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In the Light of Day: A Frozen Epic	By : GeorgeGlass Category: +1 through F > Frozen Views: 21531 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Frozen or its characters. I made no money from writing this story. I am completely divided about whether Elsa or Anna is hotter.

Chapter List
- 12
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Chapter 13: The Reindeer

It was pouring again. Sitting side by side on the driver’s bench of the ice wagon, Anna and Kristoff both had their cloak-hoods up as Kristoff drove. Anna hadn’t quite felt up to sitting astride a horse after her rather active morning with her boyfriend.

“Thanks for the ride,” Anna shouted over the rain.

“No problem,” Kristoff called back. “And I’m glad to drive you back to the castle, too.” Anna gently elbowed him in the ribs.

They arrived at the castle’s service entrance, and Kristoff unhitched Sven so that the reindeer could go take shelter in the stables. Then Anna and Kristoff headed indoors.

“Wow,” Anna said as she and Kristoff doffed their soggy cloaks and hung them on pegs by the door. “It is really coming down. I hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to have another lousy showing at tonight’s-”

Suddenly, a scream echoed down the hall. Anna and Kristoff glanced at each other for a split second, then took off running toward the sound.

***

“Well, that was…odd,” Rajiv said to Ajay as they headed down the corridor, away from the third-floor meeting room and toward the stairs that would take them back up to their suite. “I thought Lord Otos had invited us to meet with him, not with the Dianisian ambassador to Arendelle.”

“Mmm,” Ajay agreed, frowning. “And the ambassador did not seem very well prepared for our negotiations. When you asked him about how much mohair the Dianisians might have for trade, he looked as if he were making the number up.”

“He might have been. From what I have seen in my father’s court, ambassadors are not always chosen for their diplomatic skills. Often, they are friends or relations of some powerful noble whose favor a king or queen wishes to keep.”

They reached the entrance to the stairwell and started up toward their rooms.

“It was peculiar, though,” Ajay said, “that the ambassador seemed to be trying to keep the discussion going even when he appeared to have nothing more to say.”

“And then he abruptly ended it,” Rajiv added as he moved aside for three castle guards who were coming down the stairs. “It was as if he needed the meeting to last precisely-”

Rajiv heard swift movement behind him. Reflexively, his hand went for the hilt of his sword even as his head turned to see what was happening. Then something struck him in the temple, and his vision went dark.

***

Anna and Kristoff rushed into the parlor, having already seen the cloaked figure of a man run out its door and, seconds later, two guards rush in. A faint haze of smoke and an acrid smell—strange but somehow slightly familiar—hung in the air.

At the far end of the room stood Prince Hypatios, wide-eyed with terror, and Anna guessed that it was he who had screamed. Then her own eyes went wide as she saw her sister on the floor with a bloody wound on her arm.

“Elsa!” Anna screamed, running to the woman’s side.

The Queen's eyes were closed, but her mouth moved slightly. Anna leaned down and put her ear right next to Elsa's lips.

“Otos...” the Queen murmured. “Poison...”

Half a dozen palace guards ran in. Anna's head whipped around.

“Get the royal physician!” she shouted.

One of the guards ran out again, Kristoff right on his heels.

“Elsa, stay with me,” Anna pleaded.

Suddenly, Kristoff reappeared—with Dr. Montalvo in tow.

“He was nearby,” Kristoff explained rapidly.

“What happened here? Let me see her,” the doctor said, kneeling down by Elsa.

“She was poisoned,” Anna replied.

The doctor looked at the Queen's face, illuminated by the firelight from the hearth. The doctor used his hand to shade Elsa's eyes for a moment, then uncovered them again and watched the reaction of her pupils.

“It's a nerve toxin,” he said.

“Can you stop it?” Anna asked.

“Not without knowing which particular toxin it is,” the doctor replied.

Despite Anna's fear for her sister, the wheels in her mind were still turning, perhaps even faster than usual.

“Otos must have been planning this attack from the beginning,” she said. “Which means he probably brought the poison with him from Dianisia.”

“Then it is almost surely an extract from the petals of the white iris,” the doctor said. “It's highly neurotoxic, and the plant is native to that country.” He looked gravely at Anna. “I'm afraid there is no known antidote.”

