QUOTE : Half-a-dozen men had emerged on foot from the woods on the far side of the road. They were led by a man mounted on a horse – a burly man with long unkempt hair curling from underneath a polished bronze helmet and merging into a great bushy black beard. He wore a burnished breastplate and carried himself with some authority. His companions, clustered behind him, carried an assortment of weaponry, mostly staffs and bows with arrows strung but not drawn. Sister Fidelma had no knowledge of what the man shouted, but it was clearly an order, and it took little guessing that it was an order for her to desist in her task.