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insensibility, fell into thick sleep on the deck.
                  Thorgrim listened to the night. The bow of the ship made a grinding noise on the pebbles as the stern lifted and sank with the incoming waves. The wind was still strong, playing around the rigging and the furled sail. The water slapped at the hull.
                  He thought of the wolves.
                  After some time he roused himself and sat up. Harald was asleep beside him, flat on his back, his mouth open. The cut on his cheek made a dark line across his white skin. He was not a pretty boy, but handsome in his way, and broad and strong. Thorgrim loved him deeply. He worried about Harald more than he would ever let Harald know.
                  For a moment Thorgrim just sat and watched his son sleep, then he tossed the heavy fur off and crawled out from under it. He was wearing only his tunic and leggings and he shivered in the cold, wet air. The snoring and muttering of three score sleeping men sounded like a pack of rooting animals, but Thorgrim hardly heard it, it was so much a part of the night. He moved cautiously around the heaps of fur spread like little burial mounds around the deck, the warriors at sleep. He came at last to the largest mound - fittingly, the jarl, Ornolf the Restless.
                  Thorgrim shook Ornolf and got only a slight grunt for his effort. He had no illusions about how difficult it would be to stir his father-in-law. As usual, Ornolf had been foremost in the feasting and drinking. Some of the men who had tried to match him, drink for drink, were still sprawled out on the beach. Some might even be dead.
                  Thorgrim shook him again. “Ornolf...” he said, soft, then shook harder. Five minutes of shaking and whispering finally got Ornolf’s eyes open. A minute later he was sitting up.
                  “Thorgrim...what?”
                  “Come with me.”
                  With a fair amount of groaning, puffing and cursing, Ornolf extracted himself from his furs and followed Thorgrim aft. On the larboard side, right aft with the steering board, Thorgrim’s sea chest was lashed to the deck. He stopped there, kneeled beside it and Ornolf did the same. Thorgrim waited to see that none of the others were awake. He waited for Ornolf to catch his breath.
                  “There was something on the curragh,” Thorgrim said, speaking in just a whisper. “Something I did not think the others should see.”
                  He opened his sea chest slowly, reached under the wool cloaks and tunic until he felt the rough canvas. He pulled the bundle out slowly. He meant to unwrap it, to show it to Ornolf, but Ornolf took it from his hands and unwrapped it himself, which annoyed Thorgrim, though he did not know why.
                  There was little enough light, with the storm still blotting out the moon and stars, but there was light enough for Ornolf to appreciate what he held. The jarl was silent as he turned the crown over in his hands, ran his fingers over the delicate engraving. “I’ve never seen its like,” he said at last.
                  “Nor I.”
                  “This alone will give us a profit from our voyage. But what will we do with it? I doubt there is coin enough in all of Ireland to match the value of this crown.”
                  Thorgrim shook his head. “It wouldn’t be wise to try to sell it. I don’t think it would be wise to bring it into Dubh-Linn at all.”
                  Ornolf looked up from the crown for the first time since taking it in his hands. “Why not?”
                  “I think this is more than some king’s trinket. There is some meaning to it. There were twenty Irish noblemen on board the curragh, and they gave their lives to protect this crown. It was the only