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.
Legacy of the Wolf
The ash of battle still lay heavy on the barrow field. In the shallow dawn, gray and virgin, a silence stretched over the dead—kin and foe mingled in frozen repose. By the shattered stones, the survivors stood in tatters, every hand crimson, every eye hollow with the cost of legend thrust upon mortal frames.
Above, ravens circled but did not land, uneasy in the cold afterlight. For the first time in a generation, the wind did not carry their mocking calls. The Wolf and the Raven had bled, and the world waited, uncertain if dawn meant renewal or ruin.
Kerr knelt beside the last pyre—where the bones of Hrawg, Skjald’s great chief, smoked beside fallen warriors hemmed in ancient armor. His own wounds wept beneath filthy wraps; the blood of myth not quite enough to heal a man who had paid in memory for every dawn. To his left, Eirik braced himself on a spear, swaying slightly, exhaustion eating through sinew and oath alike. Inga, face drawn but steady, watched the horizon from the crest of the barrow, where the banners blew weakly—frayed symbols of tribes changed forever.
The dead were many—too many for rites, the ground too hard for graves. Instead, survivors dragged bough and bundle, building pyres round the stones where, but hours ago, battle and madness had shaken the old earth. Children fetched new torchwood, working in silence. Elders—what few remained—intoned prayers, their voices raising thin columns of hope and warning into the cold sky. No soul among them could say if they prayed to gods, ghosts, or the ancient, watching wolves.
Eirik looked to Kerr, voice rough: “Will you speak? For the dead, for what comes after?”
Kerr forced himself upright. The people—or what was left of them—gathered in a ragged half-circle, all waiting to be told what was paid, and if it had bought a future.
He faced them, fire catching once more on the wolf-bone torque at his throat, the scars on his palm raw as new seasons.
“Brothers, sisters—what is left to speak? You know what you have lost: sons, lovers, homes. Skjald and Valskar—we are remade by grief. Even the Raven, in her wrath, could not kill us all. We have bled for the right to live as kin, not cattle. If the gods linger, may they grant us this moment as seed for something better.”
His words spilled, unornamented. The Skjald, leaderless, lowered heads. The Fjorn captain, tears tracking through soot, nodded. From the Sundr, only a handful of women remained, their faces veiled, bearing stories too wounded to share aloud.
Inga moved beside Kerr, her cloak stitched with Skjald braid, and placed her hand upon Eirik’s. “It cannot be as it was. The future rises in this place, built with what blood we spare each other. Not with old scars, but with new promise. Let those who wish for vengeance follow the bones to cold; the rest must make a road for those yet to be born.”
Through the ashes drifted song: a Skjald lullaby, faltering, then joined by Valskar voices, then Fjorn. It was neither triumphant nor written for victory—simple notes to mark the passing of a season, of a world.
They found Ylva at the field’s edge. The Raven Queen’s corpse lay untouched by time or beast, as if the ground itself feared to claim her. Her hair spread like midnight across the ice; her hands folded as if in prayer. They heaped no stone, but Kerr, with Inga and Eirik at his back, knelt and pressed a blade, point-down, into the drifts at her side.
Freyja, her dead eyes reflecting cloud and fire, had spoken thus before she burned: ‘Bury power with respect, or it returns as famine.’ The Raven Queen’s eyes would haunt those who faced her, though her voice, so it seemed, would trouble the North no more. Still, a hush clamped the world as her last rites were made—burnt not as kin, nor as monster, but as one whose story had ended.
From the pyre’s edge, the last of the old seeress’s followers sent out a handful of black feathers on the wind. They circled, eddied, and vanished into the thawing sky.
“Will her curse pursue us?” asked a trembling boy.
Eirik answered—honest, defiant. “All curses fade, in the end. Or else become kin themselves.”
At midday, with the pyres spent, those who could still walk gathered in the broken moot-hall, ceilings gaping to the blue. It was colder within than out, but the struggle for warmth had given way to the necessity of peace. Inga, still streaked in the blood of kin, called the gathering to order.
“We are the last of those who stood at the barrow. There are no more Valksars only, or Skjald, or Sundr, or Fjorn—not enough to war as in the past. So let us forge now an oath to hold the rest of our lives. No other enemy remains—only hunger and the ghosts of old hate.”
The council was tense, wary. A Sundr woman spoke: “How do we trust, after all that has burned?”
Inga met her gaze. “You choose. Each day, every day. We share bread and watch each other’s back. We raise the young to remember—not for revenge. If we break, the world is done with us.”
Eirik nodded. “Let law be made of need, not pride. Let peace bind those who answer the fire, and leave to the wilds those who thirst for more death.”
It was Kerr who at last surrendered the right to lead. In the hush, he stepped forward, setting the battered wolf helm—its fur scorched and ears torn—upon the stone. His voice was soft, neither boastful nor broken.
“I led to save what could be saved, and failed half the time. Now it is for all of you, together, to mark the path. Let the next oaths be for the living. Let new hands rule—the Wolf stands guard, not king.”
There were few cheers, but no dissent. The stunned quiet was agreement enough. Before sunset, a new council—one of all remaining kin—was sworn, bound by cut palm and fresh promise, a braid woven by survivors with Skjald blue, Valskar grey, and even Sundr red. No longer were tribes ruled by oldest grievance, but by need and a hope, however thin, for the spring.
As dusk colored the world with bruised violet, Freyja’s cairn was set apart, her staff planted upright, runes carved and lit with a final coal. In the wind, children claimed to see her shape drifting, wolf and raven circling above; some elders claimed it was a sign, a warning, or a mercy—as all omens are, depending on the hunger of the heart.
That night, the survivors huddled by the embers. Banners hung together, swords laid aside. Eirik and Inga, hands entwined, watched shadow and starlight, speaking no words of what might come.
“Do you fear tomorrow?” Inga whispered.
Eirik squeezed her hand. “No more than I feared yesterday. And no more than my heart will allow.”
Above, the first snowmelt dripped from the barrow. In the fields, the silence deepened—now seeded not with dread, but with possibility. The Wolf’s legacy lay not in his wounds or the names of the dead, but in the choice to stand, one dawn more, against the breaking of the world.