Here she fell to biting and
kicking them, knocking out the eye of one and snapping off another's
ear and breaking the leg of another with a kick.
"Take away thy mare, big man," cried Conan then, "or by Heaven and
Earth were it not that Finn told thee to let her loose I would let
loose her brains. Many a bad bargain has Finn made but never a worse
than thou."
"By Heaven and Earth," said the gillie, "that I never will, for I have
no horseboy, and I will do no horseboy's work."
Then Conan mac Morna took the iron halter and laid it on the
stranger's horse and brought the beast back to Finn and held it there.
Said Finn to Conan, "I have never seen thee do horseboy's service even
to far better men than this gillie. How now if thou wert to leap on
the brute's back and gallop her to death over hill and dale in payment
for the mischief she hath wrought among our steeds?"
At this word Conan clambered up on the back of the big man's mare, and
with all his might he smote his two heels into her, but the mare never
stirred.
"I perceive what ails her," said Finn. "She will never stir till she
has a weight of men on her equal to that of her own rider."
Then thirteen men of the Fianna scrambled up laughing behind Conan,
and the mare lay down under them, and then got up again, they still
clinging to her.
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