Free Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley

instead, savouring the solitude. The road was rutted deep and soft from recent rain—I had to watch my feet to see I didn't turn an ankle—but I had a closer view here of the fishing boats that bobbed against the bar, ropes creaking as they strained against the tide. And behind them, on the farther shore, a dark green regiment of trees stood solemnly along the curving waterline, to guard the eastern boundary of the village.
    As I rounded the corner, the bay, washed with ripples, stretched wide to meet the bluer Haven, and the breeze blew more expansively. I breathed it in and walked a little faster, past the handful of houses asleep at the roadside; past the narrow pungent strip of beach where coils of darkly shining seaweed marked the progress of the tides; to where the road abruptly ended in the car park of a small white building signposted "The Point House". This was the pub, I thought, that everyone had been talking about last night— the one that only opened at weekends. It certainly wasn't open now. The only signs of life came from the line of laundry hung to dry behind the silent building, and the three Welsh Black cows in the next fenced field over, heads turned to watch me.
    I stopped walking and stared back at them, considering my options.
    A stile bridged the rail fence at the corner of the car park, underneath a wooden sign that pointed me encouragingly up the posted coast path. But the path crossed the field, and the cows barred my way. No, I corrected myself, peering more closely, not cows. Bullocks.
    "Blast," I said. It wasn't that I was afraid of bullocks, really. They didn't have the nastiness of bulls. But they had enough residual testosterone, I'd found, to make them apt to flex their muscles when they thought they could intimidate. And since I was only a puny human being, and a female one at that, I didn't much fancy my chances of making them move.
    Still, I gave it a try. "Oy!" I shouted, doing my best Harry Enfield. Waving my arms above my head, I drew in a lungful of air and tried again, full volume: "Oy!"
    The three black heads stayed motionless, save for the twitching of one ear.
    "Smug bastards," I accused them. "If you had an ounce of chivalry you'd—"
    The nearest bullock interrupted with a sound between a bellow and a snort, and as I watched the three of them spun round and lumbered up the pasture to the farther fence. A moment later I saw what had prompted their move. A tiny blur of white and brown was trotting down the coast path from the opposite direction. Ignoring the bullocks completely, it came across the bottom of the pasture, bouncing through the long grass like an oversized hare with a small wagging tail. It looked like a Jack Russell terrier, short-limbed and sturdy, but its hair was much longer than any Jack Russell's I'd seen, standing all out on end like the hair of some wild mad scientist.
    I crouched to greet the dog as it squirmed underneath the fence rail. "Hello, scrapper," I said. "Where did you spring from?"
    The dog sat back to grin at me, dark button eyes dancing with mischief. I rumpled its ears and my fingers touched leather, set deep in the tangle of hair. It was wearing a collar. "Morgan." I read the brass tag dangling at the dog's throat. "You're a boy, then, are you, Morgan? Are you a boy?" I never had been able to work out why people always said things twice to animals, especially since we were unlikely to receive an answer anyway, but I was just as guilty as the rest. "Go on, Morgan. Go on, lead the way."
    I stood, and let the little dog surge on ahead, across the field, while I hopped the stile, keeping an eye on the wary bullocks. I needn't have worried. They kept close to the fence as my newfound friend darted back and forth around my heels, circling and urging me on.
    "I'm coming," I promised, and with a sharp woof he was off again, leading me up the climbing path that hugged the edges of the fields, while to the right of us a mass of gorse and bramble tumbled