after Mor-am.
Moria cursed as they passed and came too, jogging along with them in the dark,
under the dripping eaves. She took the lead again, serving as their eyes in this
winding gut of a street.
Now there were sounds, many of them.
‘Behind us,’ Haught gasped; and where they were Mradhon could not have sworn,
but it sounded like behind. He threw all he had into running, pulled a stitch in
his side as Haught stumbled and recovered, and now Moria was gone again, in the
turning of the streets.
They staggered the last alley and on to the downslope to the river, splashing
through the outpourings of Downwind’s streets, past a low wall and down again.
‘This way,’ Moria said, materializing again out of the brushy dark, in the sound
of the river, which lay like a black gulf downslope. Mradhon went, steadied his
footing for Haught’s sake. There was the reek of blood from their unconscious
burden, and now the taste of it was in Mradhon’s mouth, coppery; his lungs
ached; he was blind except that Moria was at his nght telling him come on, come
on, down to the river, to the flooded dark, the curling waters that could snatch
any misstep and make it fatal. He flung his head up, sweat running in his eyes,
sucked air, staggered on the uneven stony shore and nearly went to his knees on
the rain-slick rock.
There was a boat. He saw Mor-am struggling with it, and Moria running to it, a
black shell amid the brush, not distinguishable as a boat if he had not known
what it was. There was a muddy slide: boats were launched here, from Downwind,