Chapter 29: The Ashes of Aidhne
The wolves had come in the dead of night, and fled with the dawn. But the fires they lit burned long past noon.
Even as the sun stood highest in the sky, the smoke still bled upward in thick black ribbons, trailing toward the heavens like accusations.
Now all that remained was ash; and the silence of the dead.
Conchobar mac Murchadha stood among the cinders, a king with a sword in hand and no war left to fight. He did not speak. He did not weep. But his knuckles were white around the hilt, and his breath came in slow, shaking waves.
He had been roused during the witching hour, not by messengers or alarms, but by the smell of smoke, and the faint orange glow flickering against the rafters of his private chamber.
At first, he had thought it was a dream; or worse, a vision sent by some half-forgotten god. But then the cries echoed up from the valley. His chamber doors had rattled with pounding fists. His men had shouted of flames on the coast.
He had donned his blade, not his crown. Called his guard, mounted in haste, and ridden for the harbor.
He had expected a siege. Or at least a battle.
The town was gone. Nothing left but collapsed timber, melted bronze, and the sickening stench of wet, half-burned flesh.
The tide had begun to reclaim the wreckage, dragging blackened beams and bloated corpses back out to sea. Seagulls picked at the remains like silent priests at an open grave.
Worse yet, the outlying villages; the fishing coves and river hamlets, had fared no better. And the priory, once under his personal protection, had been broken like a rotten reed, its bell torn from the steeple and left half-sunk in the shallows.
Few had survived. Fewer still could speak.
One man had bitten his own tongue off. Another sat in a stunned heap, hands over his ears, whispering prayers to a god who did not answer.
It was as if the apocalypse had come to the shores of Aidhne.
And for the life of him, Conchobar could not understand why. No warning. No ransom. No parley. Just fire, plunder, and disappearance. Whatever had struck had done so with surgical wrath and godless speed.
A shadow passed through his mind, darker than smoke: They mean to humiliate me.
His thoughts turned to the other kings. The vultures of Connacht, circling the vacant throne. If they caught wind of this…
His jaw tensed. Fury began to rise like bile in his throat.
Just then, his guard shoved a woman forward, forcing her to her knees before him.
She wore the torn, soot-streaked robe of a nun. Her hair was matted with ash and seawater, her lips chapped, her hands trembling. And yet there was something defiant still lingering in the bones of her face.
He narrowed his eyes. Not one of mine. The priory should have burned with all its daughters.
His voice came low, sharp, already cracking with the heat of his fury.”Your name. Now. Or I’ll have your throat cut and your body cast into the tide.”
“I am… Sister Eithne,” she said hoarsely. “I am all that remains.”
Her hazel eyes were bloodshot, too dry to cry further. Her face was drawn in agony, not of pain alone, but of having survived when others had not.
“All the others… they were taken or slain. The Norse men, those beasts, cut down the sisters like lambs. And the ones they spared… they carried off. For unspeakable reasons.”
Conchobar’s nostrils flared.
Norsemen. In Aidhne. That could only mean—
“From Dublin? Preposterous,” he snapped. “King Sihtric would not dare. Not without provoking the full wrath of Connacht. He’d burn before he dared such a slight!”
But Sister Eithne shook her head.
“No. Not from Dublin.”
Her voice lowered to a whisper. Her fingers clutched the edge of her robe as though trying to anchor herself to reality.
“They were not Christian men. They flew no cross. They bore no mark of the High King.”
She took a breath; one that rattled in her chest like kindling caught fire.
“They were wolves, my lord. Wolves from the sea.”
Conchobar stood frozen. The words echoed in his skull like a curse spoken in an older tongue.
He had grown up on stories of such things; tales told by old men and mad women, of pale demons in longships, of berserkers who tore through stone walls like parchment, of raids so swift the dead did not even have time to scream.
But those were myths. Shadows from a darker age. The world now belonged to kings and crosses. Not to ghosts.
Still… something twisted in his gut. Doubt. Dread. Not of battle—but of memory returning from the sea.
Eithne was not finished.
“Their ships…” she said, her voice cracking as though her throat bled with the memory. “I saw one, clearer than the rest. Its bow was carved with the shape of a wolf—its maw open wide… and clutched in its jaws was a hand.”
She looked up at him, and there was no madness in her gaze now. Only the chill of someone who had stared into something they should never have seen.
“It was not severed. The hand… it was offered. Held there. As if in worship. Or perhaps to bind it.”
A silence fell over the courtyard. Even the gulls had gone quiet.
Then came a voice; not sharp, not commanding, but steady, and strangely calming.
“My king,” said Derbail ingen Fergusa, as she stepped down from the stone threshold of the hall.
She wore no jewelry; only a pale wool cloak lined with woven blue. Her hair, long and dark as peat-water, was braided simply. Yet there was a quiet majesty in her bearing that no golden circlet could rival.
She did not look at Conchobar, but at the girl. And in that glance was something far older than pity. Something ancient. Like a sorrow passed down through generations of women; the knowledge of what it means to survive when others do not.
“She is cold,” Derbail said. “And exhausted. And likely more wounded than she can yet feel. You can strike her down if it will ease your pride. But it will not bring your harbor back.”
Conchobar opened his mouth, then closed it.
She finally looked at him. Not as a subject to her king. But as a wife to her husband.As the only soul in the world who could still remind him who he once was.
“You are not a fool, Conchobar. Nor a tyrant. So act like it.”
Then, slowly, he lowered his sword.
“Fetch water. And bread. And blankets,” he barked to his guards. “Find any who still draw breath. Bring them to the hall. No one sleeps while our people suffer.”
The men moved quickly.
Derbail reached out and gently took Eithne’s hand.
“Come, child,” she said. “Let the fire inside you rest for a while. We’ll stoke it again when you’re ready.”
The nun nodded, numb.
But as Derbail led her up the path toward the hall, Eithne paused at the crest of the hill. Her eyes scanned the coastline one last time.
The smoldering ruin below, the pale line of the sea beyond it. Somewhere out there, past the gray horizon, a ship sailed with a wolf on its bow and a girl named Róisín aboard.
She gripped Derbail’s hand tighter.
“Please be alive,” she whispered, so softly only the wind heard her.”I’ll find you. I swear it. I’ll find you, or die with you.”
And the sea gave no reply.