– Prayer of the poet Amergin for the coming of the Celts to Eire

Like a demon from the darkest Plutonian hell of the fallen Romans, the wind shrieked and howled in its sudden attack.

It was a vicious wild thing bent on the destruction of sailcloth and timber and human flesh, and men of the Wolfsail went hurtling from the frail vessel to their deaths. Their screams were unheard above that of the slashing wind.

The deckless little ship spun and careened. Its single mast was cracked and had fallen, to carry with it two good men amid striped squaresail of Nordic weave. Down went Wolfsail’s starboard, till she lay flat with her port side to the darkling sun. Her keel rose like a low wall from the brine. In that sudden sideward lunge more men met their weirds with wails of horror and black death.

The hugest of those desperate seafarers held fast the jagged stump of the ruined mast. To his great broad swordbelt clung one of his men; to his knotty calf in its soaked leggings hung another, fearful of being swept off the ridge of the world. The huge man gripped the mast as though it was his beloved. He it was who bellowed out to Father Odin and his son The Thunderer, for they had escaped the dread whirlpool off these nameless little isles of unpredictable elements only to fall prey to this demon-shrieking gale.

One-eyed Odin and his son heard not-or if they did, were steadfast in their resolve to punish their sometime servant for his many sins. Nor durst he relinquish his grip even so long as to draw steel, that he might die as befit his people, with sword in ruddy fist.

The little ship spun, swung, tipped, and spun again. It hurtled headlong. Islands flew by, shod and crowned with jagged rock. Cordage creaked and wood groaned as if in mortal agony. Men moaned, or prayed, or shouted-or screamed and went to their fathers.

One among their number was silent, and him alone.

He was a man apart in other ways, his armour different and his hair a swatch of the midnight sky. Grim, stolid with the insouciance of a fighting man who expects neither reward nor punishment but takes what may come from gods and men, his mouth was tightpressed and his scarred face almost impassive. He had nailed himself to the dying craft with his own great sword.