Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

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
- 16
- 17
- 18
Chapter 17: The Queen

“No,” Otos gasped, pointing at her. “No! You cannot be alive! The white-iris poison has no antidote! And even if it did, you could never have received it in time!”

“When I was a child,” Elsa said evenly as she dismounted the reindeer, “a boy in a village near here was skating on the river and fell through the ice. The current pulled the boy downstream, and it took the villagers nearly an hour to rescue him from the icy water. Yet they were able to revive him. Because the cold had kept him alive.”

Stepping in front of the reindeer and calmly facing the dozen armed men before her, Elsa added, “Just as it kept me alive.”

“It will make little difference,” Otos growled. Then, turning to the troops behind him, he barked, “Ready crossbows!”

***

Elsa had been feeling weak from the aftereffects of the poison, but she had nonetheless insisted that Kristoff bring her to the waterfront instead of her bedchamber at the castle. And now that she saw the invading troops, anger had given her new strength. Finding these interlopers on the streets of her kingdom felt little different from finding them in her bedroom—or Anna’s. That last thought stoked her anger into something approaching fury.

In a low voice, she said to Kristoff, “You and Sven stay behind me.”

“Elsa,” Kristoff hissed, “remember what Grand Pabbie said: Using too much of your power before you’ve fully recovered could kill you!”

“Don’t worry,” Elsa replied, fixing her gaze on the Dianisian soldiers who were now pointing crossbows in her direction. “I won’t need to use much.”

***

Kristoff ducked down, and Sven dropped as low as his four legs would allow just as Otos shouted “Fire!”

Kristoff closed his eyes as the barrage of crossbow bolts assailed them—some whizzing past, others spanging off something solid. The moment it was over, Kristoff whipped his head up.

“Elsa!” he shouted. “Are you all ri-”

What he saw struck him silent. Elsa was still standing in front of him, but in place of her blue gown, her body was now clad in a suit of plate armor formed entirely from ice. In her left hand she held a hexagonal shield, and in her right, a glistening ice-sword.

“Holy shit,” Kristoff breathed.

Elsa cried “HaaaaaAAAAH!” and charged forward, sword held high.

She brought her blade down at the head of the foremost crossbowman. Surprised, the Dianisian soldier only barely managed to raise his weapon high enough to protect himself before the sword struck, demolishing the crossbow and causing the man to stumble backward and fall.

The other soldiers dropped their crossbows and, almost as one, drew their short swords and began to fan out around Elsa.

Mama Bulda had given Kristoff her wooden club—“in case you need to knock some sense into somebody,” as she had put it. Kristoff pulled the weapon out of his belt.

“Looks like we’d better get in there,” the ice-man said to Sven.

The reindeer snorted in agreement. Then they charged.

***

From Anna’s position in the castle tower, it appeared that the Dianisian fleet had finished deploying all of the troops it had brought. Now, Anna watched in disbelieving horror as the fire ships began spraying the port with flame.

“What are they doing?” she cried. “They want this kingdom for themselves, don’t they? Why burn the warehouses, the chandlers’ shops, the customs office?”

“I think,” the Navy liaison said, “they’re doing it…for you, Highness.”

“What?”

“They want you to surrender. So they’re showing you how much damage they can do if you refuse.”

“I am NOT surrendering to these marauders,” Anna growled. “I’ll let them kill me first.”

“They won’t kill you,” the officer replied. “More likely, they’ll kill everyone else and make you watch.”

***

Prince Javier crowded with the other princes and attendants as they peered through the gaps of the One-Eyed Wharf Rat’s shuttered windows. It was dark inside the old tavern, in sharp contrast with the streets outside; although the sun remained behind a thick shroud of clouds, several burning buildings nearby gave off quite a bit of light. Even large patches of the pavement in the square outside burned, coated with the flammable liquid being sprayed in gouts from the Dianisian fire ships.

The princes and attendants had not yet engaged the enemy, but they were already down a man. Prince Hjalmar had been unable to keep up with the group for some reason, and in the interest of getting into position in a timely fashion, they had had to leave him behind. Prince Javier wondered whether the man was unwell. He showed no outward signs of illness—and Javier knew them all—but it could be something in its early stages. Or perhaps the prince had a heart condition. He was too young for atherosclerosis or advanced syphilis, but a congenital malformation couldn’t be ruled out, particularly given the tendency of royal families toward inbreeding.

But he could chat with Dr. Montalvo about these matters at a later time. Right now he needed to focus on tactical concerns.

“Ah-ha,” Prince Gormal said, squinting through a different shuttered window. “I think our opportunity has arrived. Look.”

