Ulf Van Yern, and Other Ballads

These are old songs for old stories, and they know it. Written in the vein of traditional Scandinavian and Germanic ballads, this collection resurrects the blood-soaked romance of medieval legend: fathers murdered, sons swearing vengeance, warriors riding through storm and darkness to settle blood-debts born of ancient wrongs. The titular "Ulf Van Yern" anchors the volume - a young man wronged, a band of fearsome fighters, a vendetta that can only be answered in steel and blood. The ballads operate by a brutal simplicity: loyalty tested, battles won and lost, love entangled with honor until you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Other pieces - "The Chosen Knight," "Sir Swerkel" - extend this world of knights bound by fate, lovers kept apart by war and duty, the grim mathematics of debt and payment. Each poem follows the old rules, where a man's word is binding and a wound demands a wound. For readers who want stories where consequences matter and emotions run unfiltered, these ballads deliver what modern fiction often promises but rarely achieves.