Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott

something charred from the fire. Holding it out, she said, ‘There’s some hare’s meat left. If you eat, it might help you sleep?’
    It was the smile that made the difference more than the words. Graine had never seen her mother shy before, nor thought herself a cause of shyness. With an odd, swooping sensation in her stomach, she uncurled herself from Stone and shuffled into the shelter of her mother’s outstretched arm. In its curve, in the surety of its grip, which had held her close over two days of hard riding, she was safe, who had not known how much she was afraid. She buried her face against a tunic that smelled of horses and sheep’s oil and leather and clung as tightly as she had done when she was first hauled unwilling from the womb.
    A while later, when the smell of charring meat lifted from the fire, mother and daughter broke apart a little and drew the hare’s haunch from the embers and shared it with each other and with Stone who pushed between them to lie across their feet.
    Thoughtfully, Breaca said, ‘I’ll shave his hair this morning, before we move on.’
    ‘Whose hair?’ Graine was leaning against her mother with her eyes shut and did not want to open them.
    ‘Stone’s. He’s too good a hound to be seen as he is in the east. The Romans make slaves of hounds as they do of people, but they have no eye for what lies beneath the surface. If I cut his pelt so that it looks as if he has mange, they won’t see past it and he’ll be safe.’
    A cool morning became suddenly colder. Graine hugged her knees to her chest. She stared into the fire and wished the grandmothers had spoken to her in the dark. On Mona, they would have done and she would understand at least a little of what was happening. ‘You’re still going to go east, to reclaim the torc of your people?’ she asked.
    ‘Our people. They are yours as much as mine. Yes. And to raise the warriors to battle. The ancestor was clear about that. I could not, with any honour, go back to Mona.’
    Too much hung on too delicate a balance and Graine saw no way to move it in the way that she wanted. She had felt the cutting
    pressure in the clearing when Airmid had faced her mother and the worlds lay open and all possibilities were equal. There was one thing that had not been spoken and should have been. It was in her power to do so now.
    She tested it a time or two in her head and then, when the grandmothers did not chastise her for it, said, ‘Did you know that Gwyddhien was dead?’
    Gwyddhien had been Airmid’s lover from before Graine was born. She had led the warriors of the Silures and, in the Boudica’s absence, those of Mona. She had been killed leading a late-season battle against Cartimandua’s Brigantes, who fought for Rome. Afterwards, Airmid’s grief had been a private thing, not spoken of. The rush to leave Mona and find the Boudica soon after had been a good way for her to lose herself in action.
    There was no telling what the Boudica thought or felt. Quietly, without moving, she said, ‘Yes. Cygfa told me.’
    Cygfa. Not Airmid. Which meant either that her grief was too new and too raw to allow her to speak of it or, more probably, that she disdained to use so obvious a hammer to crush Breaca’s intransigence.
    Graine had no such qualms. She said, ‘Airmid will not go back to Mona now. Without Gwyddhien to hold her, she is free to follow you.’ She did not say, ‘She would have followed you anyway,’ because she was not sure of that, only hoped so.
    ‘I know.’ Breaca nudged the fire with her toe, shifting the sticks to make heat without smoke. ‘We spoke of it last night. Airmid will not turn back to Mona and I have no power to make her. Cygfa will do as her own mind commands and she will follow me east whether I want it or not, as will Dubornos; both have said so. Cunomar might be commanded, but I think it more likely he will take it in his head to attack the legions alone to prove his worth. You are the only one