The High Deeds of Finn MacCool by Rosemary Sutcliff

each other, with yelpings and small excited whines – for they were litter brothers, though they had been parted from each other when they were so young that they still suckled at their mother’s flank; and they were not as other hounds, but had each a man’s heart in them, so that after the first few moments of their meeting they knew their brotherhood to each other.
    Then both together they flung themselves joyfully upon Finn, leaping about him and rearing up to plant their forepaws on his shoulders, and lick his face, so that any ordinary man would have been flat on his back before they were finished.
    But by then the men from the war-boats had come up, and there were greetings and rejoicings all round.
    â€˜Here we are come to avenge you, and you strolling down to meet us, strong and well as though you had feasted every night in your own hall!’ shouted Goll, with his arm across Finn’s mighty shoulders. But the joy of the Fianna turned to anger when Finn told themhow he had been received in the King of Lochlan’s palace, and swords were out on the instant, and the men swearing vengeance after all.
    And the vegeance of the Fianna started at one end of Lochlan and did not end until it came to the other. Only the old man and woman in the bothie at the foot of Glen More suffered no harm.
    And that was how Finn Mac Cool came by the second of his two favourite hunting dogs.

6
The Birth of Oisĩn
    Again, Finn and his companions rode hunting in their home woods, and as they returned at evening towards Almu of the White Walls, suddenly a young dappled hind sprang up from the fern and foxgloves of a little clearing, almost under the nose of Finn’s horse, and bounded away into the trees.
    Finn’s companions set up a great burst of hunting cries, and slipped the hounds from leash, and the hounds, weary as they were, sprang away on the track of the fleeing hind, and instantly the whole hunt swept after them, all the weariness of the day forgotten in the music of the hounds and the rush of the horses’ speed and the excitement of the new chase.
    But Finn noticed a strange thing, that however much the hind doubled and twisted in her track, she was drawing steadily nearer to the Hill of Almu itself. Almost it seemed as though she were trying to reach the place, like one running for sanctuary, yet what sanctuary could a hunted hind look for in the dun of the hunter?
    On they sped, the hind well ahead, seen and lost among the trees, the hounds streaking on her trail, the horsemen thundering after. But the hind was as swift as the cloud shadow on a March day, and soon only Finn himself and his two great hounds still had her in sight, while the rest of the hunt fell farther behind, andat last all sound of them was lost in the wind-rustle and bee-drone and cuckoo-call of the summer woods.
    Once the hind checked her speed and glanced back, as though to see who rode close on her trail, then fled on again, with Bran and Skolawn close behind her.
    For a few moments the three were lost to view, where the alder and hazel and quicken trees clustered thick along the fringes of the forest, and then, as he crashed out through the undergrowth on to the open moors that surrounded the Hill of Almu, Finn came upon the strangest sight that ever he had seen. For there in a little hollow set about with fern and shadowy with harebells, the hind lay panting from her long run, and Bran and Skolawn were standing over her, licking her face and her trembling limbs as though to tell her that she was safe with them and had nothing now to fear.

    And while Finn stood staring, and the hind turned her graceful head and looked at him with the soft long-lashed eyes of her tribe, he heard the Fian hunting horn, and then the music of the hounds close at hand.
    The hind sprang to her feet and stood trembling, and instantly Bran and Skolawn set themselves on either side of her, their hackles rising as they prepared if need be to