Chapter 4: The Price of Hands

Hrodmar's knife did not move.

It was not that he refused.

The ice under his boots had gone solid black, and so had his arm up to the elbow.

"Who are you?" Hrodmar shouted.

The stranger did not answer.

He lifted two fingers.

The knife flew out of Hrodmar's hand and landed on the ice at Ingrith's knees.

"Pick it up," he said to her.

She did.

Her hand shook, but she held it.

"Now," he said, "cut his hair out of your fist."

She sawed through her own hair where Hrodmar still gripped it.

The long dark-blonde strands fell in his fingers.

He roared and tried to pull away, but his hands had frozen to the altar stone.

They stuck there, fingers splayed, smoking in the cold.

"My lord," one of the Frostland men called. "What is that?"

"That," said a voice from the shore, trembling, "is Hades."

The name ran through both courts.

Hades.

The king of the dead.

The one the old women said you must never name after dark.

Ingrith stared at the man in front of her.

He glanced down and gave her a small private smile.

"Told you," he said. "You would be my queen."

"You said that to a woman who had a thimble and a knife."

"I say it to a woman who pulled a thorn out of a king and did not ask for gold."

He turned to the shore.

"Lords of the north," he said.

His voice did not rise, but it carried to every ear.

"You came to watch a girl bleed. Stay. I mean to show you something."

He walked to the Skarnholt household.

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