And with a roar and a run the beggarman made for the Amadan, and the roar of him rattled the stars in the sky. He asked the Amadan who he was, and what he had done to have the impudence to come there and meet him.
The Amadan said: “They call me the Amadan of the Dough, and I have killed Slat Mor, Slat Marr, Slat Beag, the Cailliach of the Rocks and her four badachs, the Black Bull of the Brown Wood, and the White Wether of the Hill of the Waterfalls, and before night I’ll have killed the Beggarman of the King of Sweden.”
“That you never will, you miserable object,” says the beggarman. “You’re going to die now, and I’ll give you your choice to die either by a hard squeeze of wrestling or a stroke of the sword.”
“Well,” says the Amadan, “if I have to die, I’d sooner die by a stroke of the sword.”
“All right,” says the beggarman, and drew his sword.
But the Amadan drew his sword at the same time, and both went to it. And if his fights before had been hard, this one was harder and greater and more terrible than the others put together. They made the hard ground into soft, and the soft into spring wells; they made the
