Author's Note: I had some difficulty getting started with this chapter, so I started it off less than a second after the end of the last one, and will probably move it there at a future date. On another note, you finally have a chance to see the story from Hjadvaar's point of view, so yay for that!

Chapter Eight - Revolt

"Which one of you has more muscle?" Hjadvaar asked Anna and Elsa. "Quickly arm wrestle if you don't know." The two sisters hastily put their elbows on a nearby desk, and Elsa's hand almost immediately struck the polished wooden surface, with Anna's firmly on top.

"Good. Here, take this." Hjadvaar said, pulling a very large, rusted looking mace boasting numerous hook-like protrusions extending from it out of one of his belts and handing it to Anna. "Hopefully, you won't have to use this, but if you do, it's very effective. It's the mace of Molag Bal, so it's an exceptionally powerful weapon." He turned to go direct the imminent battle from the courtyard, then stopped and turned back. "By the by, it'll probably talk to you. If you value your soul, don't listen to it." He then turned and raced towards the courtyard, readying his shield and drawing the sword on his back, while Anna stared at the cruel implement in her hands, then leaned it against the wall and determinedly didn't look at it.

~`~ ~'~

By the time Hjadvaar reached the gate to the courtyard, he saw to his chagrin that several dozen rebels were already on the wall and had managed to capture the few archers that had not been killed, even as more clambered over the battlements by the second. He realised that the archers probably hadn't even fired a single arrow, and that the assembled footmen in the courtyard probably weren't much more inclined to fight. Thankfully, a group of about a half-dozen seemed somewhat more willing to defend their Queen than the rest of the rabble, and Hjadvaar sprinted over to them.

"Make your way to the throne room!" he bellowed at them. "You'll be our last line of defence!"

"Yes, sir!" they said, and ran towards the gate to the castle. Hjadvaar looked around at his troops, and desperately attempted to think of a way to salvage the situation. Unfortunately, several other soldiers had seen the group returning to the castle, and assumed Hjadvaar had ordered a retreat, even as he screamed at them to get into formation by the castle gate. Thankfully, the majority decided to face the horde of rebels rather than the Queen's bodyguard, and promptly formed into a rough spear wall, supported by those with hand weapons and shields in the front ranks. Then, rebels already in the courtyard unbolted the gate in the outer wall, and a sea of howling men wielding torches and hand tools flooded towards the pitifully small formation of soldiers, the majority of which decided to fall back into the main castle, and Hjadvaar reluctantly agreed with them as they ran into the grand hall and closed the gate behind them, leaving a small handful to be torn apart by the mob.

"Move everything you can in front of that door!" Hjadvaar barked, as more than a dozen axes began gouging the wood. Before the soldiers could even begin to comply, however, the gate buckled, and hundreds of bloodthirsty men charged through, killing the majority of the guards before they could even move to defend themselves.

"Fall back!" Hjadvaar bellowed to the few soldiers who could still be of use if they could get into some sort of formation. "Fall back to the throne room!" He then turned and raced down the corridor to the last possible line of defence they had.

Upon bursting into the throne room, the soldiers immediately closed and bolted the door, and didn't even have to be ordered to begin throwing anything they could get their hands on in front of it.

"That's enough! Get into formation!" Hjadvaar barked as soon as he heard the telltale sound of axes striking the door. "This is where we have to stand!" he said in a desperate attempt to motivate the troops in the hall with him. "There can be no more retreat! We will hold here or we will not hold at all and will be slaughtered! Victory or Sovngarde!" crying the last bit just as the great doors and hastily-constructed barricade collapsed.

The rebels hit the formation with a resounding crash, similarly to how a large wave might smash into a boulder. Hjadvaar quickly sliced the belly of the nearest rebel open, then spun and embedded his shield into the skull of a second as the first writhed about on the floor, squealing until he was trampled to death by his comrades. Hjadvaar parried an overhead attack with his shield and ran his attacker through, then lopped the arm off a second and cleaved a third man nearly in half, causing the poor man's organs to fall to the ground in a heap as a fourth rebel got his head and and left shoulder hacked off of his torso by a massive overhand swing. Hjadvaar suddenly realised that there were no friendly soldiers in front of him, and saw a chance to tip the odds slightly in his favor.

"Fus, ro dah!" he cried in a huge voice, and nearly two dozen men standing in front of him suddenly found themselves flying through the air as he turned to engage the rebels to his left. The moment of respite that had bought him didn't last long, however, and he quickly felt a poorly aimed attack glance off the back of his armor, and relieved his attacker of his head for his trouble.

