It was not my fault that I was not lying with them under our roof yonder.  I had headed a charge by a dozen of our best men, when it seemed that a charge might at least give time for the escape of the few women of the house to the glen.  My father had bidden me, and we went, and did our best.  We won the time we fought for, and that was all.  Some of us got back to the hall, and the rest bided where they fell.  As for me, I had been stunned by an axe blow, which my helm had turned, and came to myself to find that I was bound hand and foot, and set aside under the stable wall with two others of our men, captives also.  Thence I must watch all that went on, helplessly, and after the roof fell I cared no more what should be done with me, for I was alone and desolate.

Nor did I know who these foemen were, or why they had fallen on us.  In the gray of the morning they had come from inland, and were round the hall while we broke our fast.  We had snatched our weapons as best we might, and done what we could, but the numbers against us were too great from the first.

They had come from inland, but they were not Scots.  We were at peace with all the Caithness folk, and had been so for years, though we had few dealings with them.  My father had won a place for himself and his men here on the Caithness shore in the days when Harald Harfager had set all Norway under him, for he was one of those jarls who would not bow to him, and left that old Norse land which I had never seen.  Presently, he handselled peace for himself here by marriage with my mother, the daughter of a great Scots lord of the lands; and thereafter had built the hall, and made the haven, and won a few fields from the once barren hillside.  And now we had been well to do, till this foe came and ended all.

They were not Norsemen either.  The Orkney jarls were our friends, and for us Harald cared not.  Norsemen on the Viking path we knew and welcomed, and being of that brotherhood ourselves, we had nothing to fear from them.  It is true that we owned no king or overlord, but if the Scots king asked for scatt we paid it, grumbling, for the sake of peace.  My father was wont to call it rent for the hillsides we tilled.

Yet it would have been better to be swept out of the land by the Scots we won it from, than to be ruined thus for no reason but that of wanton savagery and lust of plunder, as it seemed.  At least they would have given us fair warning that they meant to end our stay among them, and take the place we had made into their own hands.

Well, no doubt, I should find out more presently.  Meanwhile, as I have said, I cared for naught, lying still without a word.  Then the men from out of the hall were brought and set with us; for, blinded as they were with the smoke, it had been easy to take them.  That one who was set down next me was black from head to foot and scorched with the burning, but he tried to laugh as his eyes met mine.  It was