The driver was a tall, thin freckled man, with red hair trailing from under his golden fillet down over his shoulders. He wore a green kilt and over that a deerskin cloak with arm-holes at elbow length.
The chariot sped straight toward Shea and his companions, who dodged away from the scythes round the edge of the boulder. At the last minute the charioteer reined to a walk and shouted, «Be off with you if you would keep the heads on your shoulders!»
«Why?» asked Shea.
«Because himself has a rage on. It is tearing up trees and casting boulders he is, and a bad hour it will be for anyone who meets him the day.»
«Who is himself?» said Shea, almost at the same time as Brodsky said, «Who the hell are you?»
The charioteer pulled up with an expression of astonishment on his face. «I am Laeg mac Riangabra, and who would himself be but Ulster ’s hound, the glory of Ireland, Cuchulainn the mighty? He is after killing his only son and has worked himself into a rage. Ara! It is runing the countryside he is, and the sight of you Fomorians would make him the wilder.»
The charioteer cracked his whip, and the horses raced off over the hill, the flying clods dappling the sky. In the direction from which he had come, a good-sized sapling with dangling roots rose against the horizon and fell back.
«Come on!» said Shea, grabbing Belphebe’s hand and starting down the slope after the chariot.
«Hey!» said Brodsky, tagging after them. «Come on back and pal up with this ghee. He’s the number one hero of Ireland.»
Another rock bounced on the sward and from the distance a kind of howling was audible.