows to the knee and crumble under the pain, before the roar of voices and neighing of horses erupts from the trail's edge. The crude cavalry charge slams into Anastasia's circle and Anna finds herself scrambling beneath hooves and boots as the soldiers brawl in the darkness. A pair of hands grab her by the shoulders and pulls her from beneath the scrum into the moonlight, she squints at the eagle's crest on his uniform and squirms within his grasp.
"Fuck off!" she grunts, slamming her shackles into his head and throwing him off balance. The sheer weight of metal attached to her wrists sends her tumbling beneath the momentum, and she rolls to a halt before Anastasia's feet.
"Get out of here!" Anastasia yells, hurling her last knife at a rider. She grabs Anna by the neck and drags her behind the carriage's flaming wreck as horns blare in the distance.
"Bitch, I can fight!" Anna hisses, raising her shackles to Anastasia and beckoning her to take them off.
Without a word, Anastasia marches off to resume fighting the Weselton troops.
"Fuck," Anna mutters, snapping her head to the sight of Russians getting massacred by the stream of Weselton reinforcements pouring from the adjacent forest. She gasps at the shadowy figure of a rider bearing down on her. Rising to her feet, the instinct to flee deserts her until the last moment when she rolls away and pulls the rider off the horse by his boots. Anna's shackles catch in the horse's stirrups and it drags her along the blood-soaked mud for yards until she manages to pulls herself onto the saddle.
"Oh god, not that way!" Anna shrieks as the beast gallops headlong towards the Weselton soldiers. Beneath the glare of torches, ranks of pikes rise to meet her. The point of the first spear slices across her ear, sending Anna buckling against the horse, shuddering from the panic befalling her trembling body. Despite her sweat-fogged vision, Anna makes out the next spear thrusting towards her, and musters the little strength left in her arms to raise her shackles. The tip catches between her chains and she yanks hard, snapping the spear but leaving her bonds intact.
A passing rider clubs her hard in the forehead with the shaft of his spear and Anna falls over backwards from her horse, slamming into the ground with a clank. She leaps to her feet and jams her shoulder into the first soldier she sees, sending him flying backwards into another three men. With the surrendered Russian troops already tied up beside the Southern Isles men, the two groups of prisoners stare with open jaws at the sight of one feisty red-haired princess with bound wrists fighting off an entire platoon of men with nothing but the shackles on her wrists and the tenacity of her will.
One by one, the Weselton soldiers back off from fighting Anna, leaving her swinging wildly at the air with her fists. Heaving and spent, Anna crumbles to her knees and begins to sob into her hands. A lead rider approaches and points at her with his spear.
"She is of no use to us, we need Elsa," he orders, the thick Germanic accent muffled beneath his bushy moustache, "kill her!"
Blood streams down the open wound in Anna's forehead. In her hands, the smell from a mixture of tears, sweat and blood sends her head spinning into the abyss.
"Elsa," Anna whispers, forcing herself to her feet just as a mace strikes her across the head. Without anticipating the blow, the pain feels electric to her; searing hot and almost cool to the touch at the same time. The thought of cold brings a smile to her lips, and a soldier stands over her with a spear poised to strike her neck. Anna licks the blood from her lips; the taste of her own pain a bittersweet reminder of all she's done for Elsa.
Before Anna's eyes flutter shut - a single, perfect snowflake drifts down from the sky, and she sticks out her tongue to catch it.