Winter Witch Read Free Page B

the wolf that had killed her parents.
    “Die, you miserable old bitch,” she snarled. “Die and know your tail hangs from this cub’s belt.”
    “Ellasif!”
    Ochme’s tone told Ellasif that she’d uttered the girl’s name more than once before Ellasif heard it. Ochme took her knife back and pressed the baby into Ellasif’s arms. The expression on the battle leader’s face was impossible for Ellasif to read.
    “Go, child,” she said. “Take that babe to shelter.”
    Ellasif ran, the wailing baby clasped to her chest. Hail pelted them as she wove a path through the ruins of the battle. Most of the winter wolves had fallen. A steaming puddle of gore told of ice trolls and fire arrows, but two of the monsters still lumbered through the village. Small packs of ice goblins ran here and there, singing cheerful obscenities as they swarmed cottage after cottage.
    Ellasif darted between two of the small houses and skidded to a stop. An eight-foot-tall troll blocked her path, the monster facing off against Agithra and her spear. The creature swung its club in a pendulous arc. The blow snapped Agithra’s weapon like an autumn twig and lifted the midwife off of her feet. She bent in half and dropped to the ground like a rag doll.
    Three axe-wielding warriors pushed past Ellasif and converged on the troll, hacking it limb from limb. Behind them came children who picked up the smaller troll pieces and ran them to the fire pit. Not every piece of a dismembered troll would grow back into another monster, but the villagers of White Rook had learned to be thorough. Ellasif darted off to find another path.
    A hand clutched at her feet. She stumbled but ran on. Her stomach clenched when she realized the hand still gripped her ankle, fingers digging into her boot leather. She set her jaw and kept going, dragging along the huge blue hand and its severed arm. The armory was just ahead.
    She tucked the baby into a wooden bin and closed and bolted the hut door. Her charge secured, she looked around for a weapon. A woman’s corpse lay nearby, so mangled that only her long red braids identified her as Tanja, mother of Ellasif’s friend Olenka. The woman’s short sword was buried to the hilt in the body of the winter wolf she’d died slaying.
    Ellasif braced her free foot on the wolf’s bloodied white pelt and tugged the sword free. She dragged her burden closer to the fire pit, where the battle-churned ground was as soft as summer loam, and stabbed through the blue hand. She leaned on the sword to thoroughly impale the troll limb before jerking her foot free. Lifting the skewered arm and hurling it into the fire took every bit of strength she could muster.
    Oily flame leaped up around the severed arm. Perhaps twenty paces away, a blue head screamed in agony, still attached to one arm and a mangled chunk of shoulder, but little else.
    Ellasif caught a passing lad by the arm and pointed at the troll’s head. “Missed one,” she said. The severed head had already begun regenerating a windpipe and a dark pulsing bud that would become a heart. The boy nodded and hurried to dispose of the head.
    For a moment Ellasif simply stood by the pit, at a loss for what to do next. Everyone else seemed to know his task and place. Two children with pitchforks stabbed a troll hand and ran it back to the fire pit, where elders ensured every scrap of their enemies was destroyed.
    Ellasif’s gaze fell on Jadrek. He stood with his back to a cottage wall, knife and bill whirling as he fended off a pair of goblins. A surge of feral joy filled her heart. Ellasif hauled the sword up high over one shoulder and charged toward her friend.
    Jadrek’s eyes widened as he saw her approach. One of the goblins turned toward Ellasif. Her first wild thrust cut his startled cry short as she stabbed the little monster directly in the mouth. Then she turned her body and directed her momentum and the weight of the sword into a leg-slashing cut. Bright blood sprayed from