There were three turnings of the tide before Engus came home to the Whaleback, and when he did, he brought the new arrivals with him. Nessa watched them striding across the causeway, the king of the Folk side by side with a slender, finely dressed man, whose dark hair was drawn back and fastened with a band of ribbon. Engus’s warriors, more accustomed these days to plowing and seeding, harvest and hunting than the bearing of arms, nonetheless walked proudly behind their leader. But it was the other man’s companions who made Nessa’s jaw drop and Brother Tadhg’s hand move before him in the sign of a cross. These were big men, fierce men bearing axe and sword, warriors with cloaks of gray fur, thick and shaggy over their massive shoulders. Some wore helms of iron; some were bare-headed, their hair shining fair as wheat under the midday sun. They were, perhaps, a race of giants come to steal her uncle’s stock and land, or magical beings from the sea, though they were not of the fearsome Seal Tribe; the iron they carried made that plain. The king did not appear to be ill at ease with them, for he stopped halfway across, pointing, as the man by his side watched attentively. Engus was explaining about the tide, perhaps, how treacherous it might be to those who did not know this shore. Maybe he showed the extent of his own holdings: southward beyond the cliffs to the sandy cove, inland past the lakes, north around the coast, and across the water to Holy Island.

There was one among these warriors who caught Nessa’s eye. He seemed young, though he was as tall and broad as the biggest of them; he had hair of butter-yellow that curled around his ears. While the others shifted and moved and fingered their weapons, talking and gesturing, this one stood looking along the shore to the rock shelves where seals basked in the sun, and the great shawls of weed moved purple and green and black in the swell. He was as still as a standing stone, quiet and strong. When Engus walked on, leading his visitors toward the settlement, this man was the last to move, the last to take his eyes from the sea.

“God guard us,” muttered Brother Tadhg. “I have lived among men of this kind, long ago. They have little respect for what they cannot understand.”

“Who are they?” asked Kinart, who stood beside them, squinting into the sun to watch the travelers approach.

“Killers and spoilers. They follow a barbarous faith. They are Norsemen from the snow lands, far east. We have scarcely begun to feel the ferocity of their touch.”

“They do look fierce,” observed Nessa gravely, watching as Engus ushered his visitors up the steps cut in the rock, from causeway to safe ground and the start of the settlement. Then after a moment, she asked, “Aren’t you supposed to love your enemy?”