AfterwordThe inspiration for The Weapons of the Wolfhound came to me in the British Museum, London, as I contemplated some beautifully carved chess pieces in a glass case. It seemed they had been discovered at Uig on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland in 1831. The sea had worn away a sandbank to reveal a small stone room like an oven. A peasant working nearby saw it and broke into it. He was terrified to find it full of little figures, which he took to be from the underworld. He ran home in terror, but later his wife persuaded him to return, and he found the figures were carvings.
The British Museum experts identified them as twelfth century chess pieces, comprising more than one set, carved from walrus ivory. How they came to be in the little room no one knows. I was curious as
