"Of all the lazy useless boys who ever went to Norday school, the laziest and most useless was Thorfinn Ragnarson." (p. 1)

"Thorfinn woke up from his dream of the Volga and Byzantium, humped in the bow of his father's yole. He surfaced slowly through eight and a half centuries." (p. 19)

"The monk shook his head. There was a small tinkle somewhere inside the wide sleeve of his habit. 'With this bell,' he said, 'I go to look for the dying and the dead. May they rest in peace. Now bless you, boy. You're too young to be on this road of blood.' Rats were scrithing among the ribs of Seamus the horse. Then the monk and the boy heard it, a mighty threefold bronze trembling from the towered city. King Robert the Bruce was announcing victory to the world." (p. 45)

"Thorfinn Ragnarson wasn't sad. He had...