Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott Read Free Book Online

and tunics of Eceni blue gathered around a pen, as at market. All had the earth-stained hands of weeders and planters. Not one was a warrior or a dreamer; none bore the marks of an elder, none stood with any pride or fire or willingness to fight.
    Legionaries in full armour encircled them. Within the centre of these two rings were the children, more than twenty, wide-eyed and terrified. Each one was chained to the next by the neck and ankle. Open sores blossomed where the iron bit. The children wept tears of gold and their parents fell to their knees and scooped them into their palms as if they were corn and were grateful.
    Slavery. The ancestor hissed it, deathly quiet. When they have taken the hounds and the horses, slaughtered the cattle and the deer in the forests, when they have taken the iron that would have been weapons and the bronze that would have been beautiful, when they have melted the torc of the ancestors to make the coin to pay for war, when they have taxed every waking moment and taken the food from the mouths of infants, then they will come to buy living flesh and put a price on that which is priceless. Do you remember the dream of your long-nights, when you were given the mark you use so freely and do not understand?
    Questions within questions within a nightmare. Breaca prayed to wake and to forget, and could do neither.
    Sweating, she said, ‘I have never forgotten the dream of my long nights. I pledged then to protect the lineage of my people, to save the children and the elders that their heritage and mine may continue unbroken. I abandoned the battle of the Sea River to save the children. I have fought without cease ever since that they might carry forward the songs and dreams of the ancestors, knowing who they have been and so growing into who they can be. I fight now, risking death nightly, so that my own children and those of others
    might live in a world without Rome. You cannot accuse me of abandoning the children.’
    The ancestor laughed. Tell them yourself. In the vision, the mass of children parted. From their midst, a small, fine-limbed girl-child with hair the colour of ox blood and a face made old by pain stretched an arm from the slave pen, beseeching.
    ‘Graine?’ Breaca reached to touch her and smashed her knuckles on rock. The vision broke apart, becoming ash. She found herself standing with her back to the fire and the rush of the river too close to her feet. Her bad arm throbbed to the beat of her too-fast heart.
    Desperately, she said, ‘This cannot be a true vision. I will not believe it. Slave merchants are not permitted to trade in Britannia. The Emperor Claudius forbade it.’
    Claudius is dead and made a god. Enslaved Trinovantes build his temple in Camulodunum as we speak. Nero rules in Rome and Nero is in turn ruled by those who are ruled by gold. If you do not believe me, all you have to do is remain in the west and wait. If you do nothing, what you have just seen will happen. By the mark we both share, I swear it.
    ‘And if I go east?’
    Then there is a chance that the tide may be turned. You alone are not enough; you must find the warriors in sufficient numbers to fight the legions and give them heart. You must find the iron to arm them. You must find others with courage and vision to lead them if you fall. With these three things, you may have victory. Would you see that? I could show you, my gift of a better future.
    ‘I want nothing from you. Your visions are not safe.’
    Ah, the arrogance! Still you shall have it, my gift.
    The image was brief, a flash in the darkness showing the familiar pattern of a battlefield; impossible not to watch. Breaca’s vision stretched to meet them as warriors she knew well came into focus. At the left wing, Ardacos roused the she-bears as he always did, they fought on foot, painted in woad and lime, and faced a cracked and broken line of legionaries.
    In the centre, the Eceni forged forward to crush the enemy. She could not see who