“Grand Pabbie,” Kristoff breathed. “He'll know what to do. How long does she have?”

“Not long,” Montalvo replied. “But this should help.”

The doctor opened his bag and dumped the contents onto the floor. Then he removed a false bottom from the bag, revealing vials and bottles underneath.

“I keep the real medicines hidden,” he explained as he took a small vial from the bag, “in case Prince Javier decides to self-medicate in my absence.”

He looked at Elsa for a moment, literally sizing her up, then poured a measured amount from the vial into a small glass.

“Lift her head, please,” he said to Anna. She did so, and the doctor poured the liquid down Elsa's throat.

“This should buy her some time,” he said.

“How much?” Anna asked.

“Perhaps half an hour.”

Kristoff put two fingers in his mouth and let loose an earsplitting whistle. Within moments, a wooden door on the opposite end of the parlor burst open, and Sven came galloping in, skidding to a stop at Kristoff's side.

Anna looked up at Kristoff.

“The troll village is more than ten miles away,” she said, “and it's pouring rain. You'll never make it in time.”

“Got any better ideas?” the ice-man asked.

In the space of a second, Anna's mind came up with several alternatives and rejected them all.

“Go,” she said. “I'll-”

She had been about to say “-get my horse and be right behind you.” But more people—guards, pages, functionaries—were arriving to learn the cause of the commotion, and when they saw their Queen unconscious and bloody on the floor, they all looked at Anna.

No, she realized. Not at her—to her.

“-see you when you get back,” she finished.

***

Kerig the mercenary grunted as he helped one of his two henchmen drag the big, turbaned Sundaran into a disused closet near the second-floor landing. The other henchman, a fellow about Kerig’s size but with considerably less wit, was carrying Prince Rajiv over his shoulder.

“I don’t get it, chief,” the man said as he laid the Prince down on the closet floor. “Weren’t we s’posed to kill these guys?”

“The order said ‘neutralized,’” Kerig replied. “That gives us some latitude.”

“Yeah, but,” the other henchman said, lowering Ajay’s legs to the floor and pulling out some rope from inside his overcoat, “killin’ ‘em would’ve been easier than draggin’ ‘em up here and trussin’ ‘em up like this.”

Kerig answered, “If we get caught, then knocking two men out, tying them up, and throwing them in a closet gets us a year or two on the rock pile. But murdering two foreign dignitaries—in the Queen’s castle, no less—gets us fifteen seconds dancing at the end of a rope. I don’t think they’re paying us enough for that, do you?”

The other men grunted, and the three continued their work.

***

Anna helped Kristoff lift Elsa onto Sven's shoulders, laying the Queen on her stomach so that her head hung to one side of Sven's flanks and her feet to the other. Her body felt cold—very cold—even though Dr. Montalvo had said she was alive. Maybe it was some kind of side effect of her magic.

Kristoff climbed onto Sven's back, wedging the Queen securely between his hips and Sven's neck. Then, with an encouraging half-pat, half-slap to the reindeer's shoulder, he shouted, “Let's go!”

Sven took off, and Anna could hear his hooves clattering on the cobblestones as the reindeer tore out the castle gates and across the bridge to the mainland.

What was she supposed to do now? What would Elsa do in this situation?

Anna stood up and faced the various onlookers who had gathered by the door, then turned to the frightened boy in the back of the room.

“Did you see what happened?” she asked.

The shaking Tomas repeated everything he had told Elsa, then described Otos’ attack on the Queen. The boy had been lucky—two castle guards happened to be nearby when Tomas screamed, and they came running before Otos had had the chance to kill the boy.

Anna turned to the Captain of the Guard, who had entered with a group of his men.

“Find Otos,” she commanded. “Search the castle, the docks, and every ship, fishing boat, and dinghy in the port until he's found. Be careful—anyone who can get the better of my sister should be considered extremely dangerous. And put this boy under guard,” she added, pointing to Tomas.

“Yes, your Highness,” the captain said. “You should be under guard as well, ma'am, given the situation.”

“That’s fine,” Anna replied.

