Full two inches into the ship’s wood just aft of the dragon headed prow he had driven that oft-gored blade. Around its hilt he had secured his swordbelt, and to belt and gunwale he clung, with hands like the vises in a smith’s smoky domain.

This man’s slitted eyes were grey as the steel of the blade by which he bound himself aboard. In those eyes there was no fear, no horror-nor yet acceptance, either. Only a certain sadness as his Danish companions died for nought but god-whim, and a waiting. He remained alert and ready to release his iron handed grips and hurl himself into those waves like walls, should the craft break or be driven down into airless realms.

Between two craggy little isles no bigger than the dun-keeps of rich men the frail craft was swept.

Rocky walls rushed by. Instantly the force of the dread gale was quartered by intervening granite. Ten men, left of nineteen, heaved sighs of relief-

But Wolfsail’s mindless speed was great. She burst from that rock-shadowed lee into the open waters once more. Again the angry wind attacked as with a scarlet battle fury. The vessel lurched twenty feet to starboard as if shoved by the hand of a callous giant.

“Ah, NO!” a man cried out, and his nails dug into the ship’s seasoned timber so that the fingers bled. “Pray to your people’s sea-god, Gael! It’s in his domain we’re wind-captured, sure, not the All-father’s!”

The grey-eyed man regarded him without change in his set features. He recalled the seagod of the blue-hilled land he’d long since left, a fugitive. His lips formed that ancient name, though not in prayer, for this descendant of Milesian Celts begged of neither human nor immortal.