Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott

and two swords lay together on the flat leather of the bear hide; the feeding she-bear on the pommel of the larger overlapped slightly the serpent-spear that marked the smaller, so that the two intertwined and became one. Eburovic’s she-bear blade carried the soul of her ancestors back too many generations to count. Its loss had been one of her many sources of pain, but Breaca had carried the blade that bore the serpent-spear into every battle she had ever fought and she had not dared begin to mourn it.
    Reaching across the fire pit, she lifted the serpent-blade now, feeling the small thrill of death it always carried. A deep peace followed that she had not missed until its return. ‘Thank you. Some things were easy to leave behind. This was not one of them.’
    ‘And we were?’ Ardacos asked it, tightly. In his own way, he was as wounded as Cunomar. He had been her lover once, after Airmid and before Caradoc, and had believed himself trusted with all things.
    ‘No, of course not. How can you think it? But I would not ask you to hang on a Roman gibbet simply because I desired your company for—’
    A twig cracked under a mis-placed foot. They were warriors, even Cunomar; before the shattered silence had closed around them, they were standing in the dark beyond the fire pit. Breaca’s cloak lay once again across the fire, hiding the glow. The wool steamed and then smoked, sooner than it had done before. Three knives carved the moonlight, dimly.
    The twig snapped again, then a third time and it was evident that it had not been broken by accident but deliberately, as a signal.
    ‘Is your family now the enemy?’ The voice came from the trees, not blood-family, but heart-family, amused and certain of welcome. Cygfa led her horse forward into the clearing, bright haired and alive with the night.
    ‘Your dreamer was left without her sworn warrior and your daughter without her mother. I said I would return both to you, or
    you to them. I had not realized when I promised it that you would be so hard to track. I would never have found you if Ardacos hadn’t been on your trail and Cunomar before him. You really should lift your cloak from the fire. It’s too good to keep burning it.’
    In every way, Cygfa was Caradoc’s daughter. Her half-smile was his, taking the sting from the words and adding back something different and more difficult to bear. For the space of a dozen heartbeats, the young warrior stood alone in the still moonlight and Breaca had time to pray to Briga and to Nemain that the worst had not happened. Then the beeches shook and Airmid and Graine stepped forward and the night stopped and it would have been so very much better never to have left the cave.
    ‘Airmid—’
    They had not come alone. A shape blurred at Airmid’s side and then, released, sprang forward. A hound did not understand the complexities of the ancestors and their visions but Stone, last and best son of the war hound Hail, heard pain in the voice of the one he loved most and knew that he alone could heal it.
    A hound, at least, could be welcomed fully without risking the destruction of the ancestor’s visions. In more pain than she remembered since Caradoc’s capture, Breaca knelt and opened her arms. Stone crossed the last strides of the clearing as if he were coursing game and the gathered members of her family, of blood and of spirit, watched as the Boudica buried her hands in the mane of her battle hound and a woollen cloak smoked thickly beside them.
    It was Graine who lifted her mother’s cloak from the fire pit. She was too small to hold it up. Singed wool swamped her, trailing on the ground. Smoke stuttered upwards from a place near her shoulder. The fire, given air, flickered to life again and the orange glow lit her face from one side, leaving the other half to the dark. Patched thus in light and shadow, her small features were set hard so that she might not weep.
    ‘We all found you,’ she said, in case it was not