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Updated: June 19, 2025
Alpin is now our rightful king, and his life is of more value than mine." Now while Kenric was thus speaking his mother remained in Alpin's arms, with her head upon his shoulder. And when Alpin drew away his arm that she might answer Kenric face to face, she turned not round, but sank down at Alpin's feet, and it was seen that she was in a swoon.
Many galleys were then brought nearer inshore, and though assailed by heavy stones from the Scots' machines and ceaseless showers of arrows, their men scrambled upon the beach. And now Sir Piers de Currie again rode forward, followed by Kenric, Allan Redmain, Duncan Graham, many men of Bute, and others of Lanark and Ayr.
But with the feeble moonbeams, that shone through the thin films of skin that in those days except in the churches did service for glass, there was still light enough in that vast room to show what terrible deed had been enacted upon the hearthstone. Kenric had taken but a few strides into the hall when his eyes rested upon the form of his murdered father.
The Earl of Ross left the sound of Iona and sailed northward again, while Sir Piers, with the eight galleys of Bute and Arran, bent his course south to Colonsay, there to pick up the vessel that Kenric had left in guard over that island. These nine vessels thereupon returned to the Clyde, and Sir Piers made a journey into Scotland to make his report to the King.
"Methinks," said Kenric, "that were Sir Piers de Currie here, and I had fulfilled my purpose in crossing to Arran, then this joy you speak of were not greater than my own. But when I go out hunting, Allan, I like to hunt; when I come over to ask a question of our neighbour, it is not to my humour to be thus stranded upon a hilltop. So now, if it please you, we will return to Ranza."
For that young viking had lost no time in crossing over to Colonsay, and though the lord of the island was absent he nevertheless warned the garrison that Kenric of Bute, with a squadron of twelve galleys, was about to make a raid upon their island, and that it behoved them to make speedy preparations to resist him.
For an hour's time the skirmish continued, Kenric and Allan Redmain fighting side by side. But meanwhile the Norse leader, Rudri, had called off the larger number of his men to the ships, leaving but a few score behind under Sweyn of Colonsay and another. In the thick of the fight Duncan Graham sought his master's side. "Back, back, my lord!" he cried, "Back to the castle of Rothesay!
"It is," said she, "that your isle of Gigha has been invaded and conquered by the Norsemen, and that your kinsman William MacAlpin has but now given up his life in telling me the tale." Kenric stood in troubled thought, a cloud upon his brow. "Where is Lulach?" he presently asked. "Over at Inch Marnock," she said, "and ill with his foot that he hurt in climbing the rocks two days since.
"And now that we have done so completely with the fox," said a voice, "what say you, comrades, to our making equal despatch with the vixen and her cub? 'Twere easy doing, could we but discover in what corner we might entrap them." Kenric did not understand the purport of these words. He did not guess that the "fox" meant his own father, and the "vixen and her cub" his mother and Alpin.
Leaving the body of Harald where it had fallen she followed Kenric yet nearer to the brink of the rock, until together they lay so near to the band of Norsemen that they could see their white teeth glisten in the firelight as they spoke. The fire was built against the rock. The warriors sat about it in a half circle.
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