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Chapter 65 - The Wolves at Dún Ailline

The sky above Dún Ailline was iron-gray, pregnant with rain that never quite fell. Smoke rose in lazy, greasy pillars from the town below the ancient hillfort.

The scent of charred thatch and scorched flesh mingling with damp earth. A thick miasma that would consume lesser men. 

And yet, Vetrúlfr and Ármóðr stood upon a slight ridge, overlooking what had moments ago been the last desperate stand of the local guards.

Their bodies still dotted the muddy road, limbs twisted under rough Norse boots as warriors stalked among them, checking pouches, prying rings from swollen fingers, driving axes into the skulls of the half-alive to quiet their moans.

Dún Ailline itself loomed above; a relic of older ages, its earthen ramparts and stone reinforcements formidable but not unassailable.

Even now, battered gates clung to their hinges, scorched where men had tried in vain to fire the Norse back with burning oil.

The town outside the walls had paid the first price.

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