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so hard that he winced. “I am not ashamed of what I did,” hissed from him. “It was a mighty deed. But I must needs do it by stealth, and that will always be a wound in me. Do you understand, darling? Now we shall give Ys its honor, for the sake of our own.”
    Again he shook his spear in the wind. “Lay off that!” he cried. The sound went above the surf to the farther headland and back. Men froze and stared. “Leave these poor dead in peace,” Niall ordered. “Well go strip yon houses. The plunder should be better, too.”
    Whooping, they followed him inland.
    —Toward sunset they returned to Cape Rach. Besides what they had taken from the mansions, they brought firewood off the wind-demolished, nearly dry buildings that had stood outside the main land gate. Niall sent a currach party to relieve the watch on the ship, who were to bring camping gear for all with them. When they arrived, he gave them gifts to make up for the looting they had missed. “Will we do more tomorrow?” asked one hopefully.
    The King frowned. “We might. I cannot promise, for it may be we shall have to withdraw fast. Soon the Romans are bound to come for a look, and they will sure have soldiers with them. But we shall see.”
    —He could not sleep.
    The wind whispered, the sea murmured. More and more as the night grew older, he thought he heard a song in them. It was music that keened and cut, cold, vengeful, but lovely in the way of a hawk aloft or a killer whale adown when they strike their prey. The beauty of it reached fingers in between his ribs and played on his caged heart until at last he could endure no more. He rolled out of his kilt, stood up, and wrapped it back around him against the bleakness of the night.
    Banked, the fire-coals glowed low. He could barely make out his crew stretched in the wan grass and the gleam on the spearhead of him who kept guard. That man moved to ask what might be amiss. “Hush,” breathed Niall, and went from him.
    Clouds had gone ragged. Eastward the moon frosted those nearby and seemed to fly among them. Time had gnawed it as the tides gnawed what was left of Ys. Dew shimmered on the paved road, wet and slick beneath his bare feet. Between the hulking masses of headland, argency flickered on the bay. As he came closer, walking entranced, wind shrilled louder, waves throbbed deeper.
    He stopped on the sand at high water mark, near a shard of rampart and the survivor of those two towers which had been called the Brothers. Looking outward, he saw how ebb tide had bared acres of ruins. When last it did I was ransacking undefended houses, he thought in scorn of himself. By this dim uneasy light he discerned fountains, sculptures, Taranis Way running toward what had been the Forum. Across Lir Way, a particular heap had been the Temple of Belisama, and Dahut’s house had stood nearby. A skull lay at his feet. He wondered if it had been in the head of anyone he knew, even—He shuddered. It was a man’s. Hers would have the strong sharp delicacy of a brooch from the hand of an ollam craftsman in Ériu.
    Unshod, he did not wish to go farther, through the fragments. He folded his arms, gazed at the white unrest-fulness of the breakers, and waited for that which had called him.
    The song strengthened. It was in and of the wind and the waves, but more than they, from somewhere beyond.It yearned and it challenged, a harp and a knife, laughter and pain, endlessly alone. Someone sported in the surf, white as itself, like a seal but long and lithe of limb, high in the breast, slim in the waist, round in the hips, plunged and rose again, danced with the sea like a seal, and sang to him. Vengeance, it sang, I am vengeance, and you shall serve me for the love I bear you. By the power of that love, stronger than death, I lay gess on you, Niall, that you take no rest until the last of Ys lies drowned as I lay drowned. It is your honor price, King on Temir, that you owe her whom you betrayed; for never will her