Smoke in the North

Snow fell thick upon the roofs of Fjorgard as night blurred sea and sky, the harbor’s distant lanterns adrift in fog. Fishermen returned with their catch, hands numb, children ran between smokehouses and torches, and old Brynjar at the cliff’s edge—last watchman of the night—thought the world seemed quiet, too quiet.

When the first horn shattered the silence, even the gulls took flight. A shape, black as pitch, slipped through the mist: not a trader’s ship nor reaver’s galley, but something sleeker, hung with shields banded in jet and bone. From the prow, a raven banner snapped, beak pointed at the moon.

The raiders swarmed the docks— faces streaked with charcoal, cloaks feathered at the hem. Their axes glittered red, their leader’s voice rang with words none understood. Fire took root as spears drove back what passed for a militia. Sails burned. Cries fractured the stillness. A child’s scream echoed over the breakwater, then was lost as flames licked higher, devouring oak and thatch alike.

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At the moot, morning found Kerr hard-faced with the burden of the night. Whispers from the edge of camp told of uneasy dreams, of distant thunder—yet all was still but for the usual wind.

It changed in an instant. Running feet hammered icy ground. The camp’s hounds pitched shrill, and there—between the banners—stumbled a trio of figures: bloodied, clothes half-charred, the stench of sea-smoke and mortal terror preceding them.

Kerr and Eirik were first to meet them, swords drawn from habit more than threat. The survivors fell, gasping, one clutching a rent in his thigh, his face smeared in soot.

“It’s Fjorgard!” the youngest moaned—a beardless boy, voice cracked with smoke. “All gone—fire—ravens—gods help us—”

A hush swept the moot as clans clustered round, faces grave. Halvard pressed cloth to a woman’s wound as Seeress Freyja knelt to scribe runes on the earth. Hrawg barreled through the crowd, eyes wild. “Speak, boy! Who did this?”

The survivor who still had both arms shook in Kerr’s grasp. “They came with the tide. Shields black as night—helmets painted to mock the dead. They bore raven banners—no man I knew—but their leader—her eyes—she stared through us. She sang and the fire leaped.”

A ripple swept the ring. “Ylva,” Freyja murmured, the name cutting deeper than cold.

More survivors straggled in as dawn advanced. A woman with her child clutched tight sobbed, “No warning—axes and flame. They took men, too, but not for ransom. Dragged them to their ships chanting in a tongue I never heard.”

Shock and outrage clashed at the council-fires. “If they strike Fjorgard, none is safe!” shouted Sten. “Southmen, or something fouler?”

“Not Southmen—ravens, and berserkers!” another spat, baring a gash on his side.

While men quarreled, the old, the wounded, and the frightened huddled together. Children stared with hollow eyes, cloaks wrapped tight, hearing rumors that grew with each telling—the new tribe, the Black Ravens, spared none.

The moot unraveled. Skjald men accused the Valskar of plotting with foreigners. Fjorn claimed warning signs had been seen and ignored. Swords were drawn in anger, Hurled oaths called for blood and vengeance. Only Freyja’s voice, cold as the wind off the barrow, stilled them: “Would you die bickering while true doom marches unopposed?”

Kerr stood atop the moot stone, face drawn. “Listen—all! This is no border feud. We face a shadow as cruel as winter, as cold as the sea’s heart. If we falter here—if we fragment as smoke scatters—you doom every hearth and holding from sund to stornes.”

For all his force, doubt gnawed the crowd. The Jotunstag wanted to withdraw to their mountain holds. The Sundr, silent but restless, eyed loaded sleds. Hrawg pointed a red-bladed knife. “Unite us, Wolf? Prove you can withstand such a storm!”

Freyja approached what was left of Fjorgard’s bells—saved from the pyres, clutched by a shivering priest. She intoned, “Ravens bring not only steel, but old magics—shaman-song and nightmare flame. Such as haunts the oldest stories. This is not only war, but a reckoning.”

Eirik scanned the faces—Inga’s shocked white among them—then knelt by a boy who clutched his mother’s hand. “What did you see, little one?”

The child answered in a trembling whisper: “They sang, and the fire answered. The Raven Queen’s eyes glowed. The dead rose screaming.”

The shudder that passed through the assembly was near palpable. Some muttered—madness, sorcery, or child’s fear?—but none truly doubted. The old stories lived again, talons set in flesh and fate.

As the sun crested pale and cold over the broken moot, Kerr gathered Eirik and Freyja. “If we break now, the clans will run—there will be no second stand.”

Eirik’s hand was still bound from the knife wound, face set in stone. “Yet you can feel it. They’re lost already, Kerr. The old hatreds are too deep.”

But Kerr looked to the solitary raven, now perched atop the moot-stone, and set his jaw. “Then we stand alone if we must. But if the Wolf falls tonight, let the ravens choke on his bones.”

At the fringes, the clans dispersed into fractious knots—some arming, some already packing to flee, others sharpening vengeance in their hearts. Amid the snow, bell, and blood, smoke from northward still stained the hard sky, rising in a black column toward the gods.