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 Dalfin of Maghera, the Irish guest who was with us. He
had taken a passage in a Norse ship from Belfast, meaning to see
lands across the sea, and had bided here when he found that we
could show him hunting such as he had never heard of. The mighty
aurochs still fed on our hills, and we told tales in hall when
guests wondered at the great h