Eyvind waited while the horses cropped the meager grasses near the clifftop. He watched the birds circling and the clouds gathering to the south. He thought about the sickness, and the people he had helped bury, small infants just days old, young women of Margaret’s age, old men laid hastily in earth without due ritual, since there was barely time to attend to one burial before the next must come. They were a strange folk, little and dark. There was something about these people and this land that suggested secrets, mysteries hidden below the surface. The hills here were dotted with ancient mounds, the dunes with half-buried structures of neatly laid slabs. You’d be walking across open ground and come suddenly upon some great standing stone, lichen-crusted, a monumental thing like a huge earth troll, and you could hardly go by without asking its permission. He wondered if the people, too, were not quite what they seemed; he had sensed this. Brother Tadhg, now: who’d have thought such a plain little fellow could wield such influence over a strong leader like Ulf? The rumors were increasing daily in the drinking hall; they whispered that Ulf would be baptised a Christian before Yuletide. It seemed that Tadhg had strengths not visible on the surface. And there was that girl, Eyvind had only seen her once, on the beach down by the tidal island, on a day when misery had sent him farther than he should have gone, to seek Thor in the thunderous expanses of the western sky. Her footsteps had been soft as a wren’s, but something had made him turn, and when he saw her, he couldn’t tell if she were human or spirit, a waif of a thing with long hair streaming in the wind, and eyes such as he’d never seen before, the palest sea-gray with a darker rim to them. She’d fled, as if by looking he had uncovered something best left untouched. He wondered if she had died with the rest of them.

It was a long wait. When at last Somerled and Margaret returned, it seemed to Eyvind that they had quarrelled. Margaret’s lips were set tight, her dark eyes angry.

Somerled wore a mask of nonchalance. “It’s a fine spot,” he said. “A great rock stack, like a giant standing in the ocean with the waves breaking over its feet. Quite a spectacle. We’ll wait, if you want to go and take a look.”

“We should head for home before the mist comes in,” said Eyvind tightly. “You wouldn’t want your new horse to break its leg, would you? And Ulf will be expecting us.”

Somerled attempted a laugh. “You think so? For a man of vision, it is surprising how much my brother fails to see. Come on, then, I suppose we must go back some time.”