Early medieval Ulaid · Viking Age · Published
Ravens Over Ulaid
The judgment went against him. The ships came anyway.
An assembly field in the kingdom of Ulaid. Eochaid is Gall-Gaedhil — a Norse father, an Irish mother, and three years spent watching a strip of abandoned land he has no right to claim. When the ruling goes against him and the crowd finds its cruelty, a rider arrives from the coast with news that empties every other quarrel from the field: ships in Loch Cuan, and more than one.
Now available on Amazon in Kindle eBook. The opening chapter is below.
CHAPTER ONE: THE ÓENACH
The abandoned ráith stood on the far side of the assembly field, beyond the tethered cattle and the ring of market stalls, its bank bright green in the spring sun.
Eochaid could not stop looking at it.
The ditch had softened over the years and one section of the outer bank had slumped where winter rain had eaten through it, but the enclosure still held its shape. A man could repair that. A man with sons could make it strong again.
There were hawthorns growing along the western side.
A stand of hazel beyond.
Good ground below the slope.
Water nearby.
Enough grazing for a modest herd.
Not much.
Everything.
He shifted his weight and wiped his damp palms against his léine.
The field around him was crowded. Farmers from neighbouring rátha had arrived since dawn. Small kings and their retainers occupied the higher ground near the inauguration mound. Merchants stood behind trestle tables displaying iron knives, whetstones, dyed cloth and amber beads. Cattle lowed from their tethers. Horses stamped at flies.
The smell of the gathering hung thick in the warming air.
Wet wool.
Fresh dung.
Woodsmoke.
Horse sweat.
The sour tang of ale already being poured despite the hour.
Beneath it all lay the smell of spring earth drying after rain.
The season had finally turned.
He should have been listening.
Instead he kept measuring the abandoned enclosure with his eyes.
A man could live there.
A man could marry there.
A man could stand before his neighbours and answer when asked where he belonged.
Eochaid.
He glanced around.
Conall, his mother’s brother — the man who had raised him since her death — stood beside him.
The hearing has begun.
I know.
You are staring again.
Eochaid looked away from the ráith.
I was looking at the field.
Conall snorted.
You have been looking at that place for three years.
Three years.
Ever since the old owner died without sons.
Ever since the cousins began disputing inheritance.
Ever since the arguments moved from one assembly to the next without resolution.
Long enough for hope to become habit.
A murmur passed through the crowd.
The breitheamh had risen.
Conversation died away.
The judge stood beside the inauguration mound with a staff in one hand. Age had bent his shoulders but not his voice.
The names of the disputing families were recited.
Genealogies followed.
Witnesses.
Claims.
Counterclaims.
Eochaid listened now.
Every person gathered here knew the land under discussion.
Nobody spoke while the judge worked through the tangled inheritance.
The judge finished speaking.
For a moment there was silence.
Then he delivered the decision.
The disputed holding would not pass to either claimant.
A ripple moved through the assembly.
The judge raised a hand for quiet.
The land, he said, would instead be granted under the protection of Lord Áed’s household to a client family newly settled within the territory.
A second murmur.
Louder.
This time accompanied by surprise.
Eochaid felt something inside him sink.
Not because he knew the family.
Because he did not.
The decision removed the land completely from reach.
The ráith might as well have stood across the sea.
Conall swore softly.
Eochaid said nothing.
He kept staring at the enclosure.
The sunlight still lay on the bank.
The hawthorns still moved in the breeze.
Nothing about it had changed.
Everything had changed.
A voice sounded somewhere behind him.
Not loud.
Not intended for him.
Perhaps that made it worse.
The son of a sea-wolf should be grateful for any land at all.
Laughter followed.
Not much.
Enough.
Eochaid felt the words strike before he understood them.
Then came the second voice.
Perhaps his father left him an island in Norway.
More laughter.
A few heads turned.
Not many.
They did not need to.
The remark had already done its work.
Heat climbed his neck.
He kept his eyes fixed on the distant ráith.
If he turned now he would find the speaker.
If he found the speaker there would be blood.
That would solve nothing.
His hands closed into fists.
The laughter faded.
The crowd moved on.
The wound remained.
Across the assembly field he saw a woman watching him.
Muirenn.
Not smiling.
Not looking away.
Simply watching.
That was somehow harder to endure than the mockery.
Witnesses mattered.
Everyone knew that.
A humiliation observed became part of memory.
Part of reputation.
Part of the story people told.
Muirenn lowered her eyes first.
Not in shame.
In kindness.
Eochaid wished she had not.
Near the inauguration mound a monk stood among the crowd with a wax tablet in one hand.
Brother Cormac.
The monk had witnessed the exchange too.
His expression revealed nothing.
He merely observed.
As though assembling pieces of a puzzle nobody else could yet see.
A sudden disturbance arose near the southern track.
Heads turned.
A rider had appeared at the edge of the gathering.
His horse was flecked with foam.
The animal looked hard-ridden.
The rider spoke first to one of the lord’s retainers.
Then to another.
The words moved through the crowd faster than the horse had travelled.
Whispers.
Fragments.
Names.
Questions.
Eochaid caught only part of it.
Ships.
Then:
Ships in Loch Cuan.
More than one.
The assembly shifted uneasily.
Men looked east.
Toward the sea.
Toward the place from which opportunity came.
Toward the place from which disaster came.
Eochaid looked once more at the abandoned ráith on the hillside.
Then at the faces around him.
Then toward the unseen water beyond the horizon.
For the first time that spring, the future felt as though it were moving toward him.
