The Tale of Hauka

## by Veikko

The Story of Hauka is one I have never written, but told many times around camp fires and in taverns to any who would ask about the skull I wear atop my head. I was honoured to speak of Hauka at the Festival of Worth. And perhaps it's time that I commit to page, lest it may be forgotten.

It was a bitter winter during the early days of the Thule occupation of Skarsind. I had disembarked from Crows Keep, where I had been training to be a Stormcrow and educated in the Virtues of the Way. My intention lost in the Skogei Glens, pursued by a Thule necromancer, when I met the spirit of Hauka.

It was ill luck that brought me and the necromancer together. I, stumbling into a grove away from the roads in an effort to pass through Skarsind undetected by Thule forces. He, some lone agent of the Thule having set up a rude camp for the evening. He looked to me, and I to him, both as surprised to see the other. Then I ran, and he pursued.

I had hoped that knowing the glens of Skogei would provide me some advantage, but any advantage I possessed in my wisdom, he matched in brutish determination. I ran until my legs ached with every desperate footfall, ran until the breath was tearing out of my lungs, but still the orc came after me, jeering and howling.

And then suddenly the fir trees parted before me, and it was not a glen I was charging into, but a bog. This was the Dead Elk's Marsh, a terrain so treacherous that even a bog-dwelling kallavesi such as myself would never dare try to cross it. Behind me, crashing through the undergrowth, the necromancer still came.

'Wintermark!' I bellowed in desperation. 'I am yours, and I am proud to be a Winterfolk! I am not destined for the Labyrinth yet! Reward my pride and help me find safe path!'

From behind me came an inhuman screech, and that was when I first met Hauka.

He swooped from on high, a giant bird of a species I have never been able to identify, the shape of a hawk and as black as a raven, wingspan twice the length of my arms. The beat of his wing knocked the necromancer to the ground, and he rushed over me, cantered in his flight, and landed upon a dry looking tree ahead of me. The bird looked upon me, and I knew in my heart that, should I follow the path to him, I would be safe.

So I did, and so I was. If I followed the path straight to the bird, my footing would find firm purchase under the mud, and not be swallowed into the greater depths of the marshes. If he spread his wings, I knew to stop. Then he would fly, and if I turned to follow his direction, my footing remained sure.

Though I was outpacing the necromancer now, he had his own guide through the marshes. He had dredged up a long-drowned corpse and reanimated it into a husk, using it to find safe passage through the marshes and continuing to doggedly pursue me. I could hear now not only the sloshing of my adversary's footsteps and the spitting curses and vows to send me to the Labyrinth of Ages, but the dead groans of the abomination that guided him to me.

Worse, night was falling, and in the waning light I was finding it harder and harder to see Hauka in the waning light. The necromancer and his bleak artifice had no such troubles, and I could make them out getting closer and closer in the deadening night.

Once more I called out, 'Wintermark, I am yours, a child of your teachings! I am not destined for the Labyrinth yet! Grant me the wisdom to guide me through this desperate night!'

And then Hauka cried out. It was a feral cry, a coarse and shrill cawing that cut through the cold night's air. But I knew within my heart, if I followed those cries, even blindly through the night, my path would be true.

And so it was that I followed the cries of Hauka. But I was not the only one following the cries. Just when I thought I was safe, just when I came to the edge of the impassable marshes, taking my first foot onto solid land, the husk lurched from the darkness and crashed into me, throwing me into the cold and sodden ground. As I struggled against raking, bony claws and gnashing teeth, the necromancer appeared, looming over us both with a warped wand clutched in his hand, readying some abhorrent spell.

The baleful glow of his rod was all that caused me to see the flash of talons and feathers as Hauka burst from the darkness, colliding with the necromancer and seeing them both thrown into the bog with a flash of talons and spell craft. But though the bird had assaulted the more threatening of my foes, the husk was still upon me.

