Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott Read Free Book Online

over.’
    ‘I can’t. It’s dawn. I have to see to the grandmother. I’m late already.’
    For two years, his daughter had served as eyes and limbs to the elder grandmother, taking the hardship from the old woman’s mornings and giving the strength of youth to her days. To be chosen to serve was a great honour but it was also a great constraint. He had watched with amusement, seeing his daughter settle into it as a half-broken colt settles into the harness, chafing at the ties and testing the limits. Of late, she had been more conscientious.
    She began to pull herself to her feet. He felt something important slide away from him, like a fish in the river. Drawing her back into his embrace, he said, ‘No. Airmid was the grandmother’s eyes and limbs before you. This once, could she not be so again?’
    ‘Maybe.’ She turned to look up at him. Her face was wet but her smile was steady. ‘If she knew why.’
    ‘Will she be at the river?’
    ‘Not yet. She’s in the west house.’
    ‘I see.’ He did not ask how she knew. The west house was the place where the young women of childbearing age slept who had not yet taken a man. The young men of similar age slept in the south. The roundhouse in the centre was for families and the elderly. Eburovic felt another tradition sway in the storm of his family’s passing; it was not expected that a man visit the west house uninvited. This morning was, he believed, a time of exceptions. He stood, releasing his daughter. ‘I’ll go and talk to Airmid,’ he said. ‘You get the harness and catch the horses. I’ll meet you at the lower paddocks.’
    They met as the sun touched the lower branches of the hawthorn tree in the corner of the field. Airmid had agreed to tend to the elder grandmother and the old woman had accepted the alteration to her routine. On the way through the compound, he picked up his good cloak and found Breaca had been before him, collecting her own and changing her old tunic for her new one, woven in the blue of the Eceni with a coiled pattern in a darker tone worked along the border. He fixed his sword on his back and gathered his spear and his war shield with its iron boss and the mark of the shebear poker-burned on the bull’s-hide surround. The extra weapons were not necessary but he had not travelled to the platform since it was first built and he felt a need to go in ceremony.
    He walked up to the lower paddocks and found that Breaca, thinking with him, had caught the roan horse he rode to war and had spent her time cleaning the burrs and mud from its coat. Beside him, surprisingly, an iron grey filly with a flesh mark on her muzzle and an eel stripe down the centre of her back stood bridled and ready. He looked out across the paddock at the two dozen wellhandled horses, any one of which would have come readily enough to the call. Breaca flashed him a look that was both challenge and apology. ‘She will be good,’ she said. ‘Almost as good as the roan. She needs time before she comes to trust anyone.’
    He could believe it. He would have sold the filly at the autumn horse fair but she had kicked the first few who came near her and the rest had kept their distance afterwards so that he had been forced to withdraw her unsold. He had turned her away for the winter, thinking to work on her when the ground hardened in spring. Someone had been there ahead of him. Smiling, his daughter said, ‘She hasn’t tried to unman anyone recently. If you lead the roan out first, you will be safe. She will follow where he goes.’
    ‘If you say so.’
    They led the horses to the trackway that ran between the paddocks. Eburovic clicked the roan to a trot and ran alongside for a few paces. When the rhythm was right, he grabbed a handful of mane and made the warrior’s mount onto its back. In the height of the summer, with some time to practise, he could do it fully armed with his sword free in one hand and his spear in the other, knowing that if he misjudged his