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.
Seeress' Prophecy
A silence thick as oil pressed against the cavern walls, muffling breath and heartbeat alike. In the wavering lantern glow, ancient bones cast elongated shadows, their contours suggesting swords, ravens, open-mouthed wolves. Freyja’s hand trembled on her staff; her lips parted, skin sheened with a cold, luminous sweat. The old figure—guardian of the tomb or spirit of the barrow—waited with eyes like glacier-fire, impassive. The earth beneath seemed to drum in time with blood, pulsing out of sight.
No one dared speak. Even Kerr, so often first among them for word or deed, felt fear nestling in his jaw, gnawing patience raw.
Into that fathomless hush, Freyja’s voice came—unbidden, thick with borrowed power:
“In the hush before the last fire, a choice is given: wolf and raven, hand and heart, One must bleed the bond unbroken, one must offer what is most dear— The wound that binds is the hope that wounds, Only by blood freely poured can the curse be broken, and the night made memory.
See you the shadow: a wolf crowned in ash, a raven mourning at dawn. A sword quenched not in steel, but in the heart’s own longing.
Betrayal and love coil like roots beneath snow— One survives by sacrifice, or none survive but carrion and fame.”
The words fell in a hush that devoured all sound. No one breathed. The ancient guardian inclined its hood, approving or merely acknowledging, before receding out of the pool of torchlight, as if absorbed by the stone itself.
Freyja slumped, her cane rattling. Eirik and Inga caught her before she slipped to the barrow floor—her breath shallow, her eyes glazed.
Kerr knelt at her side, tension strangling his voice. "What did you see? Was that you, or the thing that haunts this place?"
Freyja’s pupils—pale, seeing and unseeing—found him, but her words came slow, the cadence of deep trance. “Not I alone. The old ones—wolf, raven, kin and foe—they speak with broken teeth. There is a path: not of blade only, but of blood—heart’s loyalty, heart’s surrender. A chieftain’s blood, spilled free, will unmake the Queen’s curse. But at the cost of what ties us—that which no steel can mend.”
Eirik’s face twisted. “You mean a sacrifice. One of us.”
Freyja nodded, fingers tightening against Inga’s cold wrist. “Willingly. And only at the hour of truest need—when all else is sundered and the world stands at the cliff’s edge.”
Inga drew in a shuddering breath. “Then there must be a price for peace... Death to buy a dawn.”
Kerr’s jaw clenched. Unspoken, all their eyes turned inward: the tally of their own loves, wounds, secrets. The cost of every moment that had wound toward this trap.
The barrow-hall began to shudder—whether with wind or spirit, no one later agreed. Torchlight flickered, runes pulsed on the walls like veins seen beneath thin flesh. The guardian’s riddle hung, half threat, half prayer.
They fled the underworld as the cold rose, stumbling into the pale, late-afternoon light. The wind cut the tears from their eyes, biting through every layer of resolve. Behind them, the mountain seemed to breathe, low and implacable.
At the moot, the returned party looked half-wraith, half-myth risen from the grave. The battered clans clustered round—the Skjald with faces like flint, the last Sundr and Jotunstag hunched by the flame.
Kerr spoke first, laying out the prophecy without flourish, without preamble. “The seeress has spoken. If we would see an end to this war—if Ylva’s shadow is to be broken—one of our blood, a chief of kin, must offer all: not from fear, nor coercion, but freely, before the dawn breaks on the field of final battle.”
Hrawg limped forward, hand clenched on his spear. “Another witch’s game! Is this not a southern trick to bleed us of what leaders remain?”
The new Sundr captain, thin from hunger and pride, muttered, “Why not save our own? Why wager on hope that asks the dearest price?”
A chorale of unrest rose: Jotunstag elders accused the Valskar of planning to trick others into the knife; the Fjorn murmured about their youth, too few to spare. Old grievances boiled up as blood sought escape from the fresh wound hope had become.
But others, Inga foremost, stepped forward. “Would you trade your children’s lives for pride, or do you cling so tightly to blood that you forget what it is to live?”
Freyja, propped between Eirik and a Skjald youth, spoke hoarsely, her body spent but gaze afire. “You mistrust prophecy because it grants choice, not certainty. But every choice denied us so far has only sharpened the knife at our throats.”
All night, arguments seethed. Kerr heard threats, pleadings, the moans of those who once prayed for a clean death. In the darkest hours, two more Sundr packed their meager bags, slipping toward the razed woods—gift or burden, none could yet judge. The senior Jotunstag proposed they send false tribute, trick the Queen with a scapegoat—a suggestion met with curdled laughter and Skjald curses.
Eirik and Inga found Kerr at the rim of the dying council-fire, the sky whirling snow overhead. “We cannot force this sacrifice on anyone, Kerr,” Eirik said quietly, the knot in his voice all sinew and pain. “If you swear to die for us, the power is lost. It must be choice.”
Kerr stared at the red spark of the embers, then up at them—at all the battered faces half-lit by flame.
“I do not know if my blood is enough. Or if my death can buy the future you want. But I will walk the prophecy’s path, pay its cost, if it means more than one life survives. No matter who is called, the bond will hold or all was for nothing.”
He raised his ruined hand, scars raw, and pointed to the night. “We do not wait for doom in our beds. We fight. If the gods demand a heart, so be it. Ours is the right to choose what is lost, and what endures.”
Freyja approached as the first crow settled on the ruined lintel, watching with midnight eyes. Her words, for Kerr alone, were a final whisper:
“Be sure you comprehend, Wolf. The gods will accept no trickery. The knife will find not only flesh, but hope and memory. The sacrifice must be freely given and freely grieved. Else darkness wins through all our efforts.”
Kerr met her sightless gaze, and for a moment—just a moment—he seemed to waver. Then he squared his shoulders and beckoned to his kin, voice steady:
“Let the dawn find us worthy or damned—but never yielding.”
In the darkness beyond, the wind caught the edges of the banners, twisting wolf and raven together. Somewhere deep in the mountain, something old and patient waited for destiny’s coin to fall.