The snow lay so thick and hard upon the earth that not even the legate’s prized bull ox could break it by plow. As the creature strained against its rigging and the great sledge made no motion, the people gathered round the fields. They whispered, and the words famine – ice age – slipped from their fearful tongues. 

It was no secret that an age of ice was drawing near. The shoremen spoke of the great clots of glaciers hardening in the north sea. The snow phoenix made billowing patterns in the skies. The cold constellations rose in the east and the thaw stars had begun to set. 

Worse still was the call of the ice shoals’ hawks as they scouted the shorelines. It would not be long now before the raiders would come. Perhaps even in their lifetimes, and certainly in the lifetimes of their children. 

So it was that this mess of frozen earth was a harbinger, not just of a hard year, but of hard centuries to come. 

Prince Omere stood in the summer halls in winter robes. The straggling gardens that sprouted in the false spring were choked with frost, and as he watched the snow fall in summer, his heart wept. Beside him, the chaplain’s face was hidden in a scrawl of cowl and breath fog. 

“Woe to all those,” the holy man whispered, “born unto an age of ice.” 

Omere frowned, but did not look at him. “We will just to have pray, wise one, for our children and their children and those who come after. Those who might see a summer for all the sacrifice we make now.” 

In the decade preceding, they lost a month abreast of spring and summer. Now it seemed that those blessings were gone. Another month of summer slipped from their fingers, and with luck or favor, they might have three months to crop this year. 

“What will you do, Omere?” 

The Prince glanced over the fold of his shoulder. His wife and her silent steps stood at the birth of the hall, and she asked him this with the Princess Embla swaddled to her breast. 

“Your lord father King Eser will not see reason.”  

“No.” Omere grit his teeth and the blue cold glinted in his eyes. 

The chaplain steepled his fingers, heavy with cold brass rings, and spoke with sincere trepidation. “Your father is a thaw king, Prince. It will take an ice king to prepare this nation for what is to come.” 

The Prince did not speak, neither to the holy man nor to his bride. Such was his nature. He watched the haze of the white winter sun stall against the horizon, and behind him, little Embla made her newborn cries. 

In three days, his father was dead and King Omere did not look back. 

There were preparations to be made. From the grain stores, the cold seed would need planting. All land would be forfeit to farming, all mills for grinding. They had only so long to build a surplus for a century of heavy ice. 

Omere sent men out to the hilltops, where the old forts lay bare to the elements for near on three hundred years. They were to dig them out, and the women to prepare them. The people would return there soon, to shelter from the cold, and from the ice shoals and their seal blood warriors. 

He doubled the shore watchmen and conscripted every man of able body into his ranks. He made good on his father’s false promises to trade for smelt and improve their weaponry, their armor. All this he did in good conscience, and at night, he lay with his wife and play with his daughter. 

And it was good he did. For what King Omere did not know was the ice age that crept toward them like the slow cracking floes would be one of the worst in known history, and even that of unknown.