Challenge of the clans by Kenneth C Flint Page A

upon him once more, with the force and speed of a great boulder plummeting from the sky. He glanced up to see the open jaws, the twin rows of jagged teeth dropping toward him. He made a desperate grab, his hand closing around the end of the spear pole, and then

    rolled sideways as the jaws crashed into the lake where he had been.
    He was behind the massive head now, the neck a great curve above him. This might be his only chance to strike. He seized the weapon in both hands and, before the Dovarchu could lift its head again, drove forward, slamming the point against the underside of its jaw.
    The spear penetrated the soft hide there, and Finn threw his whole weight against it to force it farther in, angling it up into the creature's head. His action drove the sharp point through the mouth and through the narrow head, into the base of the skull, into the brain.
    Mortally struck, the Dovarchu jerked its head up. The neck began to shake as it bellowed its agony, blood pouring from the distended mouth. The body began to convulse, flippers and tail working in an uncontrolled, wild manner.
    Seeing his danger, Finn began to swim rapidly away from it. The Dovarchu's death throes grew more frenzied, the long neck coiling, the barrellike body rolling, thrashing madly, churning the water to a white froth tinted red with its blood. He swam to a safe distance and turned to watch its struggles. They soon began to grow weaker. The body ceased to roll, the flippers to thrash. The graceful neck drooped downward to the surface of the lake in a gesture of immense weariness, of total defeat. A final spasm rippled through it, throwing the head up as if in a final act of supplication to the setting sun. Then all its final strength left it at once. The neck went Hmp, bringing the head splashing down for the last time into the waves.
    For a long moment more Finn watched the still creature. Its massive form floated, stretched out across the surface. The low sun's rays, made crimson by a haze atop the hills, drew a blazing streak across the lake and across the creature, burnishing the smooth, shining skin to gold.
    He always felt a pang of regret at destroying a proud, powerful beast, no matter how good the cause, and he felt regret now in the kilUng of this sleek, vital,

    and strangely beautiful creature, for all its savagery. Still, he had done what he needed to do. He had fulfilled his bond.
    He turned away from the Dovarchu and began the swim back to shore.
    The waiting men rushed to greet him as he emerged from the lake. They crowded about, their voices exclaiming a mixture of surprise, delight, and congratulation. Someone threw a cloak over his dripping body. Cnu Deireoil clutched his hand and beamed at Finn in relief

"It's a happy man I am to see you win that fight, ** he said. "I thought you were a dead man, surely, and the fault for it my own."
    "You have done it, and there's no arguing that,"* said Cian, clearly overjoyed at the young warrior's victory. He turned to Caoilte and said with a triumphant air: "Well, my champion, you can't refuse to take in this lad now!"
    "You're right, my chieftain," Caoilte admitted grudgingly. He stepped up to Finn and put a hand upon his shoulder as he met his eye.
    "You've won the challenge fairly, and there's no man who can say that Caoilte MacRonan doesn't see a bargain kept," he said with gravity. "If you mean to try to be a warrior, it looks as if I'll be having to see to your training myself."
    "Thank you for that!" Finn told him earnestly, grinning at the man.
    For the first time there came a return smile from the dark warrior. "All right, boy. But I still think you're a fool."
    Finn's drink sat forgotten before him as he stared about the fortress's hall. Bodhmall and Liath had told him of the halls of Ireland's great chieftains and of their wondrous style of life. These stories had been precious fuel to fire the imagination of the isolated boy. But the grand and glowing images of such places he had