Javier looked out and saw that a squad of about a dozen enemy infantry was moving on its own on the far side of the square, out of sight of the other Dianisian units. But there was a problem.

“They’re isolated, certainly,” Javier agreed. “But there is a large area of burning pavement between our position and theirs. We will have to go around it, and that will probably cost us the element of surprise. Not that that worries me,” the Hermosan prince added, brandishing his rapier.

“Then we will need a distraction,” said Prince Sefu. “Which I will provide.”

The Mianyokan prince threw open the shutters of one of the windows, then somehow managed to maneuver his stilted legs through it, his spear and shield in hand. Mofa’s eyes went wide as he watched the young man prepare to leap out into the field of flames, which rose about a foot from the ground.

“Please, Highness, do not do this!” Mofa cried. “The very ground is on fire!”

“Yes,” Sefu growled, looking intently at the enemy. “And where there is so much fire, there can be no snakes.”

The prince landed on his stilted feet and ran forward in a silent charge.

***

Elsa blocked a Dianisian trooper’s sword attack with her shield, then counterattacked with her own sword, which the man only barely avoided by backing quickly away.

Panting, she looked at her remaining opponents. Of the original dozen troops, Kristoff and Sven had KOed three, and Elsa herself had managed to wound two others badly enough to make them withdraw from the fight. What the Queen lacked in strength and skill, she made up for with ferocity and the impenetrability of her ice-armor, which her powers could repair almost instantly whenever a Dianisian sword damaged it.

“Forget your swords!” Otos shouted from his position well away from the battle. “You’ll never get through her armor! Just wrestle her to the ground!”

As two men continued to skirmish with Kristoff and Sven, the remaining five backed away, regrouped, and began to fan out.

Uh-oh, Elsa thought.

Suddenly, the thick wooden shutter of a shop window flew open behind the Dianisians, cracking one of them in his helmeted head and knocking him to the ground. When the others turned to look, an empty wine bottle flew from the window and struck another soldier in the face, stunning him.

Elsa glanced at the sign that hung above the shop door: Helga’s Fine Dresses.

“Thanks, Helga!” Elsa called.

A voice from inside the shop shouted some angry gibberish, and then the heavy shutter slammed closed.

***

“They work quickly, I’ll give them that,” Anna said, looking down toward the castle gates.

A small horde of Dianisian troops had hustled a battering ram through the streets and were now positioning it in front of the gates. Many infantrymen with large shields stood around the ram, protecting its crew from the arrows being fired down at them from the battlements by Arendellan guards.

“Their priority is to take the castle,” her Army liaison said, “before any of our reinforcements arrive. Which, I’m afraid, they are likely to do—even our fastest mounted units probably won’t reach the capitol for another half hour at least. Ma’am…you should move to a safer location.”

Anna was prepared for that. On her way up to the tower, she had stopped by her bedchamber and taken a hidden key from behind the drawer in her nightstand. The key opened two doors that few people besides herself and Elsa knew about. The first led to the secret exit tunnel in the cellar, which Anna was not inclined to use; the exit tunnel ended in the basement of the now-incinerated Armory and might well be impassable. The second door was close to her and Elsa’s bedchambers and looked like any other door on that floor of the castle, but the wood was only a veneer over two inches of the hardest steel Arendelle’s ironworks could make. The room contained a couple of cots and two weeks’ worth of food and water.

But even with the Dianisians battering the gate and the safe chamber awaiting her, Anna couldn’t make herself leave the tower just yet. She needed to keep the wheels in her head turning, to see if there wasn’t one more thing she could think of that would help keep the invaders at bay until the reinforcements began to arrive.

Or, she thought, she could hope very hard for a miracle.

***

Tilde and the Duke were on the inland side of town, overseeing the distribution of the weapons and armor confiscated from the caravel at Tan Sands, when they saw a large crowd coming down the street. Tilde’s trained eyes saw immediately that they were not Dianisian troops, but civilians. Farmers, in fact; if their peasant clothing hadn’t made that clear, the tools they carried—sickles, pitchforks, and the like—would have. Tilde guessed that there were perhaps three hundred men in the crowd, and about half that number of women.

“Who’s in charge here?” asked their leader, a sandy-haired fellow who looked big enough to plow a field without any help from an ox.

“For the moment, I am,” the Duke replied. “What brings you here, gentlemen…and ladies? Please be brief; I’m a bit busy with an invasion at the moment.”