Despite this initial success, the sheer number of rebels eventually forced him to begin giving ground, one step at a time. At this point, a man almost as large as Hjadvaar himself charged forward wielding a massive wooden mallet, swung a vicious blow at the head of the Queen's bodyguard, and connected, knocking the horned helmet halfway across the room and sending him reeling back from the blow with unfocused eyes. He raised his shield to defend his head, but this left his midsection dangerously exposed, and a rebel with an axe took advantage of that fact to direct a swing there, which bit into the armor and sunk deep into the flesh below, causing blood to begin flowing out.

Hjadvaar bellowed in pain and ran the axeman through the testicles, and was rewarded with a shriek of agony. He was on the defensive now, though, and was losing ground fast as more wounds began to appear on his limbs and torso, though he still killed several more rebels before his sword was knocked from his hand.

"Yol, toor shul!" he yelled, and a ring of flame burst from his mouth, igniting nearly three dozen rebels and filling the throne room with screams, smoke, and the reek of burning flesh. Fortunately for the burning rebels, many of their companions took it upon themselves to put their burning comrades out of their misery before turning back to the Queen's bodyguard, who had pulled an unpleasant-looking axe out of one of his belts. He had basically recovered from the blow to his head by now, but was still giving ground. He continued to fight fiercely for several more minutes, until he eviscerated one rebel, turned to engage another, and slipped in the ensuing pool of blood and organs and went down.

~`~ ~'~

Elsa watched the battle raging in her throne room, stuck in place by terror, a terror that only increased when she saw Hjadvaar throwing men through the air simply by yelling at them, and the thin layer of frost around her thickened and expanded, stretching halfway across the room. Eventually, she realised that Anna was screaming at her to pull herself together, and she barely managed to, intending to raise a wall of ice to protect herself and Hjadvaar - just in time to see him badly wounded by a rebel axeman and start setting people on fire with his voice, locking her straight back into panic mode. This time, Anna skipped the screaming and immediately grabbed her sister by the shoulders and started shaking her. Finally, seeing that she wasn't really making any progress, she raised her hand and slapped the Snow Queen of Arendelle across the face.

"Snap out of it, Elsa!" she shrieked. The slap achieved the desired effect, and Elsa leapt to her feet just in time to see Hjadvaar fall to the ground with a resounding crash. This time, however, instead of causing her to sink back into panic, it cleared her head and let her think. She immediately raised both her hands, and a huge slab of ice two feet thick slowly rose between her bodyguard and the rebel mob. Once the wall had reached unscalable heights, she began creating replicas of Marshmellow, giving them larger arms without ice fingers in the hopes that they wouldn't wind up killing any more people than they absolutely had to. After she had created approximately two dozen of them, she melted a portion of the ice wall, and the rebels charged through, directly into the waiting arms of Elsa's new snow soldiers.

Seeing that her new army was quite capable of holding its own, she melted the rest of the ice, (including the frost on and around her throne), and the rebels quickly realised that their new enemies were quite literally unkillable - torches had long since been abandoned in favor of knives, dirks, and various weapons taken from fallen or captured guards - and began an unorganized rout to the city, which resulted in further deaths by trampling, suffocation, and even a few stabbings.

After the last of the rebels was chased off of palace grounds, Elsa looked over the dreadful carnage in her throne room. She saw dozens of mutilated corpses, many of which were missing large chunks of their torso or even entire limbs, a sea of blood on the floor and walls, and the piles of internal organs scattered haphazardly about, and she smelled the reek of burned flesh. She saw Hjadvaar struggling to his feet, which she took as a good sign, then stumbled behind her throne and began to vomit, realizing that Anna was already doing so.

~`~ ~'~

The dimly lit room in the alehouse on the outskirts of town was fuller than Fredrik had ever seen it before. Clearly, he was only privy to a small part of the conspiracy against the Queen, and he was honest enough with himself to admit that he preferred it that way. Before he could think about the issue any more, Bjarne stood up and called the meeting to order.

"I called this emergency meeting," he began, "to discuss our plans now that our rebellion has failed." He looked around the room. "I highly doubt that the witch will remain oblivious to us for a week if we continue to spread rumors about her. Instead, I have contacts in Italy who should be able to take care of the situation. Are there any objections?" As was usually the case, there were none. "Then I declare this meeting closed. Fredrik, Esben, stay, and we'll talk."