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.
The Broken Pact
The dawn after the barrow’s ordeal bled thin and hopeless, casting gray light on a camp hollowed by hunger, fear, and secrets. The rescue party limped home beneath a shroud of silence; the wind carried no songs, only the coiled dread of judgment deferred. Shadows clung to every tent. Silk banners, stitched with wolves and crows, hung limp as unburied dead.
Kerr strode stiffly through the camp—Freyja’s words gnawing at his mind, the memory of the mountain’s guardian a continual ache in his chest. His hand still throbbed from the vision, his knuckles raw and battered. Eirik and Inga followed close, exchanging wary glances. Nothing in the world seemed stable now, not even the ground beneath their battered boots.
At the heart of the moot, he found turmoil already boiling. The Skjald and Sundr argued in shrill bursts, their words edged with exhaustion and loss. Near the broken storehouse, survivors of the Fjorn hunched tight about their captain, the boy whose cheeks seemed to hollow further with each day’s famine. The young captain would not meet Kerr’s gaze—even as rumors snaked around him: that some hidden pact had been struck, that traitors moved unseen as rats in the walls.
Hrawg led the shouts from the Skjald, shaking his crutch like a cudgel. “Where was the warning, Wolf? Raven banners struck at dawn—my own cousin slain, bow in hand! And yet, the Fjorn patrols were conveniently absent. Twice now our bread has vanished. Do you call this chance?”
Kerr raised scarred hands for calm, the effort more plea than command. “No one leaves this moot until truth is sown. I will have answers, not more graves.”
He turned on the Fjorn captain, searching the boy’s cracked blue eyes. “Speak, Guntar. What debt did you lay at Ylva’s feet?”
The captain’s jaw worked—denial and terror snared in his throat. “We had no bread left, Wolf. The old and women begged for mercy. Ylva’s scouts came in the night, offering gold, food—‘just open a way through the western ditch, hold back your men when the horn is called.’ Only two Fjorn were to stand aside when the sign came. My kin—I thought I could keep them from being butchered.”
At his confession, despair rippled outward. The Skjald spat in the snow. Sundr warriors shrilled oaths, some calling for Guntar’s blood. Others—mothers, the wounded, the weak—sagged in place, eyes wide with horror.
Kerr’s vision seemed to blur: the prophecy from the barrow, the shadows of the old pact, the threat of one betrayal shattering all. He wanted to condemn Guntar—wanted to seize the boy by his filthy collar and hurl him before the vengeful Skjald. Yet he remembered the hunger, the sightless pleading of those left to starve.
Hrawg thundered, “You have killed us! You dared raise bread above brotherhood? Our dead mount higher than your years, boy. There is no debt old enough to pay this treachery.”
Guntar dropped to his knees, sobbing, “Kill me if you must! Spare them—spare the Fjorn. I have nothing else to give.”
Freyja’s voice cut through the tumult. She stood at the circle’s edge, one hand clutching the runestaff. “This is the breaking spoken in dreams. One crack more, and the ice will split beneath us all. The wolf and raven danced once, and so must again, or all become bones beneath the snow.”
No one moved. Some muttered, others wept. The urge for vengeance seethed in the air, pressing on the battered remnants like a physical weight. Even Eirik looked at Kerr in silent appeal; Inga’s hands balled white on her skirt, her lips moving in soundless prayer.
Kerr took a ragged breath. “If we rend ourselves apart now, Ylva will need no sorcery to win. The Fjorn will pay for bread with service: you fight at the spear-point in every skirmish, and your name is first on the roll when tribute is claimed. You bled us, Guntar, and you will bleed with us henceforth.” His voice quavered, but did not break. “Blood for blood, not for pride—only for survival.”
No violent eruption—just the long, shuddering sigh of hope shriveling further. But the decision, for now, stemmed riot. The Skjald grimaced, the Sundr shook their heads; the Fjorn captain nodded, dust and snot streaking his chin. Kerr spat and turned from them all, bitterness a stone in his gut.
The price of betrayal was paid even before judgment finished. While the moot wrestled with the Fjorn’s treachery, chaos rippled through the defenses. Scouts called out: “Ravens in the storehouse! The snow is trampled—half the food’s gone!”
Warriors tumbled from their posts, chasing shadows that vanished into drifts. In the confusion, two Raven warriors, faces masked in soot and dead men’s mail, darted from the lower tents with bundles of stolen bread and meat. Sundr archers loosed arrows, but struck only smoke and empty air. Worse still, panic blossomed through the ranks—facing an enemy that could be anywhere, everywhere, and within.
Hrawg rounded on Kerr. “You see what mercy brings? The Skjald march for their own at dusk, with compacts drawn at sword-point. Your rule is empty as a raven’s nest!”
The threat hung—a knife in the throat of unity. For a frozen moment, it seemed the alliance would disintegrate with a single word. Only Inga’s shrill voice broke the tension:
“Enough! My father saw too many kin fall not to know what comes if you sever steel from steel. The ravens will not sort you by grudge when they descend. Remember what the witch said—one more break and there is no tomorrow.”
Eirik stepped forward, open-handing his sword hilt. “So what? Divide, and let Ylva claim what’s left, or die with wolf and spear alike?” He looked scornfully at the chieftains around him. “Choose, then: your old quarrels, or the ground to rot in together.”
The moot fell into sullen, fractured silence. Real unity was gone, replaced by a desperate truce ringed with suspicion and barbs. Freyja’s presence loomed over them, a reminder of the unkept prophecy, the cost unpaid, the gods’ patience draining.
Preparations for defense staggered on. Weapons were counted again, each clan keeping tally by their own sly arithmetic. Walls were shored with frozen mud and splintered beams. Freyja moved among the men like a vibration, her hand tracing runes on every spear and shield, though half the warriors eyed her with fear and anger.
Within the circle of flame, Kerr gathered those still loyal: Eirik, Inga, and even the shamefaced Guntar. Their war council was harsh, voices hushed but urgent.
“We trust no one outside this ring,” Kerr said. “Each patrol must have blood from all clans, three eyes for every shadow. If Ylva comes at dawn—with sorcery, with steel, with our own in her van—we stand. Fight for kin, not for flags.”
Inga offered a last thread of hope. “Let there be one oath, sworn now, that if any breaks faith—we kill them ourselves, and the gods mark us not as curs, but as those who chose defiance.”
Eirik grinned, lips split and red. “A poor oath, but the best we have.”
Each drew blade—Kerr’s cracked, Inga’s slim, Eirik’s battered, Guntar’s shaking—pressing the edges to frostbitten palms. Their blood steamed together, hissing on the fire, binding what was left of faith for the final stand.
As frost closed around the camp, word spread that Ylva’s banners rose along the eastern ridge—hundreds, perhaps more, their wolfskin cloaks dusted white where the ravens perched, endless and insatiable. Hope was not even named; only the hollow call of courage held the battered alliance upright.
Within the walls, the last children crawled into corners, muffling their whimpers. Elders sharpened sticks, memories of old feuds worn thin by hunger and dread. Warriors wrapped their arms around kin, not banners. Kerr moved among them—scarred hand outstretched, silent now—not as chieftain, but as last among equals, the Wolf against the dying light.
Above the battered moot, the ravens gathered, stroking the wind with their wings, hungrier than all men combined. They watched as blades were honed and oaths muttered, patient for the feast promised by the broken pact.