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thinks highly of your ‘witch.’ He says she’s like a moonbeam in the fog. Pale and shining. Not old, he told me. She’s young.” Tuirgeis let free a low chuckle. “And this is your fate, Agnarr? What of Elsdottir?”
    Agnarr laughed off his leader’s implication, for his betrothal to Magda Elsdottir was of long standing. “I’m interested in a healer, Tuirgeis. That’s all.”
    “A moonbeam healer?”
    “Who can heal a deep muscle wound so that no damage is evident, yes!”
    More serious, Tuirgeis nodded. “A prize indeed. You may go as soon as you gather your men. Choose well; any but my own company.”
    Agnarr was going to go, but turned back to the captive interpreter. “Does this moonbeam healer have a name, Kingson?”
    Cowan asked and then nodded. “Her name is Charis, lord. And she is wed to the battlechiefs of her people, Colum says.”
    Agnarr noted that and went in search of handpicked men to take with him. He had a healer to capture.

Chapter 4

    “They just needed a translator, Martin. I think it would be wise to cooperate just now.”
    Cowan settled himself again next to Martin and tried to think how to treat the priest’s mangled forearm. The monks had had no chance, Cowan remembered. He was seething inside over the piled desecration before him that the Northmen had amassed.
    Jeweled leather covers from carefully copied codices. He had worked on some illuminated manuscripts himself in Tours, and knew how much ink and sweat went into these translations of Ovid and Virgil, as well as the Blessed Saint Patrick’s work. And there were the holy chalices, made of gold, silver, and copper. Costly silver candlesticks were shining far too cheerfully in the sunlight. A small pile of rings, too, glittered in the sun.
    Martin’s eyes had tears in them, and not because of his wound. “It’s a tragedy,” he rasped. “How can they do that? Did you see the work?” With a jerky motion of his head, the priest indicated the pile of paper that one of the barbarians was putting to the torch. “Look at that,” Martin hissed. “All of that, up in flames. Oh, that our Lord would return and smite them!”
    Cowan was indeed concerned over the codices, but he was more appalled by the ranks of men who would be enslaved by these heathens. Already, there was a “culling” process underway.
    The leader, the man who spoke Latin with a harsh accent, was going from man to man, starting with the ranks of those nearest to the granite wall of the monastery.
    “Lord, be with them,” Cowan begged in a whisper. “Keep their faith strong, and their bodies hardy. May they find their way home.”
    “Home?” Martin gasped. “You think these—these men will let any of us live? Look what they’ve done to our work!”
    Although Martin had not illuminated any of the desecrated codices himself, he identified closely with those who had. His face was drawn with anguish, eyes dark, and his hands were visibly trembling. Cowan pitied his friend. Martin’s whole life revolved around monasteries: the men, the work, the manuscripts, the prayer services. Even the times of silence and fasting appealed deeply to Martin’s personality.
    Cowan, though, was thinking more broadly.
    “I have to get out of here and get to my father,” he decided, clenching his fists and pounding one on the ground for emphasis. “He must be warned. They’ll strike farther inland if they get what they want here. Don’t you think so?” His earliest studies had not been in Latin or scribing. Those first lessons had been in warfare , and they had been learned at his father’s side.
    The behavior of the enemy was of great import when a battlechief was waging war.
    Martin slapped at him with his good hand. “Listen, my brother. You would do better here. The brethren need your gift with tongues. You also have the advantage of having some value to the barbarians. Did you see the way the leader and the braided man regarded you? Did you notice how they