But it is foretold that thou shalt yet come
to thy father's place, and the land pines for thee even now, for there
is no good yield from earth or sea under the unlawful rule of him who
now sits on the throne of Art."
"If that be so," said Cormac, "let us go to Tara, and bide our time
there in my father's house."
So the two of them set out for Tara on the morrow morn. And this was
the retinue they had with them: a body-guard of outlawed men that had
revolted against mac Con and other lords and had gathered themselves
together at Corann under Luna, and four wolves that had been cubs with
Cormac when the she-wolf suckled him.
When they came to Tara, the folk there wondered at the fierce-eyed
warriors and the grey beasts that played like dogs around Cormac, and
the lad was adopted as a pupil by the King, to be taught arms and
poetry and law. Much talk there was of his coming, and of his strange
companions that are not wont to be the friends of man, and as the lad
grew in comeliness and in knowledge the eyes of all were turned to him
more and more, because the rule of mac Con was not good.
So the time wore on, till one day a case came for judgment before the
King, in which the Queen sued a certain wealthy woman and an owner of
herds named Benna, for that the sheep of Benna had strayed into the
Queen's fields and had eaten to the ground a crop of woad[26] that was
growing there.
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