Cruachain's timber hall felt closer to a long barrow than a seat of living kings.
Smoke from the central hearth wound up through the rafters in sluggish coils, drifting past banners so old the threads seemed to whisper of forgotten clans.
Outside, a thin rain wept down the sodden thatch, beating against the small glassless slits that passed for windows.
The kings of Connacht were gathered, each seated upon roughly hewn benches lined around the hall's circumference, with Conchobar mac Murchadha at the center; a solitary oak among scrub.
They wore cloaks of green and brown, brooches heavy at their throats, torcs coiled like sleeping serpents upon their necks.
Each carried the weight of his own small kingdom in his eyes: cattle counts, unpaid blood debts, whispered threats from neighboring tuatha.
But today, all of that bent beneath the heavier shadow of Norse sails.
