Chapter 28: Ashes Upon the Water
Her breath caught like a thread in her throat as the scent of smoke pried her eyes open. The last thing she remembered was the iron taste of fear; and her sister’s voice.
She sat up too fast, the room spinning. The fire had already begun to consume the priory. The sacred walls groaned under the weight of flame and ruin, and death was thick in the air. Its perfume a blend of scorched wood, blood, and holy oil.
But Eithne did not cry. She did not tremble. She ran.
Clutching her sleeve over her mouth, she plunged into the burning corridor, the hem of her garment sweeping through soot and ash. Her bare feet splashed through crimson puddles.
The elderly had been slaughtered where they stood. Those too young or weak to resist had vanished; spirited away like grain stolen from a burning granary.
The sacred halls of her childhood were now a tomb.
And yet, she did not falter.
Driven by a single, blinding thought: Save Róisín.
She burst through the main doors and collapsed into the mud, sucking air like a drowning child gasping at the surface. The rain greeted her like a cruel baptism. Cold. Cleansing. Indifferent.
And there, on the riverbank, she saw it.
A vessel carved from nightmares, a prow etched in the form of a wolf, bound to the ship, clenching a hand in its maw. It’s banners, unique, and fearsome. Invoking something ancient and primal that Eithne did not quite understand, but was terrorized by nonetheless.
And upon its deck, she saw her.
Róisín. Cloaked. Silent. Bound in neither rope nor chain, but something far more terrible: fate.
Eithne screamed. Her voice cracked in the storm, carried like a curse on the wind.
“Róisín! Róisín! I will pray for you, sister!”
Róisín sat beneath a heavy tarp. The storm raged around her, yet she felt none of it. Only the dull ache of loss. The priory burned behind them, and with it, the last fragments of a cruel, quiet life she had come to call home.
Her fists were clenched so tightly her nails had drawn blood.
And then, faintly, she heard it.
That voice. Familiar. Desperate.
“Róisín! Róisín! I will pray for you, sister!”
She shot to her feet, heart pounding. Rushing to the ship’s edge, she saw her; Eithne. Alive. Mud-covered. Screaming her name.
Tears broke from Róisín’s eyes, spilling freely. Not for herself.
“Thank God… She lives…” she whispered.
A hand touched her shoulder; firm, large, and warm against the cold. Instinctively, she leaned into it.
Only when the voice followed did she realize who it belonged to.
“I am a man of my word,” Vetrulfr said, his voice calm amid the thunder. “You asked me to spare your sister. And I did. Did you think me such a wretch I would break my oath?”
“Though with her home gone… and the others dead… I do not know how long she will survive. Perhaps it would have been kinder to take her too.”
Róisín did not move. The rain soaked through her already-drenched garments. But her eyes never left the riverbank, not until Eithne was lost behind the curtain of distance and storm.
When she finally turned, she sat again near Vetrulfr; not in forgiveness, but for warmth. The tarp did little, and the wolf-skin cloak he had given her clung to her like a memory.
She flinched when he moved.
But there was no violence. Only silence. And a thick woolen blanket.
“Your clothes are wet,” he said. “You’ll freeze before we reach land. Strip and wrap yourself. No man will look your way; not while I draw breath.”
She stared at him, stunned. There was no cruelty in his tone. No hunger. Only command softened by care.
Fool. You think this makes you noble?
Wrapped in wool and fur, Róisín sat silent as the oars pushed them away from the world she knew. Her gaze fixed on Vetrulfr as he stared into the distance.
“So…” she asked at last. “Am I your slave now?”
Her tone was level. Not defiant. Not pleading. Cold, like the sea beneath them.
Vetrulfr drank from a wineskin, then handed it to her.
“You will be my wife.”
The words were spoken not like a threat; but a prophecy. She barked a bitter laugh.
“Your wife? That’s your idea of freedom? What’s the difference?”
He did not rise to the bait.
“I won’t force you,” he said. “You will come to desire it. I hear it in the wind. The gods have spoken; you will choose this yourself.”
Róisín scoffed, taking the mead despite herself. She drank, then wiped her lips on the cloak.
“Foolish pagans,” she muttered. “If it’s truly my choice; then I will never marry a brute like you.”
But as she stared into the storm, heart pounding, she could not shake the voice in her head; the whisper that had begun the moment he kicked open that door.
He is not like the others.
And you… are not a lamb.
For the rest of the journey, long as it may be, Vetrulfr spoke no more. He made no demands of her, no commands nor claim. He would not force the girl to speak, or even look upon him.
Not until she chose to.This was his silent vow.
As for Róisín, she remained beneath the fur and wool, staring hollow-eyed into the storm as the river widened and gave way to the sea.
And then… she saw them.
Sails like thunderclouds. Hulls like the ribs of dead leviathans. Each bore the mark of some beast or god. Wolves. Serpents. Crows. Her breath caught in her throat.
When the priory fell, she had believed it as a final gasp. One last raid from a dying breed. A culture long since drowned by Christ and time.
But this… this was no last breath.
This was the wind before the storm.
This was the first horn in a war yet to come.
And in that moment, Róisín understood the truth:
This was not the end.
This was the beginning.
The beginning of a reckoning.
And Connacht… would not survive it.