Then out of sudden fear the host stood back, seeing Cuchulain fall. No shout went up, but silence deep and awful seized the host. They ceased to fly and turned, but none of all of them advanced to aid or slay the wounded man.
In a wide circle as they turned they stood each leaning on his spear, and in the empty space, near where Cuchulain fell, in silence Luga stood to watch the hero die. Thus all alone, without a single friend, the king of Erin’s mighty heroes lay, dying upon the plain. Slowly Cuchulain rose in mortal pain, and stooped to drag the weapon from the wound; but he could not, for it broke off at the head, leaving the metal fastened in the flesh. And as he tugged, the red blood trickled slowly to his feet and made a stream that ran away along a furrow of the plain. Cuchulain saw an otter that crept up from the rushes on the margin of the lake. Stealthily the creature drew towards him, attracted by the blood, and in a timid way began to drink. It vexed Cuchulain when he saw the cringing beast drinking his blood while he was yet alive, and he ceased tugging at the buried spear-head, and made shift to stoop and pick up the fallen shaft and fling it at the beast. At that a raven came fluttering down and hesitatingly drew near, and dipped its beak into the hero’s blood; but in the slippery stream its claws were caught and so the bird upset. When he saw that, Cuchulain laughed aloud, and well he knew that laugh would be his last.
For, even as he laughed, Death’s mists and swoonings fell on him. He closed his eyes, and when at length he opened them again, the warrior-host had moved, drawn nearer to the place where he was lying still; but such an awe was on them that in that mighty ring of warrior-hosts, armed all with clanking weapons and with arms, no sound was heard; they stood as silent as a nurse might stand within the dark sick-room, to watch the champion die.
Then came a mighty thirst upon the wounded man. “Fain would I go,” he said to them, “and quench my thirst beside the loch.”
“We give thee leave to go,” they said, “but only if thou come again to us.”
“If I come not to you again myself, I bid you come for me,” the hero said.
So he gathered himself together and went slowly to the loch. And he drank his drink and washed himself, and came forth to die, calling upon his foes to come and meet him.
Cuchulain comes at last to his Death