rength. So stoutly did they
assail them with their powerful battering rams that in the space of an
hour the doors fell in with a loud crash.

In the wide hall stood Kenric with his sword in hand. Behind him were
ranked a good three hundred fighting men. In their midst was the maid
Aasta the Fair, wearing, as all the men wore, a coat of mail and a brass
headpiece. In firm ranks they all stood with pikes and spears aslant to
meet the inrush of valiant Norsemen.

The first man whom Kenric encountered was Erland the Old of Jura.
Enraged to see this man, who had taken hospitality in the castle, now
helping to storm it, he fought with his full strength and felled him
with one blow. Cutting his way through the ranks of his foes he at last
reached the fallen gates. But nothing did he yet see of Roderic. Many
men did he kill, for none could stand against the terrible onslaught of
his great sword. And ever at his side, fighting with fearless courage,
was Aasta the Fair, and of the foemen a full half dozen did she slay
with her sword, for she was most powerful of arm and feared not the
sight of blood.

Well might Kenric seek in vain for the towering helm of Roderic. For
even as the gates gave way that warrior, with Magnus of Man, had taken
off a body of their Manxmen to the west postern. This little door,
which, as Roderic well knew, was the weakest point in all the castle,
they assailed with their ponderous battle-axes, and never did smith with
his hammer strike his iron as Roderic struck there.

While Kenric and his chosen men-at-arms were fighting against those who
were pressing in by the main gates, Roderic thus gained an entrance into
the castle. He slew with his own hand a full score of the garrison and
passed over their dead bodies up the stone stairs. In a little time
thereafter he stood upon the battlements, where Dovenald and his
companions of the bow were showering their arrows upon the invaders
without the walls. There, cutting down old Dovenald in a most cruel
fashion, Roderic tore down the honoured red lion of Scotland and hoisted
in its stead the blue and white falcon of the Norseman. This done, he
returned with his many followers to the hall and charged upon the men of
Rothesay in their rear.

Kenric, placed thus between two strong companies of his enemies, was
taken at a sore disadvantage. He felt that the men about him were
falling on every side. Soon those without the gates gave way, and the
men of Bute we