He came to a spear that had scratches and gouges in the hard earth at its base. Someone had indeed been there before him, and had failed in this work. This one must wait, for now the bags held as much as they could: the remains of six men. Six long shafts of ash lay neatly on the shore. He had laid them close to the water. Perhaps the sea would take them; wood was as scarce as precious amber here, but these, he thought, would never be used for their purpose again, nor taken to form the frame for a cottage roof or warm a man’s hearth in the chill of night. They were cursed.

Now came the walk across the narrow pathway between the lovely, many-hued pools of the tide’s ebb, fringed by dark fronded weed, strewn with thick, glistening rods of wrack, and dotted with myriad small, scurrying creatures. The sky looked up at him, blue and wide, from the small cups and channels of these ephemeral waterways. He saw Nessa’s eyes there, as deep and dazzling as this vision of sky in sea; he saw her little smile. He walked on over, and up to the place where King Engus’s hall had stood.

The work was not easy. There were many men lying here, and women too, and none were familiar to him. Some were whole. He lifted the bones of the king from the ashes of his hall, and laid him down on the sward. The fire had burned hot; there was little left. What song would that harp sing? A wail of grief, a story of loss and waste. A great shout of proud defiance. They had fought on to the last, knowing there was only death in it. The bodies lay in some semblance of peace, each with hands crossed on breast, as Nessa had placed them on that terrible morning when she had sheltered in a secret cove, listening as her folk died there above her. He moved them one by one until the sheltered sward beside the king’s hall bore row on row of folk, disposed as gently as his aching arms, his agonized back could manage.

He had worked a long time, had traversed the causeway over and over until all but three of the heads were carried across, when it became apparent to him that he was no longer alone. First it was a lad, surely no more than six or seven, sidling out of a ruined shed to take up the dragging feet of a man Eyvind carried, and help to bear him to his place of rest. The job done, the boy scuttled back to safety; not long after, another child crept out, and another. They had been watching all the time, it seemed, waiting until they could be sure this fearsome-looking warrior with his bloodied face and reeking hands was indeed some kind of friend. And when he returned to the point to gather his final grim harvest, there were women there, those same chalk-faced women of Nessa’s household whom he had seen taken captive in this very place as he sat bound and screaming his wrath into Somerled’s deaf ears. They were the same women who had walked with bitter pride and bruised faces in Somerled’s hall last night, suffering the crude taunts and careless fondling of his own kind. Now, released no doubt on Nessa’s demand, their first act had been to return here. Perhaps they, too, had observed him for some time in silence. Now, as he lowered one spear, and two, and three, they moved forward to take up the bloodied contents. One girl hissed at Eyvind, her eyes fierce with hate; another chided her, and somewhere in her speech he heard Nessa’s name.