Read Fin Gall for Free Online Page B

where they might be lucky to capture half a dozen cows driven to market.
                  Máel Sechnaill held his sword straight out, the blunt tip an inch from the Norseman’s eye. The prisoner jerked and twisted his head, but he could not move far, and always the tip of the sword was there.
                  “Tell him he loses his left eye first, then the right.”
                  Flann translated, and the Viking seemed to understand that he had pushed the king’s patience to its limits. The words poured out.
                  “He say that he was ordered by Orm, who is king of Dubh-linn,” Flann said when the Viking had stopped at last. “They were to lie in wait until a group of men passed, not peasants, but men from a royal court. They were to kill them all and take what they carried.”
                  “And what was it they carried?” Máel asked.
                  The Norseman gave a single word.
                  “A crown,” Flann said.
                  For a long moment Máel Sechnaill stared at the Viking, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The Crown of the Three Kingdoms... How did this foreign whore’s son know about it? Does he know what it means?
                  “Ask him how he knows about the crown. Why he thought it would be passing this way?”
                  Flann asked, and translated the answer, which was that the man did not know any of that, that he was doing as he had been told by his king.
                  They worked on him for a bit, with their feet and the flat of Máel’s sword, but his answer did not change, and Máel came to believe he was telling the truth. Clearly Orm knew what the crown meant, and he would not be so stupid as to make that information generally known.
                  So the question was, how did Orm know? And what did it mean that he did?
                  Máel Sechnaill looked at the Norseman at his feet. His first instinct was to drive the point of his sword through the man’s throat. He actually stepped up to do it when he heard in his head the harangue of his irascible old priest, lecturing in his cracked voice about forgiveness and what not.
                  “Bind him up,” Máel said, stepping back. “By the mercy of Christ we will let him live.”
                  Slavery rather than death, the Viking could count himself a lucky man. Perhaps some backbreaking labor in the king’s fields would help his memory.
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
     
     
     
    It is uncertain
    where enemies lurk
    or crouch in a dark corner.
                                 Hávamál
     
     
     
     
     
                  D
    onnel the sheep herder opened his eyes and his first thought was, no ra in. For the second day in a row the dawn came with clear skies and the promise of sun, and that was enough for a poor man like Donnel to think it was his lucky day.
                  He sat up. His brother Patrick and he had slept in the meadow where they bedded down the flock. They were five miles from home, twenty miles from Dubh-linn, which lay to the south. Two days herding would get the flock to the town, where the finn gall would pay in silver for fresh meat.
                  First he counted the sheep. It was as integral a part of waking up as opening his eyes. Fourteen. Very well. Then he looked for his brother.
                  He didn’t see him, and that was odd. Patrick was younger by a few years, but generally reliable. Donnel kicked off the much-worn wool blanket, got to his feet. The morning breeze from the ocean was cool and he pulled the cowl of his cloak over his head and picked up his staff.
                  Patrick was off beyond the flock, standing at the edge of the great cliff that