Prince Edvard, youngest son of King Espen II of Arendelle looked across the table at the assemblage of black-clad strangers. The red bands on their arms bore a curious device -a black spider had been smashed against a white saucer. Its nature, alien to European heraldry, afforded him no reassurance of their intentions.
"You mean to make war in the east, and you would have Arendelle drive away their winter in aid of this enterprise?" He asked.
"I have been instructed to ask your Kingdom for precisely that, Herr Aren. We are prepared to make things very comfortable for you as compensation" the strange man replied. His thin mustache crinkled as he drew up his lips to assume an imposing air. He drew up the shoulders of his pinstriped suit.
Did he mean to threaten them? Arendelle? Unassailable behind their ice as the Swiss were behind their mountains? The Prince wondered what the curious men could possibly offer other than a promise, possibly false, of neutrality.
After all, he thought they had offered such assurances to the self-described "Man of Steel" who thought himself safe beyond the banks of the Volga and yet now came seeking Arendelle's aid in destroying him.
"What would you need from us? You have planes. Armored cavalry. Surely victory will come as quick as thunder in the face of you "lightning attacks" The Prince asked.
"Herr Aren, I have been ordered to secure the service of one of your... witches", the man replied. He immediately regretted his words.
"Forgive me, mein Herr, I did not mean to imply anything. The kindness of your family's Eismaschinen is well known to us" the thinly mustached man retreated to his native tongue in embarassment. He swallowed and tugged nervously at his tie. The pin on his collar bore the same device as the armbands the men standing behind him wore, but the impertinent one's was cast in gold.
"How can they waste gold on such petty things and expect to win a war?" Prince Edvard mused to himself.
Another man, suited in gray and black, laid his hand on the pinstriped one's shoulder. The smartly dressed man rose from his seat and this other one and set his hat emblazoned with the most ridiculous insignia yet, a silver skull and crossbones, beside him.
"We know you command the ice. We have held from your borders to spare ourselves the fury of your winters. We ask only that you give us the power to end another", he offered.
"In exchange of what?" the Prince asked, already tired of these odd men dwelling even on a ship in his harbor.
"The Fuhrer has permitted us to offer you whatever you would ask for destroying the Soviet with your power" the gray-suited one offered with a straight face.
Prince Edvard composed his response with care - these Germans were ridiculous, yes, but they had already seized many of Arendelle's neighbors.
"And If I demanded The Southern Isles? What would your "Fuhrer" say to that?" he replied.
"They would be yours" the gray one promised.
Prince Edvard cast his eyes up from the desk. His gray-green eyes met the steely blue of the man across from him.
"How could you promise that any son of Arendelle accompanying your forces would be out of danger?" the Prince asked.
"They would be protected!" said the pinstriped one, from the corner where he smoked nervously.
"We would die for them as for the Fuhrer himself, Herr Aren" pledged the more serious and soldlierly of the two.
The fear of an eternal winter blanketing the Rheinland in snow; the horrific tales of an invincible army of men composed of living ice holding the Finnish incursion against Arendelle's border only 23 years earlier, when they had captured Weselton in only two weeks of fighting, and with no human casualties for their own forces; both weighed heavily on his mind. The Reich had seized The Southern Isles without effort; but they would gladly give it back if it meant even one of the crown family's icemasters would lead the blitz east into Stalin's armies; and possibly be persuaded to turn the fury of its winters against the Soviet. He could not return home in failure. His own family's lives depended on it.
"The Southern Isles, and anything else you would ask, they are yours" he continued.
The Prince extended his hand across the table to take that of the gray-suited one. In ten minutes he had doubled the population of Arendelle without a drop of blood spilled on snow.
Prince Edvard shook hands with the gray-suited man. The prinstriped offered his as well but was eschewed. His remark of witchcraft could not be taken lightly.
Edvard stepped out of the steel bulkhead door of the frigate into the winter air and looked in comfort at the splendor of the ice surrounding him. Clad only in thin, grey, woollen pants and a festive red sweater embroidered with designs of reindeer and snowflakes, he looked down the deck and saw sailors in full-length coats and furred hats trembling, rubbing their hands together to try to provoke some warmth from within themselves. He strode down to the gang plank and alighted from the frigate as if taking a walk in the summer breeze. The cold never had bothered their family.
"Herr Aren! We cannot linger in these cold waters long" the pinstriped one called to him.
In charity to the poor sailors Prince Edvard passed his hand over the smoke-belching stacks of the engine room. Until morning the boilers would be free from fighting the cold of the icy sea.
Edvard returned to the castle, waving at the townsfolk as he passed. When the gates to the doors to the great hall shut behind him, King Espen beckoned to him.
"Excellent news, father. The fools have given us the Southern Isles without so much as a shot fired" he told his patriarch. The grandson of Queen Elsa patted him on the back with thanks for a job well done.
"Who are we to send among the dogs to keep our bargain, my son?", he asked.
"I would leave that to you, father" Edward deferred.
"Oh, nonsense. I have put this matter in your charge because I knew you would choose wisely. Of all my sons you have the best head for strategy. Now, who will it be? Surely not one of the girls?" the King asked.
Edvard thought of his daughters, Bodil and Frida. He would not see them suffer were the plans of the ridiculous dupes waiting in the harbor to fail. Nor did he wish to impose on his two older brothers, Georg, the next in line for the throne, or Edmund, the middle, who was busy with his own children in annexed Weselton.
"Myself, father. I will go" he offered.
"In the morning, then" The King replied.
"In the morning" Edvard affirmed.
Dinner was made more interesting with the news. Edvard's wife Ylva worried more than his daughters. Still in their early teens, he hoped they would one day rule the Isles he'd just won for them.
"Will it not be dangerous husband?" Ylva asked with concern as they lie in bed that night.
"Of course. There is danger in doing nothing. The easterners are not as easily cowed by our snow, and if we allowed them onto our borders we may lose more than land. The greatest danger of this war will be in their underestimating me." the Prince tried to comfort his wife.
The prodding of his daughters awakened him. They shook his shoulders and kissed him on his cheeks until he opened his eyes. He took them in his arms and hugged close against his chest to soak up their warmth.
"Let's all sing a song before your papa leaves. Which ones do you know?" he asked his girls.
Bodil, 12 years old with bright blonde hair and his same gray-green eyes, and Frida, 13, head covered in sandy-colored braids, and icy blue eyes, looked up at him as he sat back on the bed and set them on the ground.
"Olaf taught us a new song yesterday. He said it was Mother Anna's favorite" Frida replied. The words whistled out of her mouth through the gap in her teeth. An accident at the docks when she was 9 had knocked one of her incisors loose and her crooked smile would be with her forever, but to his eyes it was as beautiful as the sun.
"What did he teach you? The one about Summer?" Edvard asked.
"No he taught us a new song. He said you didn't know it" Bodil replied to him.
"Well will you teach me, so I can sing it while I'm gone?" he asked her as set her on his knee.
"Okay papa. Frida, you start" Bodil urged her sister.
Bodil and Frida sang a stirring duet for him about love being an open door. Ever true to his word, Olaf must have known it was Anna's favorite. Castle Arendelle had never shut its doors, except the huge ones opening into the hall, since the time Queen Elsa and her sister had lived in the castle. They didn't even close the doors in their rooms at night. They didn't have to.
Edvard tried hard to remember the words, and took his girls in his arms to carry them down to breakfast. They ate eggs and sausages and hot cocoa with Ylva.