“We’re from Big Elk village, and we came to hunt down the bastard that poisoned our Queen,” the leader said, drawing grunts and murmurs of angry approval from the crowd behind him. “But if there’s a whole army of bastards, well, that’s even better.”

Tilde pointed down toward the harbor, where the fight was raging, and said, “Be warned—many of the invaders are trained, professional soldiers. They will not be easily defeated.”

A dark-haired man, who was even larger than the leader, held up a scythe and answered, “Well, I’m a trained, professional farmer, and I spend a month every year cuttin’ the heads off things. So I say bring ‘em on!”

“And you?” Tilde said, turning to an elderly looking woman who seemed to need her spear—clearly her usual walking staff, with a kitchen knife lashed to one end—just to hold herself up. “You should go back. You can’t hope to survive this.”

“I’ve survived long enough!” the old woman spat. “I’m more than glad to trade my arthritis and my clouded eyes for a chance to take one of those Dianisian rats with me when I leave this world.”

Tilde frowned grimly. Under most circumstances, she’d have told these people to go home. But this was a desperate situation.

“Fine,” Tilde said, addressing the whole group. “Go see Sergeant Gustafson over there. Tell him I sent you; he’ll give you all an assignment.”

As the crowd of volunteers headed away, Hildy approached Tilde.

“Can you actually do that? You’re not in the Army; you’re just the Duke’s assistant at the Armory.”

“Sergeant Gustafson knows me,” Tilde replied.

“Hmm...like, in the biblical sense, or-”

“Did you come over here for a reason?”

“Yes. I need you for something.”

“What could you need me for at a time like this?”

“I’ll answer your question with a question: Do you want that new sword of yours to just dangle from your hip while you hand out crossbows, or do you want to actually use it?”

Curious, Tilde said, “Keep talking.”

***

Ajay was sweating and achy, but his concern for Rajiv drove him on. With a great deal of effort, the sea captain—still bound and locked in a broom closet with his Prince—had managed to squirm and roll such that his hands, tied behind his back, could reach the hilt of the prince’s sword and pull it slightly out of its scabbard, exposing a couple of inches of sharp blade. Now Ajay had begun the laborious process of moving the ropes that bound his wrists against the steely edge, cutting them strand by strand.

Suddenly, the door opened, then shut rapidly again.

“Quelle chance!” a voice said in a triumphant whisper. “I have found you!”

Ajay heard a metallic snick, then felt someone cut off his gag and pull it away. Ajay took a deep, gasping breath.

“You are Captain Anand, yes?” the Gallic-accented man said as he began working on Ajay’s ropes with his small pocketknife, which the sailor noticed also included a corkscrew and bottle opener. “I am Jean-Pierre, sommelier to the royal family. I was assisting the housekeepers in searching for you and the Prince.”

“I am most grateful for your help, Jean-Pierre,” Ajay replied.

“I am afraid my assistance may have come too late,” the chubby, somewhat balding man replied. “If the Dianisian invaders are not already inside the castle, they will be very shortly.”

“Then I must get the Prince to safety,” Ajay replied. “Where can we go?”

“There is a secret exit from the castle,” Jean-Pierre replied. “No one outside the royal family is meant to know about it, but because of the nature of my responsibilities here...well, in vino veritas, as they say.”

***

Elsa was down to just two opponents now, taking swipes at them with her sword and dodging their grabbing hands as they tried to grapple her. Fortunately, armor made of ice wasn’t easily grasped. And it helped that Kristoff and Sven had pushed the other three remaining Dianisians back, keeping them engaged with club and horns. Lord Otos was nowhere to be seen.

Hearing a cry of pain, Elsa looked over and saw that Kristoff and Sven were now surrounded by their three opponents, and the ice-man’s upper arm was bleeding profusely from where an enemy’s sword had just cut him.

“Kristoff!” Elsa shouted.

Without a thought, she dropped her sword and flung her arm out at the soldiers attacking her friend. An ice-boulder the size of Kristoff’s torso flew from her hand and smashed into two of them, knocking them down and out.

Suddenly drained, Elsa staggered back, her head swimming. Her two opponents lunged forward and grabbed her, tacking her to the ground.

And then one of her attackers was flying away as Sven hooked the soldier with his horns and threw him off. The other enemy crumpled when Kristoff clubbed him in the back of the neck, below his helmet. The last soldier ran up to attack Sven from behind but was unpleasantly surprised when the reindeer kicked both feet backward like a mule and sent the Dianisian flying back into the dress-shop wall.

“I think,” Kristoff panted raggedly as he tore a piece of cloth from his jacket to bind up his arm, “that we really need to get you out of here, Highness.”

