Fires Fade, Steel Sings

Connacht,

The wind rolled dry over the ash-choked plains of Connacht, stirring soot from the blackened stumps where once stood fields of wheat and the men who tilled them. 

No songbirds sang here.

No smoke rose from hearths.

No cattle lowed.

Only the crows remained; fat, bold things perched atop shattered longhouses or circling the bones of men, women, and children half-buried where the wolves had yet to scavenge.

The Norse had come and gone like a famine. Their ships vanished into the horizon moons ago, but the horror remained; carved into burnt stones, into the memories of the few who had survived.

Of the petty kings, there were none.

Vetrúlfr had slain them all; in battle or by fire.

The survivors had been marched off in chains: thralls, to vanish into the far north, into frozen places with names no Gael dared speak aloud.

At Cruachan, the ancient seat of Connacht kingship, the throne lay cracked in two.