So Brian turned to where Kian lay upon the stony thistle-strewn grass.
“Hast thou aught more to say?”
“This only, that no eric ever paid shall be counted as near unto that which ye shall have to pay, and that the weapons wherewith ye slay me shall cry out to Lu my son, and tell him what ye three have done unto me.”
Again Brian laughed.
“Thou who fled before us as a pig shalt die as a trapped beast. We shall not give thee the honour of death by the clean sword or the deft spear.”
With that he stooped and raised on high a huge angular slab of stone, grey below, and mossed and lichened above, and, swaying with the weight, hurled it down upon the head of Kian. Then Ur and Urba lifted other great stones, and did likewise, because of their bond. And this was how death came to Kian the Noble.
When the old chief lay still and white at last, the three sons of Turenn made haste to hide his body from sight; so they dug a great hole in the sandy grass, and buried the slain man.
There was a strange trembling in the earth that day, a trembling felt throughout Erin from sea to sea, and men marvelled and feared.
But none so much marvelled as Brian and Ur and Urba, for when they had buried the bruised body of Kian they saw with horror that the shaking earth threw it back again. Nevertheless, once more they buried it, and deeper, and put heavy stones upon the trodden sods. Then, to their still greater horror and amaze, the earth again trembled and again threw back the murdered dead.
At that Ur and Urba wished to ride away at once from the accursed place, but Brian would not.