It looked like a troll avalanche and the six of them were about to get buried.
Jen cut the arm off one and gutted a second. “Can you fly us out of here?”
“No.” Damien conjured curved blades of dense soul force and sent them flying into the mass of trolls. The spinning blades decapitated half a dozen in the first pass. “If we break cover the dragon will turn us into frozen treats. I’m not strong enough to shield us all from something that powerful. Plus I don’t know if I can get through its barrier.”
Jen chopped the head off a troll attempting to reattach its arm to the oozing stump on its shoulder. “Damn it! I guess we’ll have to run.”
“I can hold the trolls off, go.” Damien guided his spinning swords into another clump of trolls and sliced them into bloody chunks.
“I can’t leave you here alone.” A troll clawed Jen’s arm, but failed to penetrate her iron skin. She punched it in the face, crushing its skull and driving shards of bone into its brain, killing it instantly.
“I’ll be fine, trust me.” Damien raised a golden wall between the squad and the trolls. “Go!”
Jen gave him one last look, concern plain on her frowning face, and then she and her squad sprinted away in a cloud of snow.
Good, now that they were clear he didn’t have to hold back. Damien dropped the wall and shaped the energy into a bubble around him.
Trolls raced toward him, foot-long purple tongues hanging out of their mouths, spit flying and freezing on the side of their faces. Ugly things, no doubt about that.
The first pair of trolls reached his bubble and scraped their black claws against the impenetrable barrier. More trolls gathered around until nothing but rough, pebbly skin, claws, and fangs filled his vision.
He waited another minute for good measure then conjured a pair of twenty-foot-long blades, one on either side of the bubble, and set them spinning as fast as he could. In an instant he ground over a hundred trolls into so much fertilizer, spattering the snow red for fifty feet in every direction.
It looked like a butcher shop had exploded.
A quick look around revealed no more trolls and the dragon’s power moving away. It must have decided to push on through the night. That wasn’t good. If the army reached their line before Damien and the others warned General Kord about the dragon it would be a slaughter.
He couldn’t allow that to happen.
Chapter 33
Jen ran, soul force blazing in her legs, the world a blue-and-green blur. She glanced back over her shoulder in time to see Damien surrounded by a horde of ice trolls. She clenched her jaw and kept going. If her brother could handle a demon, a bunch of trolls wouldn’t bother him. Jen trusted him to survive and catch up. If he didn’t make it she’d kill him.
“Captain!” Talon pointed at a patch of evergreens a little ways ahead.
Jen nodded, that would be a good place to rest and wait for Damien to catch up. They raced through the first few rows of spruce and skidded to a stop in a clearing in the center of the stand. It looked like someone had cut some trees and not that long ago if the fresh stumps were any indication. She’d never heard of ogres or trolls cutting timber; they lived in ice caves, at least according to everything she’d read.
“How long do we wait?” Edward asked.
Jen wanted to snarl, until my brother catches up, but that wouldn’t be practical with the dragon and its army on the march. “We’ll give him fifteen minutes. If Damien hasn’t caught up by then he isn’t going to.”
No one argued, which was just as well given her mood. She’d left her brother surrounded by trolls! What kind of sister did that?
It didn’t matter if he told her to go, or that he was the strongest sorcerer she’d ever seen, he was her brother and she’d left him on his own.
A branch snapped, jolting her out of her recriminations. That hadn’t taken long. Jen figured even Damien would have needed more time than that to deal with so many trolls. A nine-foot-tall, blue-skinned figure wearing a mask of ice carved to look like a dragon stepped into the clearing, an icy club held loose in one hand. A moment later eight more stepped out of the trees. The silent figures pointed their clubs at Jen and her squad.
Jen drew on her soul force, enhancing her perception and preparing her body for battle. She raised her blade, eager to take her frustration out on ogre flesh.
She recognized the ogres standing before them. Numerous reports mentioned the masked berserkers that served as the Ice Queen’s elite troops. They were essentially the monstrous equivalent to warlords.
The first ogre blurred and attacked her in a rush. Ice club met soul-forged steel with a resounding crash. If she hadn’t sped up her awareness she wouldn’t have gotten the blade up in time.
All around her the crack of ice on steel filled the clearing.
Jen pushed the ogre back half a step and counterattacked.
It matched her blow for blow as they raced around the clearing fighting for an advantage.
She leapt at a spruce, twisted in midair so her boots hit the trunk, and pushed off with enough force that the tree cracked down the middle.
At a blinding speed that even her father, the great Fredric the Lightning, would be hard pressed to match, Jen raced toward her opponent.
The masked ogre raised its club a fraction too late and her sword found its heart. She kicked the brute off her blade in the nick of time as a second berserker barreled toward her with murderous intent. Jen met it head on and the battle began again.
If any normal person entered the clearing all they would have seen
