The little group crouched in the snow above the monster army, their message successfully delivered. Whatever else happened at least the army wouldn’t get caught by surprise. Whether they could defeat a third army was another question altogether.

“We should follow them,” Jen said. “If they change course or join up with another force we haven’t yet seen we have to be able to warn the general.”

“I agree,” Damien said. “If we’re in position I might be able to break their charge and give the soldiers a better chance to hold the line when they attack.”

“Do you really think there might be more of them?” Alec asked. Damien had never met a nervous warlord, but the youngest member of Jen’s team came close.

Jen shook her head. “I don’t know, but we need to be ready for the possibility. No one has any idea how many monsters live in the Ice Queen’s territory. Some people speculate the reason she attacks every decade or two is to keep the numbers of her army at a reasonable level rather than to try to conquer the Northlands. I think that’s bullshit, but we’re all just guessing.”

Quiet from over the ridge brought their conversation to a halt. They peeked over the edge and saw the end of the column marching out of view. The squad jogged along, never letting the back of the column out of sight. Trailing the enemy force was slow, tedious work, but they kept at it until the sun hung low in the sky and the army stopped for the night. The enemy force set up tents made from fur-covered hides. They made no fires, but passed around what looked like gobbets of raw meat and ate them cold.

Damien shuddered. How did anyone live like that? The monsters were little better than animals, slaves to be pointed south to kill and die on the whim of an indifferent mistress. He would have pitied them if they weren’t on their way to murder people he’d sworn to protect.

One ogre, a big, blue-skinned monster wearing nothing but a loincloth and standing a head taller than anything Damien had seen up to now, moved a short distance from the camp, a club of carved ice slung over his shoulder.

That had to be the commander. Commander might be too generous. He was probably the one that pointed and roared when he wanted them to attack.

“We should make camp and get some rest,” Talon whispered.

Before anyone could reply a dragon’s head made of ice rose up out of the frozen ground. The soul force Damien sensed gathered around it. This was the source he’d been tracking.

It wasn’t the Ice Queen. As overwhelmingly powerful as this beast was, it wasn’t strong enough to be her. This must be one of her sons. The books Damien had read suggested she had at least two, though she hadn’t sent one against the kingdom in over one hundred years. The dragon’s eyes glowed bright blue, the same color as the soul force swirling around everywhere. It stared at the big ogre who looked back at it, mouth agape.

They ducked down out of sight. “Where the hell did that thing come from?” Edward asked.

“It’s been there all along,” Damien said. “The dragon’s power is what I sensed, I just didn’t realize it.”

“Are there tunnels under the snow where it travels out of sight?” Jen asked.

Damien shook his head. He’d read everything in the library about dragons. “Dragons are nothing but energy bound into matter, ice in this case. It can send its energy through the ice then rise up, forming a new body as it goes. That’s why they only attack the kingdom in the winter. There’s no ice in the summer and it reduces their strength to have to maintain the integrity of their bodies outside their element.”

Jen’s eyes went wide. “They mean to surprise our forces. No one will know the dragon’s there until it’s too late. We have to send another note.”

Rhys already had parchment and pencil out. Jen jotted down a quick note and when she finished Damien had a bird ready to go. It clamped on to the paper and flew off. His construct hadn’t gone more than a couple hundred yards when it shattered, shards of energy scattered everywhere, the note disintegrated.

“What happened?” Jen must have seen the bird explode.

Damien was about to explain when Talon said, “Guys?”

Damien had never heard a tremor in the arrogant warlord’s voice. He and Jen inched up the slope to join him. When they peeked over the dragon’s glowing blue eyes were staring right at them.

“Shit!”

They slid down to rejoin the others. The beast must have sensed Damien’s conjuring and raised a barrier to stop the message from going through. The scrabbling of claws on ice reached them a moment before a bluish-white face, its lips peeled back from a fang-filled mouth, scraggly black hair trailing down its back, appeared over the slope. A reflexive burst of soul force from Damien blew the ice troll’s head to bits. A second later half a dozen more popped up like gofers on the plains.

Damien blasted two more, but the rest made it over the ridge and charged, claws raised to slaughter anyone that got close. Behind the first wave, more trolls appeared, and behind them yet more.

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.