In the wane of the afternoon, Bras and Lu met at last. The tides of war ceased, for all men wished to see the battle-meeting of these two champions. But already Bras had seen that the day had gone against the glory of Lochlin, and he knew that an hour hence his great army would be utterly routed, and that all who did not straightway escape to the shores of Connaught and gain the Fomorian galleys would be tracked and cut down like flying wolves. So he lowered his great spear, and threw his shield upon the ground, and thereafter asked Lu to stay the tides of battle, and agreed that the day should be accounted as a final victory to the men of Erin. And the son of the king of Lochlin further agreed, that if Lu and the leaders of the Dedannans would do this, he would give a solemn bond to withdraw all the Fomorians from Erin, to cancel for ever the bond put upon the Tuatha-De-Danann by Balor of the Evil Eye, and never to return again in enmity, neither he nor any Fomorian of the north nor southlander of lower Lochlin. And thus it was that the great battle of Moytura, the Battle of the Kites, came to an end. A year thereafter the grass was not yet green, and the plain was covered with the white bones of the innumerous dead. When all was over, and Bras and his defeated army were hasting towards the distant Connaught shores, Lu threw from him his blood-stained armour and the weapons he was almost too weary to bear. All day he had fought, as only the mightiest heroes fight, and many strong and valorous men had marvelled at his dauntless courage and at the prowess that failed not for one moment. Glad was Lu of the Long Hand to see Ald and Art, but when he asked how his father had fared in the battle, and heard that he had not been there, and had been seen of no man that day, he knew that Kian the Noble was no longer alive. “For,” he said, “if my father were alive he would have been with me this day, or, if peradventure that were not possible, would have sent me a sign. Howsoever this may be, something within me tells that my father is no longer among the living. And now, ye who hear me, listen, for by the Sun and the Moon and the Wind I swear that I shall not slake this bitter thirst of mine, nor rest this over-weary head, until I have found how and where and when an evil fate came upon my father, whom I loved as I have loved and love none other.” That night Lu Ildanna, with a hundred chosen men, rode swiftly to Tara, but there found no word of Kian. On the morrow he set forth at dawn, alone; for in a dream it had come to him that his father lay moaning beneath the thistle-strewn grass on the stony plain of Moy Murhenna. And there, in truth, Lu came upon the end of his quest; for as he rode slowly and sadly across the plain, whereon he could not discern a living being save a vast herd of swine, he heard, as one may hear in a shell, a plaintive sighing. “What is that sighing?” he cried. “Is it the death-sigh of thee, Kian my father?”