Page 188 (1/1)

"Odei!" Lord Berthold spoke i how folknot a stone’s throw from them "Let us do her honor, who kept faith with us, but let us not stand here talking about nothing If you have so to say, say it"

"Have you not such kind of people airl’s body with the spirit of a man If she can take on a man’s life, then ill say she is not a man? This one, also She holds a woman’s spirit, and lives a woman’s life, even if she wears aabout?" cried Berthold

Wolfhere rose with a grim smile on his face "So the riddle is solved And the weapon unlooked for No creature male or female can harm him It seems I am lucky rather than clever" He touched Hanna on the elbow "Fare you well, Hanna Stay strong, for the Eagles will need you"

"What do youand his gaze had already lifted beyond hers to reckon the movement of soldiers and nobles that churned in athe

"Yes, what do you mean, Odei?" demanded Lord Berthold "Do you mean Berda is really a man? And only dressed as a woman? And we didn’t notice all this tirabbed Hanna’s attention Qumatic of men, iry "Berda was one person, with two spirits So it is known aive her proper burial rites" Seeing the stricken look on the young lord’s face, his own expression softened "You cannot know You see only with your outer eyes My uncle is a shaht his nephews to look with the inner eye"

"Wolfhere," she said, turning back

The old Eagle had vanished She turned all the way around, but he was nowhere to be seen a croith more on their way, and the banner of Saony and that of Fessehere All wanting to blame someone

"Oh, God" The wasp sting burned in her heart

The axles had cracked The wheels shattered The driver’s seat had torn free Worse, the wagon had fallen onto the side with the only door She slapped the skin of felt stretched taut over the unseen scaffolding that covered the bed of the wagon

"Sorgatani! Sorgatani! Can you hear me? It’s Hanna!"

Did the luck of a Kerayit shaman survive her death? Or was it the other way around? No person can survive without a measure of luck She re the death of Prince Bayan and his powerful atani!"

A feeble voice reached her "Hanna Here I ah et free"

"Be patient! Try not to rabbed for the first arm that came within her reach, which happened to be that of Lord Berthold, whoever he was--the naure it out

"My lord! A teaht" When he hesitated, looking at her in confusion, she added in the tone she had learned from her mother, "Now!"

They were all addled by the cascade of events He reeled back, beckoned to his coed the corpse of the Kerayit woman aside so it could be readied for burial, and the other youth hailed passing soldiers and set the hot to cold and cold to hot She had seen Breschius consuatani now? She must find allies quickly if she meant to save the sha, wo cos So many smells assailed her, but death’s perfuht Mist spun out of the mountains of storht blue blaze of the sky overhead was starting to bleed to white as the cloud cover crept back in The wind shifted west to east, and east to north, and north to south, whipping her braid in gusts that ot their shoulders and boots and hands around it and under where there were cracks and hollows in the roadbed to accommodate such levers as spars of wood and spans of iron

As they shouted, heaved, and lifted, her gaze was drawn to the top of the raht forons cleared the line of that foreshortened horizon and began a cautious and controlled descent