Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

timing he would kill himself or maim a horse he loved. Now, it was enough that his sword was in its sheath on his back and his spear hand also held his shield. He settled in the saddle, moving the shield to his arm. The blood rushed in his ears and he heard within it the sound of hoofbeats hammering the earth behind him. Spinning the roan, he saw the grey throw herself into a canter. He was reaching down for the bridle, ready to head her off, when he saw Breaca, running on the spear side, reach up for the mane. She was wrong-sided and wrong-footed - and she mounted with perfect timing. The smile she threw him then was a reflection of the morning. He found himself grinning back even as his horse matched hers at the canter. ‘Can you do that with a spear in your hand?’ He shouted it over the drumming of hooves.
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘Here, then.’ It was his war spear, slimmer and lighter than the boar spear she had killed with but with a longer reach and a blade honed to pierce metal. He tossed it across the gap, keeping the point high. She caught it one-handed and slid to the ground, ran for three paces, then, using the spear as a lever with the butt end planted briefly in the turf, vaulted back up. The grey never broke stride. Eburovic smiled and made a gesture of approval. Breaca laughed and spun the spear in the air and then, just for the show of it, she did it again on the shield side. Eburovic watched and tried to recall whether she had been able to do it like that before the winter. He believed not. Thinking back, he tried to remember if he had been able to do it on both sides at the age of twelve, the age she was now. He was almost sure that he had.
    The grey was not battlehardened. The feel of the spear whistling, close to her head pushed her into a gallop. They ran free for a while, drawing the horses in the fields on either side to race with them, then curved in a circle and pulled back down the paces to a walk. It was the first ride of the spring, and it did not do to press the horses too hard. Eburovic dropped the reins and let his mount pick the way, feeling the glory of the morning. He had spent the winter existing, not living. Today, for the first time since the autumn, he felt glad to be alive. The air was bright and sharp, cold enough to crisp the hairs in his nose as he breathed in, but not so cold that it stiffened his fingers. Around him, spring was breaking the grip of winter. The first catkins hung on the willow, dusted with frost. Birch trees bore new leaves, unfurling them before the rising sun. Whitethorn flowers, tight in bud, scattered the hedges like the last remnants of snow.
    The horses were losing their winter coats. The roan walked with his head up and his ears pricked, the way he walked to war. The filly nudged up beside him and did not roll her eyes when Eburovic leaned over to scratch mud from her neck. Breaca moved her on until they rode knee to knee. She was more sober now, not stiff with shock and the aftertaste of dreams as she had been in the forge, but neither was she showing the wild exuberance of the early gallop. There was a sense of containment to her that was new to him. He thought of the warrior’s mount she had made and the neatness of it. His daughter of a year ago would not have put in the hours of practice needed to get the timing right. It brought to mind the furnace she had built in the forge, with the edges banked high to turn the heat inwards. Before her mother’s death, she had been a blazing hearth fire, sparking at random with a vivid, careless joy. Now, she could melt her own core if she chose to. The image nagged at him, taking the edge from the morning. He turned it over in his mind. Too often, he had seen what happened to a vessel stoked over-hot, or a mould poured without air vents. Eburovic rode in silence beside his daughter and made a silent prayer to the gods that she would find a way to let out the fire before it consumed her.
    The horses nodded on.