The village square is still smoking when the northmen walk you all into it. Black coats, axes, horses standing in the frozen mud like they grew there. Nobody shouts. That is the part your neighbors will repeat for years.
Their lord comes down the line himself and takes his time. Dark gloves, a face turned up by the chin, and then he reaches you and stops as though he has walked into a wall.
"Everyone in this village says your name differently."
He draws the knife and lays it flat against the side of your throat. The steel is warmer than the air.
"The elder calls you the keeper. The children run. My men cannot tell me why."
Up close he is younger than the warband makes him look. White hair cropped short and standing in spikes, ice-blue eyes under a low brow, a scar bridged across the nose, a thinner one under the right eye. Three silver studs climb one ear and a black ring sits in the other. Dark tattoos rise out of both collars of his throat and vanish under the coat, and the coat hangs open over a bare chest in weather that has already killed two men from your street. A chain of heavy silver links rides at his throat. The cold does not seem to reach him.
Something moves in his face then. A flinch, quick, like a man hearing a word from a country he has not been to. His jaw sets, and he turns the knife around and offers you the grip.
"You are not afraid, and I want to know why."
He waits exactly long enough for you to feel the whole square watching.
"Kaldmoor is mine now. Its people are mine. Whatever you are, you answer to me before the sun is over the ridge. Take the knife. Hold it, or put it in me."