The Wolf and the Raven: Saga of the Fjordlands
Steel rings and ravens scream in the blood-soaked Fjordlands! When ancient rivalries flare and a supernatural foe threatens their very existence, chieftain Kerr the Wolf must unite warring Viking clans before the land drowns in fire and ash. Betrayal, love, and prophecy set the stage for an epic saga where only the bold—or the lost—will survive.
Blades at Dawn
Dawn’s first light was silver and steely cold, crawling across the trampled snow where the moot’s embers gave only weak warmth. Men’s breath smoked as they hauled gear, muttered prayers, drew lines in the mud—an uneasy withdrawal or a preparation for war, none could rightly say.
Kerr strode the camp with Eirik limping at his side, the latter’s bandage seeped pink. Clan banners hung limp, draped in a silence pierced only by a crying gull or the crunch of a bitter heel. Tension knotted the air; days of dread, suspicion, and shattered trust pressed upon the living like stone.
“Keep eyes open,” Kerr warned his thegns. “No one leaves before we settle this.”
Whispers moved ahead of Kerr’s passing. Hrawg, chief of the Skjald, stalked the moot’s heart, his face ruddy, beard flecked with snow, voice already raised for blood. Beside him, his champion Thorgunn—a brute of a man, red-plaited and thunder-browed—glowered, iron-shod club in hand.
When Kerr came within the aft-shadow of the mootstone, Hrawg called out: “You speak of unity, yet your blade never forgets Skjald blood. Valskar calls us brothers only when southern steel rings at the gate!”
Jeers and oaths coloured the breaths of Skjald and sympathizers; others watched, hands idle near hilts. The flames of outrage, fed hourly now, caught dry.
Kerr, voice steady as bedrock: “Enough! Is it the Black Ravens you fear, or the ghosts of old hate?”
“Both!” Hrawg spat. “But I say let steel judge. If the Wolf means to lead, let him stand against Skjald strength.”
Thorgunn planted feet, club resting upon a shoulder thick as a boar’s. “Face me, Kerr. For insult and for pride. Winner’s kin commands. Loser—debt in blood.”
The multitude roared its bloodthirsty approval. Seeress Freyja’s pale gaze sought out Eirik, but he was already moving, despair on his lips. “This will only feed the ravens,” he hissed to Inga, who clutched her cloak tight, jaw firm. “My father will not recall him,” she whispered, “not now.”
Sunlight knifed through low cloud as the moot—scattered and ruddy with outrage—formed a ring around the dueling patch. Halvard of Fjorn cast a stone to bless the ground. The ancient rules would be honored—at least in form if not in spirit.
Kerr stripped off his cloak, leaving the bear-pelt at Eirik’s feet. He favoured neither sword nor axe, but pulled from his belt the long saex— the blade his father had carried when first the Skjald feud was kindled. Thorgunn hefted his iron-bound club, grinning through yellowed teeth.
They circled—two animals, old quarrels hot in the air. “No more words,” Thorgunn growled.
The clash began. Thorgunn struck from above, the club smearing snow and rolling Kerr aside. Kerr answered with a feint, slicing a shallow line along Thorgunn’s forearm. The crowd hissed as steam rose from blood on ice.
Thorgunn laughed, swiping broad arcs, driving Kerr back—once, twice, thrice. Kerr ducked beneath the next swing, grabbing Thorgunn’s wrist, yanking the bigger man close, and driving the edge of his knife across the ribs where mail was thin. Metal rang; leather split.
But Thorgunn wrapped Kerr in a bear-hug, crushing lungs, club dropped to the earth. Kerr’s wind narrowed to a gasp.
Eirik shouted from the circle's edge, “Move, Wolf—remember the Broken Shield!”
Kerr braced, slammed his knee into Thorgunn’s thigh, and smashed his forehead into the champion’s nose. It broke with a wet crunch—blood geysered. Thorgunn wavered, Kerr twisted free, and in a blur, he drove the saex into the juncture of neck and shoulder.
For a breath, Thorgunn stood, gaping, blood flooding down his chest, then slumped to his knees and pitched forward, face-first in snow. The moot recoiled. Hrawg’s howl split the morning.
“Blood for blood!” roared Hrawg, yanking his own weapon. Skjald warriors surged, and in a heartbeat the moot dissolved into frenzied chaos. Blades flashed; bodies collided among banners, wolf and boar and broken club alike.
Halvard took a glancing axe-cut to his shield arm as he tried to drag his wounded second—Eilif—away from the fray. Jotunstag men, uncertain and angry, joined for the glory of bloodletting; Fjorn and Sundr interposed, shoving, some swinging at rivals, some only fending off.
Eilif fell beneath boot and blade, throat slit by some nameless foe. Bjarte of Jotunstag, prideful and brash, lunged for a Skjald but was speared through by a Valskar youth, neither seeing the other’s face.
Eirik fought with the flat of his sword, bellowing oaths and demands for peace, Eirik’s voice lost under the animal chorus. Inga, battered by the push and swirl, dragged a wounded boy clear as the mootside burned with violence.
It was Freyja’s cry—harrowing as a wolf’s lament—that slowed the bloodmad: “YOU KILL WHAT HOPE REMAINS!”
The fighting flared, faltered, ebbed. Skjald warriors gathered their dead, faces streaked with tears and mud. Hrawg, wild-eyed, spat a final curse at Kerr: “There is no peace, Wolf, while Skjald yet draws breath! Remember my brother!”
Kerr, still bleeding from a dozen bruises, hauled himself upright by the mootstone. “Remember who brought the south upon us,” he called—voice hoarse, echoing over corpses.
As night began to steal the rage from men’s bones, shadows regrouped. Among the tents, Eirik found Inga, her jaw smeared with blood not her own. “We cannot keep to this path,” he said, urgent. “There must be peace, even if sworn in dark. Will you meet with me— and with others willing to defy our fathers?”
Inga’s fingers shook as she gripped his. “If not us, then who? I will come. Tonight.”
Their pact—born in despair—was sealed with salt tears and a hurried kiss, hidden from torchlight but witnessed, perhaps, by gods not yet weary of mortals.
In another shadow, Sten of Jotunstag leaned in close to a hooded figure. “Tell your queen—the time draws near. The Skjald wound must fester. We will drive the Wolf to bay.” Cold coins flashed in hand, quickly secreted. The Black Raven emissary vanished into darkness.
That night, as the wounded mewled and death stalked the tents, Seeress Freyja shuddered by the mootstone, face turned skyward. Her mind filled with broken visions—a shattering of shields, a dead moon, the voice of Ylva rising above mountains of the slain.
She tried to warn those who would listen: “If we splinter now, rot will swallow all. There is still a path to unity. There must be.”
But no one heard her above the wailing, or if they heard, they turned away—each nursing grief, vengeance, or secret hope for advantage. Ravaged banners snapped in the wind while fresh blood soaked old snow.
Above all, the ravens watched, silent as the grave, as the unity of the moot lay broken, and dawn came bloodied yet again.