The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy by Jules Watson Page B

the hall was quiet. Orla had explained that her father and brother Garvan were away touring the northern forts, taking oaths of allegiance from the chieftains. When they were gone, her mother banished her father’s bard and warriors and sat with her own advisers, eating on a dining couch.
    With only darkness for company, Minna’s chest ached like a festering tooth, but she kept a stony face on the pillow.
    Instinct said she must show courage in this place, whatever it cost. If she displayed weakness she felt she might be torn apart, like the bones Clíona had tossed to the floor, which were ripped into pieces by the snarling hounds.
    The murmuring voices downstairs had long fallen silent when exhaustion at last overruled fear, and Minna tumbled into a dark sleep. Her weary soul wandered in blackness … blankness … nothingness. She sighed and surrendered the knots in her body …
    … but suddenly men are struggling all around her in battle. The air is rancid, the sun glowing red through a haze.
    Minna-in-the-dream gulps for breath, as a horse shifts beneath her. Her thighs grip its flanks, and sweat runs along bare, muscled arms on the reins and down her face from her brows, flooding her mouth, washing away blood. She is lost in a sea of screaming men jostling and falling, leaping in, staggering back. Swords twist in bellies. Spears run slippery with blood, staking throats to the ground. Arms are hacked off, the sinews split.
    ‘Lord!’ someone cries. ‘My prince, look to the east. More Romans have come !’
    Minna-in-the-dream doesn’t know the words … she can’t know… but she understands. And as she starts to turn in her saddle, shock crushes her chest, extinguishing the blood and stink and screams in one cry of despair …
    Orla was tugging on her shoulders. Minna swallowed the cry, scrabbling at the mattress. Everything smelled unfamiliar, and a roof was pressing down on her head … No. No. In the way she had learned, her consciousness fought free of the vision, instantly flinging itself up and out into awareness. The images were cut off, and she grabbed the panic and shoved it down, stilling her flailing legs.
    Only when she was rigid did she breathe out, unclenching her fists from the sheets. She turned to see Finola staring at her with enormous eyes, the puppy clutched to her chest. Orla sat back, her head nearly touching the sloping roof. ‘You were thrashing and moaning,’ she announced matter-of-factly. ‘It woke us up.’
    Minna pulled herself up, dragging fingers through her unbound hair. The sheets were damp with sweat. ‘When you sleep somewhere new,’ she stammered, ‘sometimes it makes you restless.’
    Orla shrugged and pointed at her sister. ‘ She gets those dreams, too, and she cries really stupid things I don’t understand.’ Her teeth shone in the dim firelight from below. ‘I see things when I’m awake, which is much cleverer.’
    ‘I do, too!’ Finola whispered, outraged.
    Minna stiffened with astonishment. ‘Awake?’
    Orla plucked at the wool blanket. ‘Mama says the dreams are the work of devils because that’s what the Christian priests say. She wants a priest here, but Fa said the minute a priest came he would slit his throat.’
    Finola pushed the puppy down as it tried to lick her. ‘The Lady Brónach says it is a gift and not the work of devils, and Fa says listen to her this one time but don’t tell Mama.’ She raised her chin, lip trembling. ‘But we don’t talk about it, so none of them can get angry at us.’ She glanced at Orla. ‘We don’t talk about it.’
    Minna rested her chin on her knees. ‘Your mother is Christian?’ she ventured.
    Orla nodded. ‘Of course. The Emperor is Christian, and she says,’ her voice slipped eerily into the shrill tones of the queen, ‘by the tearing of her womb to give Fa his mewling children, she will have this family Christian one day, too.’
    Minna swayed, light-headed. She still tasted blood. ‘Do you want a