The awakening birds unconscious sang in the trees, the dew
glittered on the grass; hard by the royal Boyne rolled silently.
The son of Sualtam slumbered without sound or motion, and the
charioteer stood beside him upright, like a pillar, his grey
bright eyes fixed upon the house of the sorcerers, the merciless,
bloody, and ever-victorious sons of Nectan, the son of Labrad.
Of the people of the dun, Foil, son of Nectan, was the first to
awake. It was his custom to wander forth by himself early in the
morning, devising snares and stratagems by which he might take and
destroy men at his leisure. He was more cruel than anything. By
him the great door of the dun, bound and rivetted with brass, was
flung open. With one hand he backshot the bar, which rushed into
its chamber with a roar and crash as of a great house when it
falls, and with the other he drew back the door. It grated on its
brazen hinges, and on the iron threshold, with a noise like
thunder. Then Foil stood black and huge in the wide doorway of the
dun, and he looked at Laeg and Laeg looked at him.
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