"Let you yourself
quit this place, so," they said, "or we will bring your head to Finn
since you are an enemy to him." "It is in bonds I would be," said
Diarmuid, "the time I would leave my head with you." And with that he
drew his sword the Mor-alltach out of its sheath, and he made a fierce
blow at the head nearest him that put it in two halves. Then he made an
attack on the whole host of the Green Champions, and began to destroy
them, cutting through the beautiful shining armour of the men of
Muir-na-locht till there was hardly a man but got shortening of life and
the sorrow of death, or that could go back to give news of the fight,
but only the three kings and a few of their people that made their
escape back to their ships. Diarmuid turned back then without wound or
hurt on him, and he went to where Crania and Muadhan were. They bade him
welcome, and Grania asked him did he hear any news of Finn and the
Fianna of Ireland, and he said he did not, and they ate their food and
spent the night there.
He rose up again with the early light of the morrow and went back to the
hill, and when he got there he struck a great blow on his shield that
set the strand shaking with the sound. And Dubh-chosach heard it, and he
said he himself would go fight with Diarmuid, and he went on shore there
and then.
And he and Diarmuid threw the arms out of their hands and rushed on one
another like wrestlers, straining their arms and their sinews, knotting
their hands on one another's backs, fighting like bulls in madness, or
like two daring hawks on the edge of a cliff.
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