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.
Shadows Over the Lake
The blizzard struck swift and sly, sliding down from the north on the breath of midnight. By dawn, the moot awoke to a world of white silence, the lake vanished beneath plate-glass ice veined by ancient fissures. The hush, so often a balm, pressed heavy on the battered tents—no gulls screamed, no trees moaned. The only sound: the patient crack of branches bent beneath wet snow, and, closer, the coughs of sleep-starved men.
Kerr the Wolf was already at the lakeshore before first light, the cold like old nails biting through his wounds. He paced to keep the blood in his toes, eyes drawn always to the desolate sweep where the Black Ravens might stir. Beyond the battered Valskar camp, the huts of the Fjorn huddled in a crescent, half-swallowed by banks of blown snow.
It was here the boy found him, breath ragged, eyes round as moons.
“Chief Kerr! At the shore—there’s blood—Elder Torin’s gone!”
Steel was drawn before sense. In a flurry of boots and warnings, the Valskar and Fjorn crashed toward the water’s edge. Hrawg’s guttural curse rolled through the storm as Skjald warriors joined, axes out, faces grim with suspicion.
There, stamped in powdery drifts and splashed beneath a rune-stained birch, the grim tableau waited: two pools of blood staining the crusted snow, a torn grey cloak, and a battered brass torc—Elder Torin’s, unmistakably, the runes dulled by frozen gore. No body. Only clawed furrows led out onto the ice, vanishing into the wind.
Seeress Freyja arrived, drawn by the tang of iron in the air. She crouched, one hand splayed over the bloody markings. Her lips moved, a prayer or a warning. The other clansfolk hung back, wary of her sightless gaze and her proximity to the world of unquiet spirits.
Hrawg shoved forward, boots crunching. “Who saw Torin last?” he barked. "Which of you was with the Fjorn last night?"
Murmurs followed, bitter and quick. The boy claimed Torin had supped by the Skjald fire—trade talk, he said—then wandered out into the dusk to smoke a pipe, vanishing between the Sundr tents.
A Sundr warrior spat. “We saw nothing. Maybe the Skjald took what fight they couldn’t win with steel!”
“Easy to blame, when your hands never stray far from a coin purse," growled a battered Jotunstag. “Or should we speak of the Sundr’s vanished scouts, too?”
Tension pulsed. The moot’s hard-won unity, already battered by loss and hunger, cracked at the edges. Kerr raised his voice. “No man lays blame without proof. Eirik—take a party. Find where these tracks end. Skjald, Sundr, Valskar—one from each, or I’ll have you all answering to the gods for what comes.”
—
Snow muffled every step as Eirik led his searchers around the twisted pines, boots searching for signs in drift. Inga was at his flank, her jaw grim, her eyes drifting to where the last scuffle of Torin’s footprints iced over the lake.
They traced a stagger—dragging, two sets at first, then only one. All at once the prints ended, replaced by a strange disturbance in the snow: a swirl of black feathers, a pattern scraped in the ice like runes—a wheel, curling inward.
A Skjald youth whistled, fear sharp in his voice. “No beast makes that mark. Nor any man I know.”
Eirik stooped, insensible to the wind. "These are taloned tracks—see? And here—blood, not just Torin’s. Something’s wrong."
They found no corpse. Only more feathers tangled with a lock of pale hair.
Freyja drifted up, heedless of the swirl. Her staff brushed through the marks, and her face blanched with unspoken horror. “Old magic speaks here. Blood was spilled to open a door. He is not merely dead.”
Inga, glancing sharply at Freyja, hissed under her breath, "Are you certain it is not trickery? Fear feeds on omen when men are desperate."
“Would you trust the truth, girl, if it led only to the edge of night?” Freyja replied. Eirik’s hand hovered near Inga’s, a comfort neither dared show.
Back at the moot, the council gathered in the smoky hall. Each arrival brought new whispers, every face coiled with suspicion. Hrawg burst in first, voice booming over the crackling fire. “This is no accident, nor Raven’s whim. The Sundr were last to see him—how many debts do you owe Ylva?”
The Sundr chieftain, grey-browed, shot a look of venom. “We give nothing to crows but threats. You Skjald, though—did you not say Torin owed you gold?”
Tempers snapped like thawed bowstrings. A Skjald thegn barked at a Sundr archer, blades half-drawn. A Jotunstag woman raised her shield in warning.
Kerr slammed his fist on the table. “ENOUGH! If we bleed each other, the Ravens walk over our bones before sunrise.”
But the accusation would not die. Men whispered of strange shadows near the lake last night. Someone had seen Inga near Torin’s tent—or said they had. Sundr accused Skjald of seeking vengeance for defeat at the moot. Even Eirik’s loyalty was knit with doubt when he took Inga’s side too swiftly in debate.
Kerr moved between factions, jaw set. "Who profits with Torin dead? Not the Skjald, nor Sundr, nor Raven—unless we break."
Yet every man measured his rivals anew. Hands drifted to hilts in the hallways. The Fjorn eyed the Skjald with wolfish hunger; Jotunstag whispered that the Sundr had always played both sides, and now, perhaps, the Black Ravens walked beneath stolen cloaks.
Seeress Freyja, voice thin but commanding, called to the embers. “There is burden neither steel nor suspicion can lift. I see the hand of old curses, of dark bargains struck above and below. Test every soul—but recall that sometimes the shadow behind you is your own.”
Old feuds flared in her words. Two Sundr clashed with Valskar over a disputed loaf; blood spotted the table. Kerr broke them apart, cursing, but Inga stepped between her father and a Skjald thegn, voice sharp with old wounds. “If you accuse the living, do not forget the dying. None here is so clean.”
Night fell, and with it, more violence. Fires flared in two camps—tents burned, men fought in the dark. An arrow landed in the snow beside the moot hall, black-fletched and marked with a rune that none could read but all feared. The defenses, built for outward threats, nearly failed from within.
Kerr retreated outside, breath ragged, Eirik at his side. “This is how we fall,” the Wolf said, voice hollow. “No need for Ravens when every heart here runs black.”
Eirik’s reply was bitter. “They want us broken by our own hand. Perhaps they have already won.”
Through it all, Inga wandered, her movements watched and weighed, her spirit coiling tighter with every whisper. Eirik found her at the lake, alone, staring across the mirrored ice. His words were little comfort to the fear in her eyes.
Within the hall, Freyja built a ring of bone and twig at the fire’s edge. She burned root and feather, summoning truth or ward against lies. The smoke curled green, then black—omen of secrets deeper than the lake. “There are ravens in the hearts of men,” she warned. “And the witch who calls them is closer than the moon.”
By dawn, the clans were broken into wary knots—no closer to Torin’s fate, the wound in their trust bleeding raw. Every eye hunted enemies, phantom and real, while outside, the army of the Raven Queen gathered, emboldened by the chaos within. The last glint of hope guttered in the wind, as the shadow of the lake grew long and uneasy beneath the watchful gaze of circling birds.