Weighted ropes flew. Some ended in grappling hooks. Others were knotted about stones, one of which sent a son of Eirrin to his knees, clutching his arm. Then Cormac was beside him, his eyes terrible. Without releasing either spear or buckler, the Gael boosted the jagged stone up with his bronze-bossed shield, lifted, and hurled it back over the side.

And ten more came over the bulwarks of the hull, on either side.

The Picts kept up their awful wolf-howling as they attacked, for this was their battle cry both to spur and excite themselves and to shake the enemy. Frail skin-boats rocked as squat men stood in them, tugging at their grapple-ropes. Men from time’s dawn they were, avatars. out of place in this age-and knowing it.

Deagad mac Damain, who’d kissed his plump Dairine farewell and vowed they’d demand her hand of her father on his return, a hero, thrust with his good spear at a burly dark man who stood below, in his boat. The nearly naked Pict deflected the spearpoint with a twisting movement of his shield that turned the jab into a scraping carom accompanied by a grating ear-assaulting noise. At the same time, he miraculously kept his footing in the rocking carack. Without pause the black-haired man drove the tip of his own spear, a jagged wedge of flint the length of his hand, straight up into young Deagad’s eye. It ran deep, destroying eye and pricking brain. Deagad lurched backward with a moan rather than a cry. The Pict, whipping back his spear, cocked his arm and launched the death-tipped stave at another man who leaned over his ship’s bulwark fifteen feet away, engaged in a thrust-and-parry spear-duel with another attacker.

Deagad’s killer looked astonished when a dark, scarred son of Eirrin appeared and, swifter than any man should have moved, bashed the spear away, only inches from its intended victim.

“Take MY spear, Pict!” Cormac yelled.