The Children Who Remembered the Legend
The dirt ring lay at the far edge of Vargr territory — not among the noble training yards where sons of jarls practiced beneath carved banners, but on an open patch of hard-packed ground where the lowborn and forgotten tried to carve worth into their bones before the world broke them for dreaming too loudly.
Here, bruises were welcomed, and splinters were trophies.
"Again," Torva muttered, watching Sigurd raise his wooden spear with too much tension in his shoulders.
"I'm trying," he grunted, planting his feet wider, as if the earth might lend him strength if he took enough of it beneath him.
"You look like you're preparing to shit on the ice, not fight," she sighed, leaning against the rough wooden fence post marking the ring's boundary.
Sigurd scowled and tried again.
Feet apart. Chin forward. Spear angled like he'd been told. But then he shifted — slightly crouched, left knee bent deeper, torso lowering, weight coiled more like an animal preparing to spring than a trained warrior locking formation.
It wasn't a stance the overseers taught.
It wasn't one found in shield wall manuals.
It was a stance children tried to imitate after hearing stories they weren't supposed to repeat.
"A wolf doesn't wait for the blow," Sigurd whispered, as though reciting a line passed among lowborn mouths in secret. "He watches. He measures. And when he strikes, it is already too late to pray."
Torva raised an eyebrow. "You've been listening to old Skjold again."
"It's not just Skjold," Sigurd insisted. "Everyone in the ring has heard it now. That there was once a pack of lowborns who fought their way into the raid ranks before any noble brat would ever have let them stand in line."
"That's just a story," Torva said — but her voice carried hesitation.
"They said one of them lost an eye during the trials," Sigurd pressed, gripping his spear tighter, the tip trembling slightly with excitement. "But he howled so loud that even the nobles stepped back. They said he fought like a wolf possessed until everyone yielded or fell."
Torva remained silent.
"They called him Ragnar," Sigurd continued, almost reverent. "Ragnar Vargrson, who should've died but didn't."
Torva's eyes flicked downward. Covering her left arm, wrapped under leather bracers, a small raven sigil was scratched clumsily into the surface — inked in soot and ash. She'd drawn it months ago. Never told anyone what it meant.
"And the girl who fought beside him?" Sigurd added. "They say she was small, but her fury made the shield wall shudder. They called her Raven Fury —"
"Enough," Torva snapped — too quickly, too protective. She pulled down her sleeve to hide the raven.
Sigurd blinked. Then grinned knowingly. "You drew her mark."
"I said enough."
Before he could tease further, a voice cracked across the yard like a whip.
"What in Hel's name are you two whelps doing?"
Overseer Korrin stomped toward them, his face creased with disdain. "Trying to fight like wild dogs again? You think flailing like beasts will make you warriors? You want to end up dead in a ditch like that cursed one-eyed traitor who disappeared years ago?"
Torva felt Sigurd stiffen. The boy said nothing, but his jaw clenched.
"You want to rise?" Korrin sneered. "Learn discipline. Learn obedience. Wolves don't belong in the ranks. Only shield-bearers who know their place."
Torva lowered her gaze, fury tightening in her chest.
Sigurd's knuckles whitened on his spear.
Korrin scoffed. "Now stand up properly before I—"
He stopped speaking.
His mouth hung open.
His eyes widened.
Torva turned, confused.
Sigurd did too.
And then both children froze.
At the ridge beyond the field — at the border between wildwood and clan land — shapes moved through the morning mist.
Five of them.
Walking slowly.
Deliberately.
The leader walked tall — a giant cast in muscle and storms, a long braided mane trailing with carved bone beads that clacked softly like runes whispering fate. A wolf's head was painted across his back in pale white. One side of his head was braided; the other, where an eye patch of dark leather and iron sat, seemed to throb with silent power.
Beside him walked a woman small in stature but terrifying in presence — red hair braided long and burning like warpaint in the rising sun, a raven sigil marked over her heart, a wolf tattoo circling one eye. Her spear rested easily against her shoulder as though it were an extension of her breath.
At the giant's left strode a silent warrior with calm steps and eyes like sharpened winter thought.
Behind them sauntered a tall, wild-haired woman with blood-hunger curling her lips into something near delight.
