Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott Page A

I could send back. I could order Ardacos to take you back to Mona and he would do it, staying to be your protection, however much he hated me for it.’
    There was an odd tone in her mother’s voice. Caught between fear of leaving and terror of going on, Graine looked up. Understanding left her mute. Eventually, ‘You don’t want to send me back,’ she said.
    Breaca smiled crookedly. ‘I want very badly to send you back, but I don’t have the right. You are bound to Airmid as mother to daughter. Where she goes, you go. It is not for me to force you apart.’
    The hollowness in Graine’s midriff became a void. Swallowing, she said, ‘Did Airmid tell you that?’
    ‘No. The ancestor tried to and I didn’t believe her. Then the other night, fleeing the legions, I knew it was true. When you were about to fall off Ardacos’ horse and break your neck, it was Airmid who saw what was happening. Her horse wasn’t fast enough to catch you, or you would have ridden these past two days with her, not with me.’
    A quantity of silences made some sense, and the uncertainty in her mother’s eyes. Graine found her hands wrapped tight in Stone’s pelt, as they had been in the mane of Ardacos’ horse. Her fear now was different, and very little of it for herself. She freed a hand and, searching, found her mother’s, which was cold, and squeezed it.
    There were no words that would set the world right again, or none that could be found. Presently, Graine felt herself gathered more tightly in her mother’s arms, felt her mother’s lips press into the top of her head and heard her own name spoken over and over, as a litany, too low truly to be heard. Warm breath filtered through her hair and the words rocked down through her skull to reach her ears from the inside.
    At the very end, when the hair of her crown was warmly damp, she heard a single sentence that made sense.
    ‘Small child of my heart, I love you; while I live, I will not let Rome kill you, I swear it.’
     
    VII.
    THERE WAS SNOW IN THE LANDS OF THE ECENI, AND A HEAVINESS to the air that smelled of old, uncleared dreams.
    The thin blanket of white did nothing to cover the starved ribs of the earth. The deeper Breaca’s group moved into occupied territory, the more the hedgerows were unkempt, ditches clogged, field edges a harvest of weeds. Paddocks were churned to slipping mud and yet empty; too many sheep and cattle had grazed too hard and then died for it.
    It was too much like the land of the ancestor’s vision. When Breaca said so, Dubornos said, drily, ‘The people pay their taxes in the meat of their beasts, and in corn. The land must yield twice over now: once for those who farm it and once for those who claim its ownership.’
    Ardacos said, ‘And the rest of life? Where are the birds? The foxes? The hares? Are they, too, paid in taxes?’
    ‘Some. Rome will take fox pelts and hare’s meat if there is no beef. As to the others, would you stay in a place where the earth itself was made slave to the legions? They have left, and will return when the gods have restored the balance to the worlds.’
    The knowledge did not make each day’s travel easier. Breaca led them, caught between the driving urgency of the ancestor’s command and the needs of her own oath, newly made on the head of her daughter, to keep Graine safe, and as many of those who travelled with her as may be.
    She rode as she had done since the retreat from the clearing, with Graine held on the saddle in front of her. Outwardly, all was the same. Inwardly, the quality of her caring was different and those who rode with her knew it. The part of her that remained bound to the ancestor-dreamer scorned the collapse of her resolve and predicted death of the worst kind for those who travelled with her. The rest of Breaca - the greater part - drank in the essence of her daughter as one dying of thirst drinks in cool water. Do you wonder that the children of your blood cleave to others? She had