Free Dreaming the Hound by Manda Scott Page A

strategies of his tracking were fatally flawed, the quality of his movement was exquisite; a sinuous flow that disturbed neither leaves nor small branches, but sent him forward to where she had been.
    Where there was one tracker who knew his craft, there may be two. It was the knowing of that stayed Breaca’s hand when the tracker emerged beyond the blackthorn and the red and black slingstone could have killed him. The Boudica had not hunted alone so many winters to be caught by a warrior prepared to sacrifice himself to trap her. She watched the place the scout had rested, waiting.
    ‘He’s good, isn’t he? But not as good as you and me.’
    The murmur was part of the night, a sighing of soft breezes. The voice was a friend’s and the last she might have expected to hear.
    ‘Ardacos?’
    She turned, slowly. The small, wizened warrior grinned at her from the base of a beech tree. Ardacos led the she-bears and was the greatest proponent of their art. He fought naked and on foot, smeared in the grey woad-stained bear’s grease that gave him his power, painted with lime-clay to terrify his enemies. He was not painted now, nor did he stink of bear, but he was naked, save for a knife belt, and his body merged with the land around it as a stone might do, or a sleeping bear. Breaca saw him because he chose to let her. In all probability she had passed him in tracking the tracker and had not felt the first hint of his presence.
    Surprise waxed briefly to anger and then to a stabbing anxiety. Ardacos had been sent by the elders once before to find the Boudica and bring her home. She did not wish to have to fight him for the right to continue east.
    On a silent breath, she asked, ‘Why are you here?’
    ‘I am sworn to protect your son in your absence. The she-bear asked it of me and I consented, gladly. Where he goes, I go. Whom he hunts, I hunt, even if the quarry is his mother.’
    Ardacos nodded forward and what should have been obvious became so: that the scout who tracked the Boudica was not a Coritani traitor but Cunomar, her eldest child, son of his father in so many ways - but not enough.
    Cunomar had reached the edge of the clearing and was working his way forward through the beeches. Breaca felt the weight of the red-painted stone in the fall of her sling. The understanding of how close she had come to killing him left her light-headed with fear. The ancestor’s voice echoed in her mind. If you would have your victory, you must lose them …
    ‘But not like this.’ She spoke aloud, not meaning to.
    Ardacos shook his head. ‘I am here for his protection. I would not have let you throw.’
    ‘No?’ With her eyes, she measured the distance to Ardacos. Two spear lengths separated them. They could argue for the rest of their days over whether it might have been enough.
    She said, ‘I don’t understand. Why is Cunomar here? And why is he tracking me when he could ride in and share the fire?’
    ‘Could he so? He thinks not. Your daughter believes you have left us and so now, for the first time, your children are united in their fear and their loss. They would bring you back, or join you in your flight. Your son believed that if he rode to your fire, you would be gone before he reached you. Was he not right?’
    It was late and Breaca was tired and her mind had not yet fully recovered from a spear wound gone bad. She said, ‘Cygfa believes I have left Mona? How does she know?’
    Ardacos ran his tongue round the white edges of his teeth. He hissed disapproval, or despair. ‘Breaca, you have two daughters and it is not Cygfa who is the dreamer, but Graine, your daughter-of-blood. She dreamed your wounding and knows that the grandmothers and the greater ancestors wished you to travel east, but not why they sent you away from us. She did not know, either, if you would be well enough to travel.’
    He reached out and touched the red and swollen edges of the healing wound on the Boudica’s arm. In a different tone,