Kit’s expression stayed sour as she held one nostril shut and blew through the other. The great wind of her breath whistled down to the water. The dark surface below rippled and undulated, gathering into humps and troughs. Waves started rolling toward the mainland, chunks of ice slipping over them as they crossed the frigid bay. They grew in size, each cresting higher than the one before. The first rose tall enough to engulf a child, the next a horse, the next a house.
“Keep going,” Jack urged.
Kit’s face turned red as she blew harder. The waves began to break against the shore. The furred serpents paused. Every new crash sent the surf farther and farther across the beach.
“Higher!” Jack said.
With a final phlegmy snort, Kit expelled whatever breath remained in her lungs. It created a sudden depression in the water, nearly deep enough to hold the castle itself. As she dropped her hand from her nose and gasped desperately for air, a massive wave reared up, twice as large as the one that preceded it. The great swell of water advanced like an avalanche, casting a long shadow over the creatures that stared at it from the opposite shore.
“Will that really help?” Kit sputtered. “The big ones might not even topple over!”
“Max,” Jack said, ignoring Kit, “when it breaks—”
“I know.” The hunter whipped off her hat. “I’m on it.”
The temperature dropped. Goosebumps rose on my skin, and the ichor staining my dress crystalized. Max set her mouth in fierce concentration.
“Everyone get back!” Jack shouted. We stumbled away from the hatless hunter as the vapor in the air around her froze into glitter.
Solid ice fanned out from the rocks at the base of the wall. As it spread, every bump and ripple in the water became trapped in motionless sculpture. The ice shot across a bay already on the point of freezing, the dark water transforming into an expanding semicircle of white, racing its way to the opposite shore.
Some of the monsters turned and ran, but it was already too late. The wave was moving too fast. As it neared the shore, the top of it curled, foamed, and came crashing over their heads.
And it froze there, the ice overtaking the wave just before it collapsed, sealing the enemy in a frozen prison.
Max jammed her hat back on her head, and I clenched my chattering teeth to a halt.
Jack nodded at the other hunters. “All right. Let’s go find out what they want with us at court.”
“Did you just win the battle?” I asked. The flying monstrosities had evaded the ice and were harrying the archers, but one by one, they were meeting their ends.
Jack shook her head. “Hardly. Listen.”
Deep booms issued forth from the mound of ice. The glistening surface was crazed with cracks. Small at the moment but widening as we watched.
“I hope I froze a few of them solid,” Max said. “But it won’t be all of them. And those rock things won’t care. They’ll break it, given enough time.”
“Enough time is what I was hoping for,” Jack told her. “The archers can hold out as long as no one’s throwing boulders at them.”
“And then what?”
“There must be a reason we’ve been summoned. Maybe Gervase has a brilliant plan. Or the lion. Or anyone.”
I didn’t see why any brilliant plans on offer wouldn’t have been sent as part of Harry’s message. But military strategy hadn’t been an emphasis of my eclectic education, so I held my tongue. Perhaps it could only be explained using charts or those toy soldiers you push around a map with a little rake. Which still wouldn’t explain why I had been invited. I supposed a summons to the Great Hall meant I had permission to be there this time, at least.
We made our way to the nearest ladder, dodging the extended claws and tentacles of winged horrors as we went. Clem met us at the top, firing arrows one after another. Her quiver had scarcely any left. Things I didn’t have time to look at thudded to the ground around us, pierced through.
“This ’ud better be important,” she snarled as she slung her bow across her back and grabbed the rungs. “If tis some courtier wha wants a report, he’s gittin’ an arrow thro’ th’ knee.”
We slid down the ladder. The evacuation was still in progress when we reached the bottom. We pressed through the remaining villagers more slowly than any of us would have liked. Kit raised a hand to her nose but lowered it at a headshake from Jack. And thank goodness—using a hurricane to blow the crowd apart would have been ill-advised, to say the very least.
I could sympathize with Kit’s impulse, though. The stone fists resounded like distant thunder whenever they smashed against the ice. As we forced our way forward, step-by-step, I pictured fissures spreading, frozen outcrops breaking free and splashing into the lake.
When we reached the entrance of the Great Hall, the rest ofthe hunters were already there, waiting with poorly concealed impatience. Or not quite the rest of them—a hurried count brought me only to eleven.
My hopes fell. I knew who was missing. “Where’s Sam?”
“Still unconscious,” one of them said. Fred or Kit or Jules or I really didn’t care. A coma lasting so long was a bad sign. A very bad sign.