“You’re probably right,” Elsa said weakly. “We should get back to the castle and find Rajiv. He may be our best hope now.”

Kristoff heard sounds from behind him, in the direction of the waterfront. He turned and saw, through the increasingly thick smoke enveloping that area, another squad of Dianisian troops headed his and Elsa’s way.

“Sven, help me get Elsa onto your back!” Kristoff shouted.

The reindeer squatted down as Kristoff helped Elsa onto him. The troops were starting to get close.

“Sven,” Kristoff said desperately, gripping his club as he gazed intently at the approaching troops, “get Elsa back to the castle. I’ll stay here and-”

“Bjorgman!”

Kristoff turned around and saw Henrik and Grimmjaw, uphill from them and in the middle of the street, standing on what appeared to be a fully loaded ice wagon with its tailgate off. Both men were at the forward end of the wagon, poised to push the load of ice out of the back of it.

“Move aside!” Henrik shouted.

Kristoff, Elsa, and Sven darted into an alley. Kristoff could hear the two ice-men grunting loudly with effort; then he watched in near-wonderment as what looked like two tons of block ice came sliding down the stone-paved road and straight into the advancing Dianisian troopers, knocking them down like bowling pins.

“Huh,” Kristoff said. “Wasn’t expecting help from those guys.”

“People can surprise you,” Elsa replied. “Now let’s go, before those soldiers regain their senses.”

***

Anna was watching the Dianisians bash away at the main gate with their battering ram when a page, his blonde hair wild and his face red, sprinted out onto the castle parapets.

“They’ve breached the service gate!” the page practically screamed. “The enemy is inside the castle!”

Anna cursed inwardly. The attack on the main gate was a distraction. The service gate wasn’t visible from the tower, and none of the intelligence that Anna had received from the pages or her military liaisons had suggested a heavy assault on that gate. The Dianisians must have made some kind of blitz attack on it; it looked like they could hustle those battering rams through the streets pretty quickly.

“Highness,” said one of Anna’s guards. “We need to get you to safety right n-”

Suddenly, several men emerged at a run onto the roof. From their uniforms and their tight formation, Anna could tell that these weren’t conscripts or new volunteers—these were pros, maybe even elite troops.

“Highness, go!” her guards shouted. Anna’s Army and Navy liaisons drew their swords and, standing side by side with the guards, formed a wall between the onrushing attackers and the Princess.

Anna ran for the door on the opposite tower, hoping that there was no second squad of enemy soldiers on its way up the stairs to which it led. She threw open the door, saw no one beyond it, and glanced back at the fight now being waged in the spot where she had stood only moments before.

A flash of motion and a spray of blood caught Anna’s eye, and then Anna saw the blonde head of her Army liaison roll to a stop on the stones of the rooftop, the woman’s blue eyes staring sightlessly at the gray sky.

Anna ran.

***

Prince Hjalmar looked around. He had fallen behind the other princes, all of whom were more lightly armored and more fleet of foot than he. He had never been especially fast, and somehow he felt even slower today, as if some invisible weight were dragging at him.

He looked around, seeking some way to join the fight, some Arendellan platoon he could assist. The memory of Queen Elsa’s kindness during their meeting the day before was foremost in his mind, and he wanted to return it, even if it would be his last act on Earth.

As he lumbered down the cobblestone street, headed toward the waterfront, he spied movement to his right as a voice loudly whispered, “Hey! You!”

He turned and saw an armored blonde woman crouching behind some barrels near a storefront, waving him over.

“There’s a Dianisian squad headed this way,” the woman hissed. “Help me ambush them.”

“How do you know I’m not Dianisian?” Hjalmar asked.

“How many blonde-bearded Dianisians of your size have you ever seen?”

“Fair point,” the prince replied, dropping into a crouch next to the woman. “I’m Hjalmar.”

“Tilde,” the woman replied. “Now be ready. They’ll get here any moment.”

“Not that I doubt your skill,” Hjalmar said, “but I’m not sure the two of us are a match for a dozen Dianisians, even if we take them by surprise.”

“They’re going to be very surprised,” Tilde said. “Just stay hidden until they are just past us. And don’t get distracted.”

Sure enough, moments later, the squad of leather-armored Dianisians approached, armed with long spears and short swords. Hjalmar hid his big body behind the barrels as best he could.

“Oh, boys?” a female voice said from somewhere ahead of the Dianisians.

Hjalmar peeked through a gap between the barrels and saw a woman—the exceptionally buxom one who had briefly participated in the pub crawl the night before. Hildy, that was her name. She was wearing a low-cut blue dress, around whose neckline her fingers were curled.

