There walked Brother Fortunatus. Safe! She wept to see him, to see others she knew. Behind them flew the proud standard of the Lions.
“Hanna! Hanna!”
But it was not their voices calling her. Their gazes, as all gazes, were pulled to the center of the whirlpool. To the dead man.
She looked west, and saw a figure hobbling at an awkward canter, waving to catch her attention.
He was filthy, as though dragged through the mud, and sopping wet with bits of vegetal matter and slops and drips of slime shaking off him as he ran. But despite the muck, anyone could see the startling flame red of his hair as he lunged up onto the roadbed, grabbed her elbows, and stared at her in disbelief. He had grown taller, his shoulders had gotten broader, and altogether he was a different person in stature and expression, but he was still the same rash, stupid boy she had grown up with.
The one she had always loved.
“Hanna!” He gaped at her as if the sight of her baffled him.
To her surprise—and manifestly to his, for he still looked dazed—he pulled her close and kissed her for a very long time.
“I pray you, excuse me.”
They stumbled apart, Ivar blushing and Hanna reeling. The weather had changed, or the world had. She wasn’t sure which, but it had gotten hot all of a sudden.
There was a man standing beside them with two huge black hounds, although in truth the hounds were cringing as they gazed at the approaching wagons. One whined, and the other whimpered, tail and hindquarters tucked tight like a dog that fears it is about to receive a whipping. The man knuckled their heads affectionately with one hand, but regarded Hanna and Ivar apologetically as he brushed the back of his other hand along his chin, the gesture a man makes when he feels a little sheepish.
“I pray you, forgive me,” he said. “But are you not an Eagle, called Hanna? The one who knows Liathano?”
She blinked. She knew she was gaping. Her lips were warm.
Ivar was still staring at her like a madman, with wide eyes and slack mouth. He appeared not to have heard the question at all. Only he said, without looking at the other man, “You’re the one who was named heir to Lavas.”
“So I was. I’m called Alain.”
“Liath is lost,” Hanna cried. “She’s missing.”