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.
Fury on the Fjord
Dark above the fjord, the storm clouds twisted low, swallowing the line of water and mountain in leaden shadow. The snow-lashed wind pressed hard from the sea, howling like a dirge for the bold. All day, crows had circled, blackening the sky above the battered Valskar moot. Kerr watched the gathering night with a wolf’s patience, hand wrapped about the grip of his notched axe, ear tuned for any shiver on the air. Inside what passed for council, firelight flickered across hollow cheeks; each face marked by famine and defeat, each heartbeat strung taut as a bowstring.
When dusk bled into black, Kerr rose.
“No more defending like penned lambs. The Raven’s war-fires eat what’s left of us. If we die, let it not be as sheep, but claws bared at her throat. Tonight, we move.”
Eirik looked up from a fletched arrow, his bruised face shadowed. “If we strike—strike the marrow. The convoy lines, the stores by the strand.”
Hrawg, propped on a battered shield, barked, “Your men run lean, Wolf. If too many fall on this foray, we’ll not last another moon. And the Skjald still remember debts not paid in blood.”
“Debt be damned,” Inga snapped, scar taut along her jaw, “If the alternative is chains.
The Sundr captain, gaunt and fox-eyed, hissed, “Even a wolf must beware the bite that comes from behind, not just the raven’s talon.”
Kerr met all eyes in the ring, his glare leveled not for show, but for faith. “You who ride tonight—Skjald, Fjorn, Valskar. When the moon is rimed over, we strike south along the ice, hit the Raven’s supply trains by the fishery outposts. Burn what we can’t take. Take what you can’t eat. At the first call of the horn, you run, not for honor, but survival.”
Freyja, lurking just beyond the tongue of light, muttered a warning: “The omens are thick—shadows clutching the moon, fire unseen by living eyes. Tread carefully, or the price will be more than wounds.”
Kerr only nodded, hard as bedrock. “The Raven Queen offers no bargains. If we stay, we starve. If we flee, she hunts us as prey. I choose neither.”
He pulled his battered pelt tighter and limped to the muster.
The war-band drew together in silence. Valskar, Skjald, Fjorn—shivering, hungry, most for the first time fighting alongside old blood-enemies. Thirty blades, less than half the might once mustered at the moot. Banners hidden, faces smeared with black ash, they took their oaths in the dark: not for glory, but for kin.
The world was a knife-edge of ice as the company crossed the ravaged snowfields, boots muffled, weapons wrapped in battered pelts. Inga walked point, eyes darting, recalling every map she’d learned as child, tracing the shore of her own memory as much as the land. Eirik slid between shadows, bow strung and quiver heavy. Hrawg, favoring his wounded leg, kept pace with iron resolve—and the threat that if the Wolf blundered, he’d be the first to claim command.
A sound—a distant yelp, a crash in the thicket—halted their progress. Close-set ranks cut low. Kerr’s gesture sent two Skjald creeping into the firs. Minutes passed. The Skjald returned, faces pale.
“Raven scouts. Dead—by whose blade, we can’t tell.”
Eirik knelt, finding black-fletched arrows buried in snow by the bodies. “They kill their own for failure. Or to cull the weak—see how the tracks double back.”
Freyja, hunched in her furs, whispered, “Ravens turn on kin, when hunger sharpens. But danger’s closer. The wind is wrong.”
By deepest night they reached the shore of the fjord, where Raven supply sledges, heavy with grain and weapons, rumbled southward guarded by shrouded shadows. Fire gleamed on plank roads built hastily over the ice, stretching like veins from the forest’s edge to a pair of distant, torch-lit huts. Beyond, frost-chained boats creaked on the shore, Black Raven banners fluttering above crates of pilfered axes and barrels of meal.
Kerr signaled: two squads to the sledges; one to the huts. His heart pounded with the old predator’s thrill—the knowledge that only action would feed their dying kin another day.
Inga led her Fjorn and two Valskar, knives drawn. Eirik, with Hrawg just behind, slipped to the pier. Kerr chose three Skjald and stalked for the stores.
The attack unfurled with sudden, frigid violence.
