So then they made an agreement and took service
with him.
They stopped in the court a fortnight and a month, and they never saw
the horses through that time. Then Brian said: "This is a bad way we are
in, to have no more news of the horses now than the first day we came to
the place." "What is best for us to do now?" said his brothers. "Let us
do this," said Brian, "let us take our arms and gather our things
together, and go to the king and tell him we will leave the country and
this part of the world unless he will show us those horses."
So they went to the king that very day, and he asked them what did they
mean by getting themselves ready for a journey. "You will hear that,
high king," said Brian; "it is because trained fighting men from
Ireland, like ourselves, have always trust put in them by the kings they
guard, and we are used to be told the secrets and the whispers of any
person we are with, and that is not the way you have treated us since we
came to you. For you have two horses and a chariot that are the best in
the world, as we have been told, and we have not been given a sight of
them yet." "It would be a pity you to go on that account," said the
king, "when I would have showed them to you the first day, if I had
known you had a wish to see them. And if you have a mind to see them
now," he said, "you may see them; for I think there never came soldiers
from Ireland to this place that were thought more of by myself and by my
people than yourselves.
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