And their horses all ran from them and
grazed upon the plain. And those forty[a] that had gone in advance descend
clad in armour on the plain, and the garrison of the three battle-wheeled
towers falls to attacking and harassing them, and is attacked and harassed
in turn by those forty champions, so that there was heard the breaking
of shields and the loud blows of hard iron poles on bucklers and
battle-helmets, on coats of mail and on the iron plates of smooth, hard,
blue-black, sharp-beaked, forked spears. And in the whole camp there is
none but is on the watch for their fierceness and their wrath and their
cunning and their strangeness, for their fury, their achievements and the
excellence of their guard. And in the place where the forty champions are
and the thousand armed men contending with them, not one of the thousand
had a wounding stroke nor a blow on his opponent because of the might of
their skill in arms and the excellence of their defence withal!"

[d] That is, a battle-pillar or prop for each of the four wheels of
each of the three towers.

[a] This is the first mention of the 'forty.'

"They are hard to contend with for all such as are unfamiliar with them, is
the opinion held of them," spake Fergus, "but they are readily to be dealt
with for such as do know them. These are three battle-wheeled towers,"
Fergus continued, "as I perceive from their account. Once I saw their like,
namely when as prentice I accompanied Dare to Spain, so that we entered the
service, of the king of Spain, Esorb to wit, and we afterwards made an
expedition to Soda, that is, to the king of Africa, and we gave battle to
the Carthaginians. There came their like upon us against the battle-line
wherein we were, an hundred battalions and three score hundred in each
battalion. One of the wheeled-towers won victory over us all, for we were
not on our guard against them. And this is the way to defeat them: To mine
a hole broader than the tower in the ground in the front thereof and cover
over the pitfall; [W.5669.] and for the battle-line to be drawn up over
against it and not to advance to attack, so that it is the towers that
advance and fall into the pit. Lebarcham told me, as I passed over Taltiu,
that the Ulstermen brought these towers from Germany, and the towers held a
third of the exiles of Ulster among them as their only dwelling; and
Cualgae ('a Heap of Spears') is their name, namely battle-penfolds. And
herein hav