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again, bright with triumph at the success of a ruse.
    ‘He was there when I left Sorcha’s cabin with Stone. I saw him ride to the water’s edge and raise the signal. He rode lopsided, holding his belly, and when he tried to dismount he fell and his horse walked away from him. They only do that when a man is dying, Gwyddhien said so.’
    The hairs rose on Airmid’s forearms and her throat ran dry. Certain dreams of the past nights became more clear than she might have liked. Distractedly, she said, ‘If Gwyddhien said so, then it must be right. Did Sorcha go to him?’
    ‘Not yet. She was rising to feed the babe when I left. She’ll be ready by now. You should go. He brings news from the east. The hare told me that.’
    ‘And did the hare tell you what news he bore?’
    The grey eyes grew wide. ‘No. It showed me his brother, who is dead. Mother met him and has his message. She was sick with the wound we saw but the serpent-dreamer healed her. She is going away now and will never come back. The ancestors are with her. They cannot hold her safe any more than can the gods. But they will keep watch so that we’ll know if she falls.’
    ‘Thank you.’ So much from the lips of a child. So much held alone for the length of a morning. So much to mourn and to fear and perhaps to plan.
    Airmid did not force herself to smile; with Graine, such a thing would be an insult. She rose, holding the child’s hand, and said, ‘In that case, there is nothing to be done but to greet the messenger. Do you think he will live long enough to deliver his message?’
    ‘He will if we are quick.’
    ‘Can you run?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Let’s go then.’
    They ran together along the stony path towards Sorcha’s cabin. A single frog at the river’s edge croaked an autumn song of mourning.
     
    V.
    ENCASED IN A PIT, THE FIRE GAVE OFF NO SMOKE, ONLY A HAZE OF burnt air that smeared the straight lines of the surrounding beech trees so that they wavered as if reflected in water. The clouded evening sky behind took on the ripples of the ocean so that Breaca could have been in the cave again, locked in the fever dreams of the ancestor, but was not.
    Dreams might have been pleasanter than reality. She sat wrapped in her cloak with her back to a rock and wished, without hope of fulfilment, for the warmth and companionship of a hound. In the days before Rome’s invasion, no hunter, warrior, trader or travelling smith would have slept under the open sky without a hound to keep the night’s cold at bay.
    It was a small change amidst the greater cataclysm of occupation, but it served as a marker for the life that had been lost and was yet one more feather to weight the balance of her decision, should she ever regret it: for the promised warmth of a hound on an autumn evening, Breaca of Mona, once of the Eceni, had abandoned her warriors and the island of Mona that had been her home and her safety for nearly twenty years. She had abandoned the children for whom she had never fully been a mother and the warriors for whom she had been the Boudica, bringer of victory, and, emerging from the cave of the ancestor-dreamer with the wound in her arm half healed, she had set her mare’s head to the east towards the lands of the Eceni and had not once turned back.
    The gods show the many possible futures … it is up to the living to manifest what is offered.
    The ancestor-dreamer had said so on parting, speaking from the hound stone as Breaca scoured clean the last of the grasses in fulfilment of her promise, then stood on it to mount her horse.
    She thought of that later, riding east on poorly trodden pathways, focusing on the smaller sacrifices that the larger ones might not overwhelm her. It was not hard to find things to mourn: the loss of Stone, who was her best war hound and the last remaining son of Hail; the loss of the dun stallion who should have covered the blue mare in the spring and the yearling filly who was their daughter and would