The lumbering creature came lunging for me, gnashing jaws and grasping hands, bodily crashing into me with no regards for its own safety as husks are want to do. I pushed at its forehead, kept an arm to its neck, kicked and punched, but the creature came regardless, undeterred by my attempts to defend myself. I fell beneath it, my head submerging beneath the grimy bog water, coming up to choke and splutter on mud only to have it gashing for me.

By some chance I found a rock underhand, and with a mighty swing I was able to throw the creature off of me. Then I was upon it, the reanimated remnants of some Winterfolk made wretched by undeath, and as it attempted to stand I brought the rock once, twice, three times into its skull until the temple caved in and it slumped lifeless beneath me.

Somewhere in the gloom, beyond my sight, Hauka and the necromancer continued to battle, the bird shrieking and the Thule hissing curses. I put my back to them and waded, stunned from my fight, my leg injured from the fray. I pushed into bone-chilling waters, which came to my waist, then to my chest, then to my chin so high that I was drinking it in with every harried gasp of air I took. I knew this surely would be the end of me.

Then suddenly I found higher, firmer ground beneath my foot. I scrambled against the embankment, hands grasping at root and thorn, splitting my fingernails on course rock until I finally found grass and stone underfoot. I lay gasping for air until my heart stopped racing, and then laughed until I was sick.

My relief was short-lived. When I had stopped retching I could hear something dragging its way through the bogs towards me, and soon over the wind I could he the rasped, pained voice of the Thule necromancer, readying yet more devilish spellcraft.

‘Wintermark,’ I said as I struggled to my feet. It was difficult to tell what hurt more, my right leg, or my throat when I spoke. ‘I am yours, a scion sired by the storm. If I am destined for the Labyrinth, let me at least have the Courage to die gloriously.’

And at those words, ahead of me, I saw a pale light, somewhere up amongst the trees. I followed it, at first rushing despite my wounds, thinking that the necromancer would be behind me, but the further I got from the marshes the more it seemed that the light was not for the necromancer’s eyes, only my own. It stood amongst the trees, flickering between Beggarwood branches, and it was only when I got close that I realised what stood before me.

A spirit. The Spirit of Hauka stood ethereal and effervescent over the woven branches of huge nest. There, within the nest itself, were the long-abandoned, remnants of a giant crow and its chicks, turned to bone save for a few scant scraps of meat. I knew, seeing the huddle of bones, that it was Hauka and its children that I had come across.

‘Eat,’ the spirit bade me without words, ‘and what remains of my flesh will strengthen you and see you to full health. Rest and you will be sheltered in these branches until the break of dawn. And arm yourself with what remains of my bones, and it will protect you, O Wise, O Proud, O Courageous Stormcrow of Wintermark.’

Eat I did, and the flesh was not rancid, but the most succulent meat that I Had ever tasted. Rest I did, and the sleep I had was the most invigorating of my life. And come morning, when I woke without a wound on my body, I set the Skull of Hauka upon my head, lashed his wings to my torso, and took a talon as my dagger.

As I descended from the nest, I could feel the Wisdom of Hauka, a true predator of Skarsind, filling me. As I stepped into the glens and saw the weary, yet enraged, necromancer, I knew no fear, for I had the Courage of Wintermark coursing through my body. And it is with great Pride that I can say that I struck down the Thule necromancer before he had even a chance to land a single spell upon me.

Let this tale carry you through into Skarsind, a warning of the dangers of the world beyond the beaten path. But let it also act as a lesson of the three virtues that Wintermark holds dear, Courage, pride and Wisdom, for there are spirits in Skarsind that will reward displays of all three.

As for Hauka, I never have known what it was. Perhaps it was the manifestation of some Eternal, perhaps just some spirit we may never fully understand. Perhaps it was all some wild hallucination brought on by my terror? Not even I can be sure, and I lived through it all.

But I still wear atop my head the Skull of Hauka, and feel enriched by the bird’s Wisdom as conduct my business as a Stormcrow. I hope, when the time comes that I stride off this mortal coil and towards the Labyrinth, I am able to leave the Skull of Hauka behind, so it might protect the virtues of whoever wears it next.