from that!”

“You are learning well, Daughter,” Fianna smiled. “Soon you will be able to do some yourself.”

Minutes later, everyone was busy picking, filling baskets and pouches with the dark berries. The older children watched the babies and toddlers while their mothers picked and talked, their tongues moving even faster than their hands. They moved along the riverbank as they worked their way through the large patch of elderberries.

Tara found herself searching for more berries ahead of the group and was surprised when she saw a footbridge leading across the river. Someone had gone to the trouble to make a crossing to the fields on the other side. Without thinking, she jumped lightly onto the footbridge and crossed to the other side, intending to check on the quality and quantity of the berries.

But before she had a chance to do anything, strong hands grabbed her from behind and a second later, she was hoisted over the shoulder of a large man. She screamed and struggled, almost faint with horror as she realized that it was the finngail. He slapped her, hard, and she screamed again as he ran along the riverbank with her. He took her around the bend, scampered nimbly down the bank, and dumped her in the bottom of a boat. She screamed again and tried to get up, but he pushed her down and tied her hands behind her back and her feet together, cruel laughter mocking her cries. Then he wrapped a cloth around her mouth and forced her to lie in the bottom of the boat.

Several other men appeared and soon the boat was moving swiftly downstream, towards the finngail settlement of Dubh Linn. Hot tears poured down Tara’s cheeks but it was useless; she was unable to move or speak and her captors were certainly in no mood for mercy. She wondered what would become of her. Would they kill her?

“Oh God, have mercy,” she prayed as best she could around the cloth in her mouth. “Save me, please God, I beg of You. Mary, have mercy! Return me to my home, please!”

She had grown up going to Mass in the little church in the village but it had been her grandmother who had passed on her faith. Móraí had shown her what it meant to serve the God of heaven; she seemed to have a personal friendship with Him. Although Tara couldn’t claim to have His ear the way Móraí had, she firmly believed that He could be entreated for help in times of need. He was her only hope now.

“Here, have this.” A large man with a red beard tossed Tara a blanket and motioned for her to lie down at the end of the longhouse with several other women, all of whom had been kidnapped that day.

Tara was surprised to hear him speak in her language; she had only heard her captors speaking in a foreign tongue. She took the blanket, grateful to wrap herself in its warmth. The men had so far treated them well, giving them food and water and allowing them to use the outhouse. Two large warriors stood guard at the only entrance to the longhouse, making escape impossible, so the women were untied and left to their own devices.

“What are they going to do with us, do you know?” Tara whispered to a girl about her own age.

“I know not. But I would rather die than be subject to them.” Even in the dim light inside the longhouse, the girl looked fierce and proud.

“If we cooperate, perhaps they will treat us well,” Tara said.

“I will never cooperate with those pigs!” the girl spat.

“Shhh! Let us listen! They are speaking our language!” Tara hissed.

“We have enough,” she heard a man say.

“Then we shall leave in the morning. We are ready.”

Leave? Where were they going? Did this plan somehow involve the women? Would the men molest them during the night? Tara wished she knew the answers to those questions; she was determined to stay awake, but after the long and harrowing day, she couldn’t keep her eyes open and despite her resolve, was soon sound asleep.

“Wake up!”

Tara awoke with a start to find the large man with the red beard prodding her with his boot. She shook her head, disoriented. Then the horror of the previous day came flooding back and she covered her face with her hands, trying to stem the flow of tears that arrived in a tsunami of terror. What would happen to her today?

The girl she’d spoken to last night sat up and swore at the large man. He responded with a swift kick to her thigh. The girl screamed and stood up, ready to fight, but the man grabbed both of her hands and tied them together, muttering something in his own language.

“You will learn to obey,” he told the girl. “There will be more punishment if you do not.”

After breakfast, the finngail gathered up their belongings and left the longhouse, returning a short time later.

“We are leaving now,” Red Beard said. “You will come with us.”

He and two other men marched the women down to the water, where a much larger boat was waiting. Its sails were folded, but men were loosening the ropes in preparation for the journey. Tara was desperate to know where they were going.

“Where are we going?” she timidly asked Red Beard.

“To Norowegr,” he answered shortly.

Norowegr? Where was that? She had no idea.

“Are these women the last of the slaves?” another man asked Red Beard.

“Yes. Once they are on board, we can leave,” he replied. “The tide is right so let us waste no time.”

Slaves? They were to be slaves? Horror engulfed every fiber of Tara’s being and it was all she could do to hold in her screams. But she knew enough

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