Today's excerpt is from "Chapter Five: The Lighthouse"
Dylan and Clyde followed the boy to the shed, where the three horses barely fit within the narrow confines of the wooden shelter. They could hear the crash of the water upon the rocks nearby, a sound that amplified the roar of the winter wind. The three wound their way up a narrow set of stairs that led to a high, rocky outcrop upon which the lighthouse stood. It was a squat, square stone structure, three stories high, with an open pavilion on the top where the lighthouse’s hearth and chimney shined out from the dark coast at night. Despite the overhang of the pavilion roof, the ferocity of the wind would have made keeping a fire lit impossible, which was one of the reasons few sailors would be foolish enough to try to navigate the coast in a storm such as the one raging that morning. Dylan wondered whether it was fools or madmen aimed at his coastline now.
Murdock, the old harbormaster, stood in front of the lighthouse fireplace, right at the edge of the open pavilion, as still and as solid as the stone coast itself. His white beard was caked with ice. His eyes were fixed upon the open sea. He didn’t turn as he heard the three open the trap door in the floor and step up onto the lighthouse deck.
“Who did you bring, Baylen?” Murdock said, still not turning.
“Kim Macnylleth and Sir Clyde, Grandfather,” Baylen answered.
Murdock turned, bowed his head to Dylan, and returned his gaze to the sea. Dylan and Clyde took up positions on either side of the old man and looked out themselves.
“How many do you count, Captain Murdock?” The old man had retired from the sea almost two decades previous, but Dylan continued to address him by his former title out of respect.
“Forty-four ships, Kim Macnylleth,” Murdock said. “Each carrying between forty and fifty men, I reckon, if they are what I think they are.”
“And what do you think they are?” Dylan asked.
“Longboats,” Murdock said. “Norsemen.”
“Norsemen?” Dylan said. “Why on earth would Norsemen sail here of all places? It’s unthinkable!”
“They can’t very well sail up the Thames into London or storm the coast of Scotland, now, can they?” Murdock said. “Of all the places in the Isles, our harbor is the least defended.”
“For a good reason,” Clyde said. “There’s nothing here but rocks and sheep.”
“Maybe they don’t want what we have,” Murdock said. “Perhaps we are a foothold for something else, something bigger.”
“The only conceivable target is Llanfyllin itself, but the only way to get there from here is to go through the mountains, and that’s impossible in the winter,” Dylan said.
“We thought sailing here in the winter was impossible,” Murdock said, “but there they are.”
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