"It is from the dun of Tadg, son of Nuada, I am come," he said,
"and it is to yourself I am sent, to ask how it is you did not redden
your weapons yet upon the King of the World." "I swear by the oath of my
people," said Finn, "if I do not redden my weapons on him, I will crush
his body within his armour." "I have here for you, King of the Fianna,"
said Aedh then, "the deadly weapons that will bring him to his death;
and it was Labran of the Long Hand got them for you through his Druid
arts." He put them in Finn's hand then, and Finn took the coverings off
them, and there rose from them flashes of fire and deadly bubbles; and
not one of the Fianna could stay looking at them, but it put great
courage into them to know they were with Finn. "Rise up now," said Finn
to Fergus of the True Lips, "and go where the King of the World is, and
bid him to come out to the place of the great fight."
CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT FIGHT
Then the King of the World came to the strand, and all his armies with
him; and all that were left of the Fianna went out against them, and
they were like thick woods meeting one another, and they made great
strokes, and there were swords crashing against bones, and bodies that
were hacked, and eyes that were blinded, and many a mother was left
without her son, and many a comely wife without her comrade.
Then the creatures of the high air answered to the battle, foretelling
the destruction that would be done that day; and the sea chattered of
the losses, and the waves gave heavy shouts keening them, and the
water-beasts roared to one another, and the rough hills creaked with the
danger of the battle, and the woods trembled mourning the heroes, and
the grey stones cried out at their deeds, and the wind sobbed telling
them, and the earth shook, foretelling the slaughter; and the cries of
the grey armies put a blue cloak over the sun, and the clouds were dark;
and the hounds and the whelps and the crows, and the witches of the
valley, and the powers of the air, and the wolves of the forests, howled
from every quarter and on every side of the armies, urging them against
one another.
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