Read Online Dreaming the Eagle by Manda Scott - Free Book Online

horse recently broken for riding and a dagger made of hard iron with copper wire bound round the hilt. It was deemed a fair trade.
    The salt trader left with the old moon. The new brought others, most notably Gunovic, horse-racer, warrior and travelling smith -and the only weapons-maker in living memory to match Eburovic in skill. He rode up from the south, bringing rods of raw iron fresh from his ovens and newly cast cakes of copper and tin from the mines and furnaces in the south and ingots of silver from the far north and red Hibernian gold. He was a big, bulky man with dark hair and skin that had weathered to brown even at the start of spring. His tunic was black, set about with brooches in gold, silver and bronze that showed off to good advantage against the dark material, and the sleeves had been cut out the better to display the fortune he wore in bands on his bare arms. He rode through the gates on a hazy afternoon in a jingle and clash of precious metals and the trading had begun before he reached the first of the horse barns. At the roundhouse, he was given oatcakes and ale while others unpacked his baggage train for him. He sat in the doorway with Macha and the elder grandmother, exchanging news from those parts of the south not yet visited by Arosted, while his work was passed from hand to hand to get the feel of it.
    In the beginning he offered the easy, decorative things: brooches, combs, dress pins, neck-pieces and armbands, all in gold and silver, copper and bronze, with or without enamel insets. This year, for the first time, there was blue enamel set alongside the red on some of the pieces; Belgic work; from the apprentice workshops on the continent. The blue was very close to the colour of the Eceni cloaks and those pieces went first, followed closely by others inset with coral or amber, or finely worked in silver and gold. Long before evening, he had traded all the pieces he intended to sell and gone on to bargain with Eburovic in the forge, exchanging, amongst other things, several cakes of raw blue enamel for a mirror in silver and a brooch cleverly made to look like a spearhead from the front but with a feeding shebear arced across the back of it.
    The place of honour in the roundhouse that evening was his. Sinochos had hunted and they feasted on jugged hare and field beans spiced with wild garlic. They asked him for a song after. Gunovic was not a singer, he had no training, but he had a good stock of stories that were common amongst the tribes and a voice to do them justice. He drank the ale and bade them stoke up the fire and, in honour of Eburovic, began with a tale for the children, of the shebear who lived in a cave in a mountain and first brought fire to the ancestors, together with the skills to forge metal. It was a good tale, although here in the flat lands of the east, where a hill barely made a thumbprint on the horizon, he spent time building for the young ones a picture of the jagged, snow-laden mountains in which the bear lived and the great cascading waterfall, the height of nine times nine men, that tumbled down for ever in crashing torrents to fill the gods’ pool below. They watched him in utter silence. Ban hugged Hail at each mention of the beast, never taking his gaze from the weaving, sensuous hands of the smith and the stream of shadow pictures they cast on the wall.
    They left the bear at the gods’ pool, talking to Nemain, the moon, who alone of the sacred ones showed her face twice to her people, once in the sky and again on the water, thus showing that water was the way by which one could reach the gods. The children, protesting, were gathered and wrapped and laid down, some to sleep, some to listen, some to try to listen but still to sleep. Ban was offered his old sleeping place with Silla but turned it down. Hail was old enough now not to need feeding through the night and there was no reason for Ban still to sleep in the harness hut but he liked it and was guarding the