And all around: stone. Granite and basalt, igneous rock like petrified sponge, and the sand to which some of it had been worn, by wind and sea with the aid of uncaring time.

He saw how the beach ran up bare and desolate, strewn with drifts and gravel and fragments of rock. Then rose, towering, steep and gloomy ramparts of natural rock, deep-hued basalt. Its somberness was cut here and there with veins of paler lipartite and studded with twinkling quartz, set like jewels against the dark and brooding background.

The Gael compressed his lips. The island was like a great rock wall or giant’s castle, surrounded by shore and a coast that was mostly rocky and precipitous, and then by an enormous protective moat: the domain of Manannan MacLir, the unending sea.

Then a voice rumbled up from a massy chest. “There’s a great drouth in my throat. If this be Valhalla, where be the cup-bearers?”

The Gael was forced to chuckle. He turned to look at the big man, Wulfhere Hausakliufr, who was in the act of sitting up. Already he scratched in his beard:

“I see no cup-bearers, and a Valkyrie I am not, bush-face.”

Wulfhere looked at him. “Cormac! We live!”

The Gael nodded. “We do. And all others breathe.”

Even as he spoke, another stirred. Like Wulfhere, he scratched at the salt encrusting his chin deep within his vermilion beard. “Where are we?”

Wulfhere’s reply was a snort. “Ask the gulls, Ivarr.”

The Gael named Cormac said, “Where are we? Here.”

Ivarr sighed, twisted, shoved himself erect with a palm against the sand. He gazed around himself.

“Ugh and och! Here, is it? I’d rather be there.”

“Ahh… methinks my arm be broke.”

“You are lying on it, Guthrum,” Cormac told that waking Dane. “Stir yourself. It’s a nice sleep we’ve had: the little death. An we find not water, and that soon, it will be the big sleep on us all.”