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links of iron.
                  The Viking knocked Máel’s sword aside with his shield, slashed at his attacker and Máel deflected the blow with his own shield. Among all the Irish, Máel was the only one whose weapons were a match for the Vikings, but that did not matter because the Irish had surprise and numbers on their side.
                  Máel slashed at the Viking and their swords met with a ringing sound, a jarring impact that was painful. Máel saw another of his men charging, spear level at the Viking’s throat and he stepped in, pushed his own man aside.
                  “Alive! I want this one alive!” the Irish king shouted.
                  Then more of the bodyguard were there, behind the Viking and on either side of him, spears level. The Viking looked around, his face was a mask of rage, and he roared out, but if they were words in his Northern tongue or just noise Máel Sechnaill could not tell.
                  The Viking swung his sword in a great arc and one of the bodyguard pounced, grabbed the mail-clad arm, pinning it back. Another grabbed the shield, and for all his rage and struggle the Viking was pulled down, shouting and thrashing, the bodyguard barely in control.
                  Máel Sechnaill stepped up, stood above the struggling men. He reached out with the tip of his sword and scribed a long flesh wound across the Viking’s throat, just deep enough to be painful, and that seemed to have a calming effect on the man. He ceased struggling, looked up at Máel Sechnaill, eyes wide, mouth open. He spit out some words, but to the Irish king they were babble.
                  Flann mac Conaing appeared on the road above, his mail shirt making a metallic rustling as he moved. He climbed and slid down the embankment to Máel Sechnaill’s side.
                  “We had one killed, two wounded, slightly, my lord,” Flann reported. “The Norsemen are all killed. Forgive me, the one wearing mail was killed by accident.”
                  “No matter,” Máel said. “We have this one.” He pointed at the now motionless Viking sprawled at his feet. The men who had brought him down were now standing on either side of him, their feet pinning his arms and legs.
                  “Remove his helmet,” Máel ordered, and they did, but still Máel saw only defiance in the man’s eyes. For a moment the Irish king was silent, staring into that foreign face. They were a plague on his land, these fin gall, these white strangers. He turned to Flann. “Did you find anything?”
                  “No, my lord. Some food, weapons, nothing more.”
                  Máel nodded. “Ask him where he is from.”
                  Flann, who was well-traveled and had spent enough time in the Norse countries to have a decent command of the language, turned and spoke to the man on the ground. For a moment the man just looked at him, his expression pure hatred. Then he spat out a single word.
                  “He says ‘Jelling’, my lord, which is in the Danish country.”
                  Máel stepped up and smacked the side of the man’s head with the flat of his sword, hard enough to make the man grunt with pain. “Ask him again.”
                  Again the Viking answered with a single word. “Dubh-linn.”
                  “Ask him how he knew that a delegation from Leinster would pass by this way.”
                  Flann translated the words. “He says they knew nothing of any delegation. They were looking for travelers to rob.”
                  That was a lie and not a terribly convincing one. When the Norsemen raided the Irish countryside they did it in large bands, on horseback. They sacked monasteries and kings’ halls. They did not lie in wait in the brush by a roadside,