“Oskar.”
“As you wish. Come, mumbler. Let me hold your sleeve, or I will lose track of you. Why can’t you make noise and leave tracks like a normal man?” Oskar sighed as Snorri led him away.
Rakel watched—she wanted to becertainthey left—until they had disappeared from sight for several long minutes. She flicked her fingers, and snow rose off the ground and covered her dark blue cap and her green dress, coating her in white and making her much harder to discern among the snowdrifts.
Sufficiently camouflaged, Rakel—giving the garrison a wide berth—crept around to the other side, putting her much closer to the lean-tos that housed the captured Verglas soldiers.
She glanced up at the mountain, feeling for the deepest pockets of snow. She dared not touch the top of Ensom Peak—it was the tallest mountain of the range and housed the most snow—but a third of the way up the mountain, there was a promising pocket of snow that, with a little prompting, would serve as a small, controlled avalanche.
She mentally traced its path and double-checked her predictions as she started calling up her magic. Using the avalanche would make for an easy win, but it would be difficult. She couldn’t let the snow get away from her, or it might flood a village, and she had to be careful to sweep Chosen soldiers away—not to bury and suffocate them.
“It can’t be more difficult than building an ice-castle,” she murmured. She set her shoulders and took a deep breath.
Now.
Rakel’s magic leaped to life with the ferocity of a windstorm. It swirled in her veins and twined around her fingertips.
Under her direction, ice wrapped around the lean-tos, strengthening them and sealing them from snow but leaving gaps at the top for air. The earth rumbled, and a wave of white snow rushed down the mountainside.
Some of the invader guards and sentries gaped at the storm of white gushing at them like water. The noise summoned additional soldiers from the barracks. A few tried to run; others began to climb the walls of their temporary buildings, but all of them yelled when the snow hit them. They yelped in confusion as the snow buoyed up, pushing them to the top instead of burying them. Rakel watched with satisfaction as most of the garrison was swept away in the river of snow, which carried them out past the foothills and dumped them a fair distance away.
Rakel boxed in the weapons and supply storehouses with walls of ice—no sense wasting weapons that could arm Verglas soldiers—and fought the rushing snow to keep the buildings standing, even the ones that several enterprising Chosen soldiers had taken refuge on.
As the snow settled and the avalanche subsided, Rakel sauntered towards the encampment, hardening the snow under her, so she would not plunge into the drifts that were now well over her head.
A young man—probably in his late teens—stood on the building closest to her. His copper-colored hair stood up like a patch of weeds, and he waved his arms and stared at Rakel with great concentration.
A storm cloud formed above Rakel, and rain began to pelt her face.
Rakel stared at the magic user and wondered if he was that stupid or if he was just inexperienced. Judging by his baby face, she suspected it was the latter, but she almost felt bad for him when she fed his storm and made it bigger and bigger.
When it spanned a mile, Rakel brushed raindrops from her face and flicked her magic, pulling the temperature of the storm down, turning it into a stinging snow.
The young magic user gawked at her in dismay, his regret clear when his lips formed the vowels of “Oops.”
Rakel smiled and funneled the snowstorm over the few remaining Chosen soldiers.
“Bluff!” one of them shouted.
“Sorry,” Rakel’s opponent said.
Rakel shook her head and flicked ice off her. She splayed her fingers, and a wave of snow tossed Bluff from the roof. She made a slide of ice and sent the young magic user down it. He jolted and spun around as it carried him far away from the garrison, off to join the rest of his compatriots.
She saw the slide throw him into the air one last time, then he disappeared from view. She barely had enough time to raise an ice shield when she noticed the first arrow.
Five arrows stuck the wall, quivering and digging almost all the way through. Rakel hissed when she inspected the barbed heads. If she was serious, so were they. Deadly serious.
Rakel dismissed the storm—it took more concentration to keep it running than it was worth—and flung snow into the soldiers’ faces. She was about to start cornering them with spikes of ice when a loud yodel echoed down the mountain.
“WOOOHOOO!”
A young lady who appeared to be a little older than Rakel—perhaps in her late twenties—zoomed down the thick layer of snow on a tiny, red sled. As she whooped, the sled launched her precariously into the air, making her dark brown hair levitate. She kept her seat, and the sled landed, taking her surging past Rakel and towards the soldiers.
“I’d move if I were you,” she called as her sled hurtled her straight up to one of the buried buildings. The soldier standing on it gawked at her, missing his chance to flee. When the sled smacked into the roof, the woman flew into the air and crashed into him.
“That was a thrill,” the woman said, peeling herself off the stunned soldier. “A fast ride and a soft landing—how perfect! It was even better than riding a water serpent. Thank you, soldier, for your worthy sacrifice,” she said, bowing to the mostly unconscious soldier. She brushed off her pants and smiled when she caught Rakel’s eye. “You, there, beautiful lady. You must be the fabled Princess Rakel?”
Beautiful? That is such a poor lie it must be a joke.Rakel warily eyed the woman’s unusual wardrobe—she had never seen any of the village women wearpants—and collected a chunk of her magic. “I am.”
