The Hound of Ulster Read Free Page A

would be a man among men.’
    â€˜Your time is not yet for close on another half year,’ Conor said, startled.
    â€˜That I know, but there is nothing I shall gain by the longer waiting.’
    Conor looked at him long under his brows, and shook his head, and indeed, slight and dark as Cuchulain was, and small for his age, he seemed very far as yet from being a man. ‘Nothing save maybe a wind-puff of strength and a thumbnail or so of height.’
    The boy flushed. ‘Size is not all that makes a warrior, and as for strength—give me your hunting spears, my lord and kinsman.’
    So Conor gave him the two great wolf spears that were still red like rust on the blade, and Cuchulain took them lightly and broke them across his knee as though they had been dry hazel sticks, and tossed the pieces aside. ‘You must give me better spears than these,’ he said, and it was as though deep within him a spark kindled and spread into a small fierce flame.
    Conor beckoned his armour-bearer, and bade him bring war spears; but when they were brought, Cuchulain took them and whirled them above his head, and broke them almost as easily as he had done the wolf spears, and tossed the jagged pieces away. By now there was a crowd begun to gather, and Cuchulain stood in the midst of them, waiting for someone to bring him better weapons. They brought him more spears, and then swords, and each he treated as he had done the first, and flung contemptuously away. They brought chariots into the forecourt, and he smashed them as easily as he had smashed the spears, by stamping his feet through the interlaced floor straps and twisting the ash framing of the bow between his hands, until all the forecourt lay littered with wreckage as though a battle had been fought there. And at last Conor the King burst into a harsh roar of laughter and beat his hands upon his knees and shouted, ‘Enough! In the name of the High Gods, enough, or we shall have not a spear nor a war chariot left whole in Emain Macha! Bring the boy my own weapons, my spears and sword that were forged for me by Goban himself, and harness him my own chariot, for ‘tis in my mind that those are beyond even
his
breaking!’
    So the King’s armour-bearer brought out Conor’s own angry battle spears headed with black iron and decked with collars of blue-green heron hackles, and his sword whose blade gave off fire at every blow like shooting stars on a frosty night; and the charioteer brought the King’s chariot, with polished bronze collars to the wheel hubs and its wicker sides covered with red and white oxhides, and in the yoke of it the King’s own speckled stallions that scorned any hand on their reins save that of Conor himself or his driver.
    And Cuchulain took the spears and sword and strove to break them across his knee, and could not, though he straineduntil the muscles stood out on his neck like knotted cords. ‘These weapons I cannot break,’ he said at last.
    The King said, ‘Keep them, then, since it seems that none others will serve you. See now if the chariot serves as well.’
    So Cuchulain sprang up beside the charioteer, and the horses felt the stranger behind them and began to plunge and rear so that their own driver could do nothing with them and it seemed that they and not Cuchulain would crash their heels through the chariot floor. Then Cuchulain laughed, and the fire in him blazed up like the smoky flames of a wind-blown torch, and he caught the reins from the hands of the King’s charioteer and fought the team as a man might fight with a hurricane. For a while the watchers could see little but the cloud of red dust, hear nothing but the trampling and neighing of the horses flinging their plunging circles about the forecourt, and the screech and thunder of the wracked chariot wheels—until at last Cuchulain reined the panting beasts back on their haunches close before the King, and the uproar fell