As Hjalmar watched, Hildy pulled down the neck of her dress to expose her huge, perfectly formed bosom.

The Dianisians stopped in their tracks and gawked. Hjalmar, remembering Tilde’s warning about not getting distracted, averted his eyes; besides, having been with a frost giant, he’d seen bigger.

“You know what they say,” Hildy continued. “‘Make love, not war.’”

One of the enemy soldiers, still gawking, blurted, “N- Nobody says that.”

Hildy smiled as she replied, “It’ll catch on.”

Hjalmar looked at Tilde. Tilde looked back. Then they attacked.

***

Having descended to the floor where her and Elsa’s bedchambers were located, Anna slipped out of the stairwell and peered around a corner, inspecting the corridor. She was trying to keep her mind on what she was doing, and not to dwell on the horrible sight she had just witnessed. Or on the guilt she felt that her military liaisons had died for her without her even having learned their names.

Spying no enemy troops, she headed for the door to the safe chamber, which was only thirty feet or so down the hallway.

She was perhaps three steps from the door when a man in the leather armor of a Dianisian infantryman suddenly leaped out from a nearby archway. Anna reflexively dodged away from his grabbing arms—and straight into those of a second enemy soldier.

“Gotcha!” the second man shouted, wrenching one of Anna’s arms up behind her back and taking firm hold of her other wrist.

“Now, Princess,” he said, “just behave yourself ‘til we get downstairs. You don’t want to have to sign the surrender papers left-handed.”

Struggling uselessly, Anna snarled, “You can break both my arms and all of my teeth before I’ll-!”

“Well done!” a voice interrupted.

Anna turned her head to see a familiar figure in an outdated red velvet jacket step out of the shadows.

“Well done, Corporal,” the man repeated, looking at the soldier holding Anna, then to the other man, “and Private. You bring honor to Hydra Company this day.”

“Herringholtz,” Anna said slowly, even as the wheels in her head spun. “I should have guessed you were working for the Dianisians.”

“Indeed,” the man said as he drew a dagger from his jacket.

“Hey!” the Dianisian corporal interjected as he pulled Anna back a step. “We need her alive.”

“It’s not for her,” the Baron replied, his tone suggesting that he had meant to end the sentence with “you cretin” but had merely forgotten. Using the dagger, he cut the cord from the drapes of a nearby window.

“You’ll want to bind her hands,” Herringholtz said. “The Princess is both feisty and clever. All too often, she is one step-” he locked eyes with Anna “-ahead.”

He tossed the cord to the private with his left hand. Then, in a flash, he raised his right arm and hurled the dagger straight through the private’s throat. The gagging man fell to the floor.

Anna leaned forward and then whipped her head back, smashing it into the startled corporal’s face. Seeing Herringholtz draw a second dagger, she wrested her arms out of the Dianisian soldier’s grip and twisted out of the way as the Baron threw his blade and struck the man squarely in the middle of his chest protector, which the razor-sharp blade pierced as easily as if the leather were slow-cooked pork. The soldier fell.

“Thank you,” Anna said. She picked up one of the fallen Dianisians’ swords while Herringholtz speedily retrieved his throwing daggers and wiped them off with a handkerchief.

As princess and baron ducked into the archway from which the private had ambushed Anna, she asked, “But how did you happen to be here?”

“I was looking for Prince Rajiv when I spotted those two in the corridor. They were arranging themselves to lie in wait near that door, and I thought there was probably a reason for it, so I decided to lie in wait myself.”

“Otos must have found the safe chamber and told the troops where it was,” Anna said. “And how did you -?”

“Dianisian rank and unit insignia,” Herringholtz interrupted, seemingly in the interest of time, “have remained unchanged for three centuries. As for the dagger-throwing, it is a hobby I have embraced as a way of dealing with life’s pressures. My family never considered it an appropriately gentlemanly pursuit, however, so I would go into the forest to practice unobserved—a habit I retain to this day. Now, this being your castle, how do you suggest we proceed?”

“The safe chamber is no good now that the enemy knows about it,” Anna replied. “The room is walled with steel, but the Dianisians could turn it into an oven with their Greek fire. Our best bet now is to try to get out through the secret tunnel in the cellar. Or, at least, we can probably hide down there for a while, and hope that the reinforcements can take back the castle when they get here.”

As they slipped away down the stairs, Anna couldn’t help think that hope might be all she had left.

END CHAPTER 17
- 16
- 17
- 18
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

In the Light of Day: A Frozen Epic