“I and my son Oscar,” said Oisin.
They went to the strand with two hundred men; and against them came the King of France with his forces. The two sides fought with such venom that at midday there was no one alive on either side but Oscar, Oisin, and the King of France. The king and Oisin were fighting at the eastern end of Ventry; and the king gave such a blow that he knocked a groan from Oisin. Oscar, who was at the western end of the strand then,—Oscar, of noble deeds, the man with a heart that never knew fear, and a foot that never stepped back before many or few,—rushed to see who had injured his father; and the noise that he made was like the noise of fifty horses while racing.
The king looked toward the point where the thundering sound was, and saw Oscar coming. He knew then that unless he escaped he had not long to live; his beauty and bravery left him, and his terror was like that of a hundred horses at the sound of a thunderbolt. Lightness of mind and body came on him; he stretched himself, sprang up, flew through the air, and never stopped till he came down in Glean nan Allt,—a place to which, since that time, insane persons go, and every madman in Erin would go there in twenty four hours, if people would let him.
In the battle of the next day, the King of Norway was chief; and there was never such destruction of men in Erin before as on that day. This king had a venomous shield with red flames, and if it were put under the sea not one of its flames would stop blazing, and the king himself was not hotter from any of them. When he had the shield on his arm no man could come near him; and he went against the Fenians with only a sword. Not to use weapon had he come, but to let the poison of his shield fly among them. The balls of fire that he sent from the shield went through the bodies of men, so that each blazed up like a splinter of oak which had hung a whole year in the smoke of a chimney, and whoever touched the burning man, blazed up as well as he; and small was every evil that came into Erin before, when compared with that evil.
“Lift up your hands,” said Fin, “and give three shouts of blessing to the man who will put some delay on that foreigner.”
A smile came on the king’s face when he heard the shouts that Fin’s men were giving. It was then that the Chief of the Fenians of Ulster came near; and he had a venomous spear, the Crodearg. He looked at the King of Norway, and saw nothing of him without armor, save his mouth, and that open wide in laughter at the Fenians. He made a cast of his venomous spear, which entered the king’s mouth, and went out through his neck. The shield fell, and its blazing was quenched with the life of its master. The chief cut the head off the king, and made boast of the deed; and his help was the best that the Fenians received from any man of their own men. Many were the deeds of that day; and but few of the forces of the High King went back to their ships in the evening.
On the following day, the foreigners came in thousands; for the High King had resolved to put an end to the struggle. Conan Maol, who never spoke well of any man, had a power which he knew not himself, and which no one in Erin knew except Fin. When Conan looked through his fingers at any man, that man fell dead the next instant.
Fin never told Conan of this, and never told any one; for he knew that Conan would kill all the Fenians when he got vexed if he knew his own power. When the foreigners landed, Fin sent a party of men with Conan to a suitable place, so that when the enemy were attacking, these men would look with Conan through their fingers at the enemy, and pray for assistance against them.
When Conan and his men looked through their fingers, the enemy fell dead in great numbers, and no one knew that it was Conan’s look alone, without prayers or assistance from others, that slew them.
Conan and his company stood there all day, looking through their fingers and praying, whenever a new face made its way from the harbor.