Berserker's Soft Wood Warhorn of Ice

Berserker's Soft Wood Warhorn of Ice sits on my table, its pale spruce grain winding like frost-lit rivers around a horn-blue mouthpiece. The wood feels warm to the touch, a paradox that only a well-loved instrument can pull off, as if the bark itself remembers marches and campfires. Along its length, frost-blue runes coil in tight spirals, tiny annealed chips of ice trapped in the lacquered surface. The horn’s mouthguard is darkened brass, dulled by years of wind and echo, while a rough leather strap threads through a brass ring, bearing the patina of countless camps and markets. When you tilt it toward the light, you can see the grain deepen, birch-silver in the sun, and you catch a trace of resin that lingers like a memory you hadn’t realized you carried. Lore threads into that wood as surely as winter threads through the world. Some say the horn was carved from the softest timber of a northern grove, chosen not for its hardness but for its resonance with the human heartbeat during a frenzy of war. A berserker captain, famed for turning chaos into a chorus, supposedly coaxed the first note from it as ice storms gathered above a besieged fort. Since then, the Soft Wood Warhorn of Ice has carried not just sound but a petition to the storm itself: when the bearer hones their cry, the air seems to hold its breath, listening for that heartbeat, and the frost eddies at the horn’s edge respond like a chorus of winter spirits. In legend and in fieldwork alike, the instrument is less a tool than a messenger—between brute force and tempered strategy, between anger and alliance. In practice, the horn is a companion in the line, a catalyst in the clash. Its call unfurls a rallying cry that threads through the ranks, guiding allies with bursts of force and focus. A single blast can spread Might and Ferocity to nearby fighters, sharpening blades and quickening steps, while a softer, tremulous note sends a chill through advancing enemies, slowing their advance as the ice breathes along their skin. It’s the kind of gear that makes you feel the battlefield breathing—your team drawn tighter by sound, the pace of battle guided not only by the skill of hands but by the rhythm of a well-timed call. Those who wield it learn to measure tempo—the way a note can lift a strike, the way a chilling undertone can buy a moment to reposition, to shield a comrade, to break a spear’s momentum with a glacial gust. Market mornings bring their own poetry, and Saddlebag Exchange is where the horn sighs into the hands of a new keeper. I watched it trade, price steady as a cold rivulet, traded by a veteran vendor who spoke in the measured cadence of a man who has counted winters on the backs of horses. The tag bore the weathered stamp of the exchange—condition described in a few careful lines, the length of the crack along the mouthpiece, the resin-fix on the ferrule—priced with the wisdom of someone who knows a rare thing when they see it and knows how to read its value in gold, leather, and memory. I walked away lighter in pocket but heavier in resolve, thinking how a single horn, carved from soft wood and iced with history, can carry a battle’s bones and a court’s longing in equal measure.