“Liath!” Hanna cried, running forward. She hopped awkwardly sideways to avoid being run over by the wagon, which had now gathered speed as the men at the shaft got momentum. One small chest jolted, bounced, and fell out, splitting open at Hanna’s feet to spill delicate cloissoné clasps and buckles onto the cracking mud.
“My lord! There is nothing you can do! You must come away, my lord!” So the Lions shouted at the nobleman, and he cursed them once, without feeling, and then began to weep.
Ai, Lady. Surprise brought her to a jarring halt while fire blistered the timber walls of the palace and parched her lips. It was Hugh. He dropped to his knees as if he meant to pray, and only when the Lions hoisted him up bodily could he be persuaded to move back to safety as the fire scorched the peaked roof, spit, leaped the chasm of an alley between buildings, and kindled a new fire on the roof of the fourth quarter of the palace—the only quarter as yet untouched. Everything would go. Everything.
“Lady forgive me,” said Hugh as he stared into the blaze. “Forgive me my presumption in believing I had mastered the arts you gave into my hands. Forgive me for those innocent souls who have died needlessly.” He looked up, saw Hanna, and blinked, for an instant examining her as if he recognized her.
She almost staggered under the weight of his stare. She had actually forgotten how glorious he was.
Then he shook his head to dismiss her and spoke to himself—as if to convince himself. “Had I only known more, it would not have happened this way. But I cannot let her go….”
“Come, my lord,” said a servant, but Hugh shook him off.
“Father Hugh!” A new man had come running up; he was clearly terrified to stand so close to the blaze. “Princess Sapientia calls for you, my lord.”
Torn, he wavered. Rising, he could not bring himself to follow the servant.
“She is having pains—”
Clenching a hand, he glared at the raging fire, cursed under his breath and then, with a last—beseeching?—glance at Hanna, spun and followed the servant.
Liath had gone back inside the inferno.
“Keep your wits, Hanna,” she muttered to herself, recalling the first Lion’s words: “Your comrade has run mad.” Pulling her cloak tight over her mouth and nose, she pressed forward into the blaze.
“Come back!” they shouted, those Lions who remained. “Eagle!”
Her skin was aflame, but no flame touched her. She crossed into a great hall ragged with smoke and blowing ash. Heat boiled out. She saw nothing, no one, no figure struggling through the smoke. The thick beams supporting the ceiling above smoldered, not yet in open flame. A far wall cracked, splintering, burst by heat.
She heard the scream. It was Liath.
“Help me! God save us, wake up, man!”
Hanna could not take a deep breath, for courage or for air. But she ran forward anyway into the fire. Ash rained on her head. The boom and surge of fire raged around her as harshly as the tempest of battle. Smoke burned her eyes and the air tasted acrid.
She found Liath in the corridor behind, dragging a man so big and so burdened with armor that it was a miracle Liath had managed to get him this far.
“Hanna!” That she had breath to talk was astounding. “Oh, God, Hanna, help me get him free. There’s two more, but the beams have fallen—” She was weeping, although how could she weep when the heat should have wicked all moisture away?
Hanna did not think, she merely grabbed the Lion’s legs and together they tugged him out of the corridor while the fire blazed closer. They had dragged him halfway across the hall when beams began to fall and the far walls to crack and disintegrate.
Just out the door her three faithful Lions were waiting, together with the red-haired Lion; Ingo and Leo grabbed their limp comrade and yanked him free as Liath turned and started inside again.
“Stop her!” screamed Hanna. Folquin wrapped his arms around the young Eagle and lifted her as she kicked and pleaded and wept, trying to get free—but he was a brawny, farm-bred lad and as strong as an ox.
“Liath!” Hanna shouted.
But there was no time to reason with her. They retreated in awkward haste as the great roof beams collapsed in the hall. The gates remained open but stood now deserted, and they paused outside the gates to look behind. Everyone had fled to safer ground. Townsfolk carried their buckets of water to the houses closest to the palace wall, dousing their roofs with water to stop the flaming ash from setting a new blaze. The market village was all there was left to save.
On the wind, a faint counterpoint to the blaze, she heard a hunting horn.
