David Drake - The Fortress of Glass

All around Sharina soldiers shouted in fear and amazement. As Tenoctris' spell spread outward, its effect speeded up. The soil froze to the edge of the bay, turning windblown foam into a coating of rime.

Men hopped up and down, freeing themselves, but the hellplants stopped where they were as if suddenly rooted to the ground. Their tentacles moved sluggishly, no faster than the blooms of the heliotrope following the circuit of the sun. Plants don't like cold any better than they like darkness…

"Lord Attaper!" Sharina said as the guard commander struggled to her side. "Now's the time to attack, while we can move and the plants cannot. Can you give the signal?"

Attaper looked first shocked, then puzzled. Then the meaning behind the words dragged his mind out of the set, angry rut in which it'd been running and he saw that she was right.

"You, cornicene!" he shouted to the signaller from a line regiment standing a few yards away. "Sound Charge!"

He turned. "Blood Eagles, follow me!" he bellowed. "Sharina and the Isles."

Sharina waved her Pewle knife in the air. "The Isles forever! Attack, attack, attack!"

The Blood Eagles turned around. Nobody else was paying attention to Princess Sharina; indeed, the Blood Eagles probably weren't either, but they saw their commander slant his sword toward the enemy. That was enough for them.

Sharina could've stayed where she was; should've stayed where she was, she knew, because there were ten thousand male swordsmen in the regiments assembled here. Every one of them was better for the purpose than a woman with a knife, even a healthy young woman with abig knife..

She advanced on the hellplants anyway, with Lord Attaper at her left and Lires on her right. The trooper had loosened his shield strap so that he could hold it out in front of the Princess if he needed to.

Lires wasn't a great thinker, but he knew battle and he knew his job. He had the ability many smarter men lacked, the knack of connecting his experience with the situation he'd be facing in the immediate future. Thus the shield strap.

The ground had occasional patches of greasy slickness, but the soil had been gritty enough that even frozen it gripped the soles of Sharina's sandals well enough. The soldiers' hobnails dug in; the texture of the ground was like that of the first hard freeze of winter, not the surface of a glacier.

Tenoctris had collapsed over her symbol and basin. One of the guards had lifted her head off the ground and was placing his rolled cloak under it; the rest of the squad stood around her as they'd been ordered to do, looking unhappy.

Seeing them allowed Sharina to relax slightly. If they hadn't been there, she'd have had to go back and stay with her friend; but then, if they hadn't stayed where they'd been ordered to, Attaper would've dismissed them from the Blood Eagles and very possibly had the squad leader executed. A princess has the right to determine for herself where duty lies. A soldier does not.

Lord Waldron was trying to reorganize his forces after the multiple disruptions caused by wizardry; his subordinate commanders had even more basic objectives, to halt men on the verge of panic and to get them to listen to commands again. Nobody had time for or interest in a single signaller sounding Charge on the horn wrapped around his body.

They noticed the bodyguard regiment, though-a hundred and some big men in black armor, advancing toward the enemy in a reasonably compact mass. Sharina's bright blonde hair hadn't regrown to the splendor it'd been before she'd had to shave it a few months earlier, but it still stood out like a banner in a sea of soldiers.

And even troops who couldn't see the Princess among her guards were drawn by the attack. Often it's easier to move toward danger than it is to wait patiently for imminent danger to come to you.

Once men looked in the direction the Blood Eagles were advancing, they saw that the terrible enemies they'd feared as even brave men fear were frozen andn motionless. They were no more dangerous now than so many cabbages.

The hellplants were ripe for revenge.

Sharina jogged and skidded over ground that was more solid than the week before when it'd been plowed fields. It was better footing this way too, since the furrows had slumped closed when the farm'd turned to marshland. It was tricky to run across furrows and almost impossible to run along them without stumbling in a soft spot or where a clod turned underfoot; Sharina knew…

Tenoctriscouldn't have done this! To undo the work of the Green Woman would've required a wizard of equal power, and only Double Sharina looked over her shoulder. The whole army was returning sluggishly to the attack; that was gratifying. But Double was where Sharina'd last seen him, standing beside his case of paraphernalia and wearing a look of blank incomprehension. She didn't think his legs had moved since the spell took effect; was he frozen to the ground?

Tenoctris had donesomething. Perhaps she'd summoned Cervoran? But she'd claimed that Doublewas Cervoran!

A hellplant had advanced a few yards ahead of its fellows; perhaps it'd crossed the earthworks at a place where the rampart had slumped. Three Blood Eagles and a line soldier fell on it just ahead of Sharina. One guard had come from a cavalry regiment and still carried his long sword; he thrust it deep into the hellplant's barrel and twisted as it jerked it back.

A crinkle of ice followed the steel; the reservoir in the creatures' bodies had frozen along with the fields. No wonder the plants had stopped advancing!

Four men hacking at one object, even an object as large as a hellplant, were enough. More blades without careful coordination meant the attackers would cut one another, and Sharina had seen too many battles by now to imagine that 'careful coordination' was possible in the midst of one.

She ran to the next plant. Attaper and Lires flanked her as before. She half expected Attaper to object, but instead he saved his breath for better uses.

The score of tentacles fringing the top of the hellplant's barrel were blackening from the cold already. One moved feebly toward Sharina; she sheared it with a side-stroke, then bent. As the soldiers slashed at the plant's vast body, she began methodically to chop off the white, wormlike tendrils on which the creature walked.

Each blow crunched the blade through into the ground beneath. She'd have to sharpen it after the battle, but there was no time for finesse. Nonnus would've understood that.

Lady, bless the soul of my friend and protector. Lady, make me worthy of the life he sacrificed for me.

"Back, your highness!" Attaper said. Before he had the last syllable out, he'd grabbed Sharina by the shoulder and dragged her away. There's no time for finesse.

The plant slumped like a mass of snow sliding off roof slates, a quiver building to a rush until it crashed into the hard ground. The green body burst at every point a blade had cut it. A slush of half-frozen seawater oozed out, smelling of iodine.

A javelin stood up from the mass, then fell free as the remains rotted with the usual suddenness. The spear hadn't been there when Sharina and the guards attacked the creature: one of the soldiers behind them had thrown it while they fought, missing the humans by the Lady's grace and doing no significant harm to the plant, as anyidiot should've known by now!

Sharina started to laugh. She took two steps toward the next hellplant, but there was already a squad of men around every one of the creatures in the immediate vicinity. She stopped, her laughter building hysterically. She knelt and set the Pewle knife flat on the ground; she was afraid she'd cut herself as she laughed uncontrollably.

"Your highness?" Attaper said. "Your highness!"

"I've read the Old Kingdom epics, Attaper!" Sharina said. Concentrating to speak helped her to regain self control. "They've all got battles in them. Sometimes they're mostly battles."