Valravn

Part 1

~

It began the day the kings died.

There was a great battle, the last in a great and terrible war.

The kings of Scandinavia, feuding over a slight real or imagined, had gathered their armies to rain fire and death upon each other's kingdoms. Spouting lies of honor and duty, they stole the men from villages, homes, beds, to go fight their senseless battles and to die, unknown and unremembered, on some barren battlefield far from home.

As the war raged, those left behind continued to live their quiet little lives, mourning their men and praying for an end to the war. It was the start of a bitter winter, the frost beginning to set in, when reports came of a bloody end to the war.

It was said that the three kings and their armies had met on the battlefield one last time, each confident in their impending victory. The battle was long and brutal, claiming the lives of countless soldiers. They say there were thousands of ravens, drawn by the stench of death and decay, so many that the sun was blotted out and the sky went dark.

Through hapless chance or foolish pride, each king was struck down. Once word of their sovereign's death had reached them, the few soldiers left alive set down their weapons and ended the senseless war, beginning the long journey home. They left the bodies of the fallen on the battlefield, including the three kings, as a feast for the ravens, and left the cursed place.

~

Our story centers on a small village, remote and isolated in the hills of Denmark. They had not been spared from the heartbreak of war - their men came home, but far fewer than had left. Many wives were left without husbands, many children without fathers.

They passed a quiet winter, mourning their dead but trying to heal and rebuild.

Set back in the wilderness as they were, the village almost never received news, except from yearly merchant caravans peddling their wares. It was from one of these caravans, arriving after the spring thaw, that they first began to hear the strange, dark stories.

The merchants spoke of children gone missing, of babes snatched off their mother's breast. They spoke of monsters in the shadows, of mysterious strangers and dark magic. Above all, they spoke of ravens.

Ravens, they said. Ravens with a dark light in their eyes, and an almost eerie intelligence. Ravens had been seen at every town, every village where the kidnappings had taken place. They would alight on the town, nearly blotting out the sky in the awesome numbers. In the morning, they would be gone - and so would the children. Children were kept indoors at all times, scarcely allowed out of their parent's gaze, and the sight of a raven could put an entire town in a panic.

The merchants sold their goods and departed, leaving the townspeople to mull over the disturbing tales. Some put no stock in the rumors, calling them nothing more than fairytales. Others urged caution, drawing on ancient legends and shadowy warnings. Ultimately, it was decided that they would watch and wait, that they would not heed these rumors unless they witnessed it themselves. Still, mothers kept a tighter watch over their children, and as if it were an unspoken rule, no one stayed out of the town boundaries after dark.

Then, one bright spring day, the ravens arrived. A great noise was heard, like the rustling of a thousand trees in the midst of a terrible storm. They flew together in a great seething mass of wings and beaks and darkness, rising over the village as if they were a great ocean wave about to swallow it whole.

Everyone dropped what they were doing and ran, as if death itself were on their heels. They all instinctively made for the village center, where the great hall could provide a modicum of shelter. It was a building made for social gatherings, dances and feasts, not a siege, but it had sturdy walls and a wooden roof, unlike the thatched roofs of the homes.