The captain assigned two of the guards in the room to watch the Princess and two more to protect Tomas. Then the captain swept out, the remaining guardsmen following behind him.

The wheels in Anna’s head kept turning. Considering what Tomas said about Otos acting on King Aegeus’ orders, she asked herself why the Dianisian king would want Elsa dead. It couldn't be personal; they'd never even met. Which meant that Aegeus must be planning something—something for which he needed Elsa out of the way.

Anna turned to a small group of teenage pages that had gathered near the door, fixing her eyes on the one in front—a short-haired blonde girl whom the Princess knew fairly well.

“Karolina,” Anna said, “find General”—crap, what was his name?—“Stark, and tell him to put the Army on alert. It's a good bet that this attack on my sister is just the first part of a bigger plan.”

“Yes, ma'am,” the girl replied, and darted out the door.

“Ma'am?” asked another uniformed page—a new boy, whose name might have been Max. “Should I give Admiral Ostergard the same message?”

Anna, glad of the boy’s quick thinking, said, “Where is the admiral now?” The pages made it their business to know the whereabouts of all Crown VIPs so as to be able to get messages to them as quickly as possible.

“He’s at the Navy dock, ma’am,” the page replied.

“Good. Then tell him to put the Navy on alert, and that I’m coming to see him.”

“At once, your Highness.” The boy flew out of the room.

***

Kristoff and Sven rode hard down the dirt road that went in the general direction of the pine forest where the troll village lay. The rain was fierce, but Kristoff’s cloak was more or less waterproof, and he had wrapped Elsa tightly in a somewhat better cloak borrowed from the guards at the castle gate.

They rode and rode. Sven seemed to understand the urgency of their mission, because he never once paused to rest; if anything, the reindeer seemed to grow swifter and more determined with each passing mile.

Finally, they approached the point where they would leave the road and enter the forest. But first they needed to cross the now swollen Moosehoof River. Squinting into the storm, Kristoff looked ahead and saw water rushing past some broken timbers that were sticking out of the riverbank on both sides.

“Oh, no,” the ice-man said. “The bridge is washed out.”

Kristoff thought quickly. The next-nearest bridge was a mile downstream—the opposite direction from the troll village—and there was no guarantee that that bridge wouldn't be washed out, too. So he turned Sven and rode upstream along the bank until he found a spot where the river briefly became deeper and narrower, about twenty feet across.

He took one more look up and down the river, then said to Sven, “This is the narrowest spot I can find. You think you can jump it?”

The reindeer gave an aggressive snort.

“Attaboy,” Kristoff said, giving Sven a solid pat on the neck.

They backed up to give Sven a good running start. Then the reindeer took off sprinting. Kristoff was impressed; not since their attempted rescue of Anna nine months earlier had the ice-man seen his animal friend move so fast.

They reached the riverbank, and Sven leaped mightily into the air.

“Ha ha!” Kristoff shouted as they flew in an arc over the rushing water. “Reindeers CAN fly!”

They landed hard on the riverbank. Sven landed on his feet, but as he staggered to stay upright, the grass tore away under his hooves, leaving only mud. The reindeer's legs scrambled as he fought to keep from slipping backward into the fast-moving river. Kristoff shifted his and Elsa's weight forward, trying to give the animal more traction with his front hooves.

Suddenly, Sven bent his head sharply downward, and Kristoff and Elsa tumbled forward, off the reindeer's back and onto the bank. Kristoff, wet and muddy, whipped his head around to see what had happened.

It was clear that Sven had lost the struggle to find any traction on the muddy riverbank. His front hooves were now sliding straight backward, leaving two deep channels in the mud as the rear half of his body went over the edge of the bank.

There was no time for Kristoff to do anything but look. In his best friend's eyes, he thought he would see panic, or desperation. Instead, he saw something far more frightening: resignation.

“No,” Kristoff whispered.

The reindeer fell backward into the raging water. The powerful current caught him instantly, pulling him downstream and, within seconds, under the surface.

“No!” Kristoff cried, his eyes frantically scanning the rushing, debris-filled water. “Sven! SVEEEEEEN!”

But the reindeer was gone.

END CHAPTER 13
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In the Light of Day: A Frozen Epic