Nearer and yet nearer they came.
"Steady, my lads, and take good aim," he said coolly as he fixed an
arrow to his bowstring. "Now!" he cried, and as the enemy came within
bow shot a shower of well-aimed arrows met them, and many men fell. The
shields of their companions bristled with the arrows whose flight they
had stopped. But the long-haired warriors pressed on to the castle
gates, behind which stood Allan Redmain with half the garrison at his back.
From the hilltop of Barone, Aasta the Fair had watched the ships
approaching from afar, and at the moment of first seeing them she
clashed a flint and steel and promptly lighted a bundle of dry twigs and
straw. The signal fire was seen from Rothesay, and at once Earl Kenric,
at the head of five score of men, marched across the island towards
Kilmory. But so quickly had the invaders landed, so speedily had they
stormed the stronghold, that ere Kenric and his followers appeared upon
the heights, the castle of Kilmory was in flames.
The Norsemen, taking their machines to the rear, had stormed the
building at its weakest point. The heavy missiles from their shot wagons
soon succeeded in making a breach. Then a detachment of Rudri's men
brought sheaves of new-cut corn and bundles of hay from the stackyard,
and flinging them within the breach set them in flames. The stout walls
of oak very soon caught fire, and Sir Oscar Redmain and his archers on
the towers speedily found themselves inclosed in clouds of smoke.
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