And at the back came a woman older than the rest — bearing scars and silence like royalty — her gaze moving not with fear or pride, but with the steady sorrow of someone who knew the cost of every step.
Torva exhaled shakily.
Sigurd's spear slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the dirt.
The overseer stumbled back — dread frostbiting his voice before it could form a word.
No one spoke.
But Torva did.
Softly. Trembling. In awe.
"…The Wolf…"
Sigurd swallowed hard.
"…has come back."
Korrin stumbled back, scrambling like a drunk who'd seen death reach for him. His face had gone corpse-pale.
"They're— they're not men," he gasped, voice shaking as his heel caught the dirt and he nearly fell. "Draugr— walking from the trees— risen from Hel's own pit!"
A nearby guard, half-dressed in chain and still chewing a strip of dried meat, turned with an unimpressed snort. "Korrin, if you've been guzzling mead before sun's touched the sky again—"
But then he followed Korrin's trembling stare.
He saw them.
Five shadowed shapes striding through the treeline, black silhouettes cut sharply against the fog, moving not like shambling dead, but like executioners walking toward a condemned village.
The guard's voice died in his throat. The strip of meat fell from fingers gone slack.
He reached for his horn as though pulled by instinct older than reason.
A single blast tore through the air — deep, urgent, unmistakable.
🔱 The alarm for enemy approach.
Villagers startled upright from morning chores, dropping baskets of wood and fish and grain. Smiths stopped hammering. Mothers yanked children behind them. Heads turned as people ran toward the walls and training yards.
"The horn's sounded!"
"What is it?"
"Raiders?"
"No ships came ashore—"
"—then something came through the woods—"
Korrin was still shouting, half-backpedaling: "Draugr! I swear it! I saw them—their eyes— the wolf's eye—"
Most ignored him, but fear rippled faster than rationale.
At the noble trainees' yard, boys of proud blood and girls with gold-threaded arm wraps looked up, confused. Some laughed nervously — until Sigurd crashed through the gate, breathless, wild-eyed.
"They're here!" he yelled, voice breaking but desperate. "The Wolf—The One-Eyed Wolf and his pack—they're real!"
Half the nobles scoffed automatically out of habit. Then they saw Torva racing behind him, face pale with certainty, clutching her training spear like a sacred object.
"He's back!" she cried, voice ringing across the circle. "The Pack is real—they're coming now!"
The laughter died like flame in snow.
At the lowborn ring, training halted mid-swing. The battered youths who had trained on stories instead of honored lineages all turned at once — not with fear, but something dangerously close to hope in their blood.
"The Wolf?" someone whispered.
"No one comes back from death."
"Maybe gods do."
Nobles and lowborn alike began rushing toward the settlement's edge, converging with villagers and guards now spilling into formation. The Earl's housecarls assembled, shields locking tight, spears at the ready.
By the time the crowd filled the open yard before the main gate, panic and curiosity churned into a breathless anticipation that sank into every throat.
And then they saw more clearly.
They were not draugr.
But neither did they seem merely mortal.
The mist parted like a curtain torn open by their mere existence.
At the front, towering, broad as a bear and carrying a storm in the set of his shoulders, a one-eyed warrior walked with the slow inevitability of fate itself.
To his side, a woman small in body but iron in gaze strode beside him, a raven marked on her heart and a wolf claiming her face. Behind them followed two more—one composed as honed steel, the other grinning like a creature born for slaughter—and at the rear walked a scarred woman bearing the silence of grief and gods alike.
Someone in the crowd whispered shakily, "That cannot be him—he died. It's just a man—"
Another voice, trembling, responded, "Then why does it feel like the earth itself steps back for him?"
Sigurd and Torva pushed through bodies, pressing to the front of the crowd, hearts thundering.
Torva's hand found Sigurd's on instinct.
"They're real," she whispered, voice shaking with awe. "They're real."
At the sight of them, some villagers fell silent in reverence.
Some clutched charms.
Some dropped to one knee out of instinctive fear.
One of the younger guards muttered, barely breathing, "Holy gods… if they are not draugr, then they are what draugr fear."
And above them, on a distant terrace, eyes of rank and influence turned… and felt something like dread at the sight of a legend made flesh, returned not to plead innocence—but to reclaim destiny.