I wrote this first draft of Chapter One’s beginning almost 2 years ago.

I’ve not moved on since. Time to revisit MY Ravens ?

 

Chapter 1

Dublin

August 1100

Dubh Linn lay wary and waiting around the Ostman trader now that the oars were shipped, ropes thrown and knotted, sail slack. Still, black waters. The sleeping Morrigan dreaming a battle beneath Maredudd ap Cadell’s hard-held patience. Right hand on the warm head of his bitch, he lifted his face, east, towards the mid-morning sun and his homeland beyond the sea. No wind stirred but the longboat beneath him rocked gently to the rhythm of running feet and a hold half-filled with stamping hooves. Maira’s shining, black nose twitched on the air, analysing the smells of this port, well-known to Maredudd but new to her. Her ears moved to the exultant din of seabirds on the fish shambles before she tilted her head upwards, amber eyes wondering at this stillness above her and Maredudd smiled, bending to nuzzle familiar fur.

‘It’s time,’ he said, and Maira understood.

Straightening, Maredudd found his cousin, Gruffydd close by tight-lipped and white around the nostrils.

“Your mother is on the dock,” Maredudd said, blinking at the sun. “And she won’t stop shouting at everyone. You have to go to her, for pity’s sake and your own glory. I have troubles enough of my own to sort.”

Their attention moved to a tall silent woman behind the dragon’s head and the tension he felt beside him crept into Maredudd’s own muscles. It was ever this girl’s uncanny stillness, her great, unfathomable silver eyes that caused so much discomfort to both of them. A woman as frozen as a Saami winter someone had once said, though well beyond the range of Gruffydd’s ears and those of her royal father.

“Go to your wife,” Maredudd said. “I will see what Cristin wants. And if it is just first pick of the furs and amber then…” He didn’t finish. Gruffydd was disembarking hurriedly, head down, and whether this was in prayer or defeat, Maredudd could only guess. Sigrid Mangusdottir. Fourteen years old, heavily pregnant and a prize so cold she could burn your hands. It made a soul wonder for the future of the nearly born child of Wales and Norway.

 

He heard the words but they meant nothing. 1093. So many deaths. So many lives changed irrevocably. He lowered his eyes into the peat coloured waters of the Black Pool, Dubh Linn. This perfect harbour, a southern tributary of the Liffey, was deep and safe enough for the trading and raiding boats of Ostmen or Lochlannachs as the locals once called their Norse invaders.

Seaweed, gulls, rotting wood, cries of men, dung and fish guts. All smelled and sounded the same as it had two years ago when they had left this place as boys with the King of Norway. Now they returned, battle-blooded and treasure laden. Now they returned as men. Maredudd caressed his dog’s hard head, squeezing an ear hard enough to make the dog yelp in surprise. He bent down. “But what has changed here?” he asked into the black and white fur.