Hushed blades cut throats; arrows found vital shadows. The first Raven guard dropped with hardly a sound; the second screamed—blowing the horn before Kerr split his skull. Inga wrestled with a hulking scout and drove her knee up, breaking the man’s jaw before her knife slid between ribs. Eirik loosed three arrows in three heartbeats—one shattering a lantern, dousing the path in darkness, another pinning a foe to the sledge. Skjald poured oil across the sledges and put torch to them. The stores flamed, billowing oily smoke into the blue-black heavens.
But the alarm had been raised. Horns blared from up the hillside—black plumes rising as more Raven warriors surged into view. Behind the burning storehouses, a flurry of shouting and cursed oaths.
“Back! To the boats!” Kerr howled.
Dozens more Black Ravens pressed from the tree-line—strange markings glittering on faces, axes smeared with something tarry and reeking. Their champion bellowed words in old Kvennish, sounding half-spell, half-curse. Eirik and Hrawg formed a rearguard, holding fast as fleeing allies slung sacks of saltfish over shoulders. The Skjald hesitated—one fell, gutted at the hut’s door, the others dragging him, cursing Kerr for the cost.
Steel met steel, axes rent flesh. Kerr dropped one foe, staggered by a glancing stroke across the brow. Two Skjald fell beside him, screaming. Inga, her hair alight from sparks off a burning keg, fought off a warrior twice her size, her blade lost—just fists and teeth remaining, she bit, tore, scrambled free, his blood hot on her frozen lips.
At the boats, the Fjorn captain—only a boy, face raw as baby snow—caught an axe in the thigh. Eirik stayed with him, fighting off two more Ravens, cursing all folly and fate, till he could drag the lad aboard.
“Row, damn you!” Hrawg bellowed, shoving Fjorn and Skjald alike into frostbitten hulls. Kerr was last to launch, foam freezing where his boots hit the shore. Raven arrows clattered on the planks; two more men died, one sliding into the slush, another vanishing with a spear through his back.
The boats slipped into dark. Oil fires blazed behind them—Raven stores roaring skyward as the allied raiders rowed half-mad with exhaustion and terror. Blood dripped over oar-handles, shadows slumped where warriors bled out at the thwarts. Smoke and embers chased them down the black water. Only when bone-numb and out of range did they slacken, collapsing into a silence thick with grief and adrenaline.
When they made shore miles upriver, the tally was grim. Eight men lost, four more bad-wounded, and only two sledges’ worth of grain and salted meat wrested from the inferno. The Skjald bickered, blaming Kerr—in the same breath mourning their own and swearing vengeance for every blow sparred or slight endured. Fjorn warriors spat at the Skjald, the threat of dissolution bright behind every curse.
Hrawg, pressing a rag to his side, staggered to Kerr. “Was this victory, Wolf?” His voice broke on the last word. Kerr met his stare, wearied. “It was the only choice left.”
Eirik sat, hands shaking. “More will die tomorrow. The Ravens will not forgive. We bought a day’s bread—no more.”
Freyja, huddled in the ruined prow, shivered suddenly. “Their Queen knows. The runes are twisted now—her vengeance comes on frost and wings. Pray tonight, if you’d see another dawn.”
Inga, still bleeding from a cut across her temple, huddled at Eirik’s side. “We survived—together. For now.”
Overhead, a streak of fire crossed the cloud-choked sky—whether meteor, omen, or the flash of Ylva’s witchery no one dared say. But when the coalition limped back to the battered moot at sunrise, what remained of hope was battered more ragged than ever.
Throughout that day, the wind wailed and warriors dug shallow graves for kin lost on the ice, the moot trembling with rage, grief, and suspicion. Skjald threatened to withdraw. Fjorn accused Valskar of cowardice and the Skjald of murder in retreat. Only the Sundr—too few to matter, now—remained sullen and watchful. There was no feast, no song, only the business of surviving another hour.
As dusk gathered once more, ravens massed on the highest timbers, staring down at the battered survivors. Black shapes circled, croaking out their judgment, as flames guttered low and the northern night set its icy jaws on all beneath it.
Kerr sat by the ring-fire—blade across his lap, face raw with new wounds—wondering whether unity was only another word for shared doom.
Behind him, the snow drifted deeper, and the night pressed tight—a silence broken only by the distant, mocking sound of witches laughing on the wind.