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 Raven Queen
Snow, stained by blood and trampled mud, still lay heavy around the moot. A weary hush choked the air, pierced only by the hacking cough of the wounded or the keening whispers of widows. Amid the tents and the spent fires, shadows lengthened and old promises seemed brittle as last summer’s grass.
But the northern wind shifted, carrying with it a stench not of woodsmoke or battle, but a faint, foreign incense—bitter, sweet, and thick as prophecy.
It was just before dusk, as the deep sky bruised itself purple, when the first cry came: a scout, ragged and breathless, stumbled in from the firs beyond the river crossing. “There—armies in the bog!” he gasped, eyes bright with terror. “Shields black as a starless sky. At their head—her. The Raven Queen walks.”
The moot rallied to the hillock above the west road, men clutching axes and bows, chieftains drawn by dread more than courage. The last of the storm’s light caught on steel and helm, on desperate faces creased by sleepless nights.
Below, the marshes churned with movement. A line of warriors wound along the causeway—strange shields interwoven with feathers, black-and-bone designs catching ebbing light. Their discipline was uncanny; none spoke, none faltered.
From the front, a banner rippled—a raven, wings outspread, beak red as a wound. Behind it strode a woman in wolf-pelt and woven bone, taller than most men, her hair a fall of black iron, eyes dead and bright as winter stars. The Northmen shuddered, for even from a distance there was power in her bearing—a hunger, a derision for all beneath her gaze.
She lifted her arm. Silence, absolute. Even the crows ceased their cawing.
With a voice that carried, somehow, through the wind, she spake: “I am Ylva, blood of gods, breaker of shields. Lay down your arms, and the river’s mercy is yours. Resist, and you will know the naming of night.”
From her fingertips, the wind itself seemed to twitch; somewhere, a dog howled and dropped dead in its traces, foam flecking its muzzle.
Kerr watched from the ridge, hands balled white. Eirik stood beside him, sweating despite the chill. “Sorcery,” he muttered. “Or trickery.”
Seeress Freyja, lips moving silent prayers, pressed her good hand to the earth. Her sight clouded—the frost beneath her palm prickled and twisted, runes flickering in her blinded mind. All at once, she felt a vision seize her—a blood-red sky, a field of wolf and raven, bones rising from the ground as if the dead answered their own roll-call. The sound of wings—a thousandfold—drowned her thoughts.
When her trance passed, she found herself clutching Kerr’s sleeve, nails bitten in to the bone. “She is more than flesh. She is—”
“What?” snapped Kerr, heart pounding.
Freyja shook, her skin waxen. “Old as the tree, new as the axe. She bends dreams, shapes omens. She is chosen—or cursed.”
As darkness deepened, the moot reeled. That night no fires were lit on the field’s edge; women huddled with children, warriors traded prayers for idle boasts. Yet still, sleep would not come easy.
Across the tents, men and women suffered dreams—visions sliding into nightmares like rot into bread. Runes bleeding out between their fingers as they slept. Old friends grown hollow-eyed, muttering names of the dead. Warriors confessed to seeing things in the flames: a mountain split, a wolf devoured by black wings, the sea running backward and the sun faltering in the sky.
The haunted air was thickest around Seeress Freyja’s tent. Her visions came in flashes—Kerr kneeling in the snow, torn by talons; Eirik bound in black sailcloth, his sword snapped like a twig; Inga, crowned with frost, her face streaked with blood and tears. Between them all, Ylva’s shadow loomed.
The next evening, Hrawg prowled his camp’s periphery, ill-tempered and brooding, as Skjald and their allies counted wounds and sharpened grudges. His thegns muttered—Skjald pride stung, revenge half-formed. They did not see the two figures approaching through the swaying birches—cloaked, slow, deliberate.
A Valskar sentry on the boundary called a warning, but the Skjald lines ushered the visitors in, as though they bore no threat. The first figure was a woman—her hand marked with black feathers, her eyes lined with kohl. The second, gaunt and yellow-toothed, brandished a token: a ring of braided raven bone.
They bowed, mockingly, before Hrawg’s fire. “Word from the Queen of Storms,” the woman intoned, her accent thick as honey but twined with venom. “Ylva offers strength to those with the heart to claim it.”
Hrawg’s eyes narrowed. “You bring threats, not terms.”
The emissary laughed. “We bring both. You know your enemies. The Wolf is hated, the mountain kin turn and gnaw their own tails. The time comes to choose.”
She drew forth from her pouch a small, rune-worked idol—a wolf, split with a jagged blade. She laid it at Hrawg’s feet. “Break allegiance with the Wolf. The Queen will grant safe passage for your clan—she will make you great. Or stand with Kerr, and know ruin, for she will feast on the heart of Valskar, and the Skjald will howl alone.”
The second emissary produced another gift: a pouch of silver, heavier than a widow’s wailing. “If the Skjald cut their bonds before the next dawn, the path to power opens—her own word.”
Hrawg weighed the silver, the idol, the words. His heart thundered with old hate and new dread. Around him, his thegns argued—some for pride, some for vengeance, all uncertain. The Black Ravens turned and faded into the wood, their eyes bright with malice and calculation.
In the minds of the Skjald that night, doubt battled greed and the memory of murdered kin. Yet elsewhere, sabotage crept forth on freezing feet.
Among the Fjorn tents, a fire flared sudden in the dark—fuel doused in oil, furs catching. Screams, confusion, men scrambling to save children and gear. When the flames died and embers hissed, two scouts of the Fjorn were missing, vanished without trace. Some said they’d deserted; others, that shadows had plucked them off the earth.
Rumors raced through the moot—the Wolf’s blood oath was poison, the Skjald had bartered with the south, that demons in raven-feathers now walked as men in their midst. Kerr stalked the lines that night, Eirik by his side, every shadow a potential traitor. Around the ring, Seeress Freyja bound runes and scattered sand, mouthing old wards.
Yet Kerr’s grim resolve could not fill every gap. Knots of warriors gathered in the gloom, trusting no one—some sharpening spears, some whispering of escape, some watching the tree-line for more omens. The wind howled overhead, and above the camp’s edge, the ravens circled, black wings masking the stars.
By dawn, the camps reeked of fear and suspicion. The Valskar sang mourning dirges for the lost scouts. The Jotunstag, grim and silent, sent out double patrols. The Skjald watched Hrawg, awaiting his word, uncertain if they would follow him to damnation or deliverance.
Ylva and her Black Ravens stood at the edge of the world, poised to strike or bargain as they pleased. Her shadow cloaked the moot and rebuked the fragile hope of unity. All knew, now, that what faced them was not just war, but an ancient reckoning drawn on the bones of gods—a doom begun, and not soon ended.