said those were the really bad ones.
III
Moria saw him fall. She never thought. She ran out onto the walk with Stilcho
shouting after her and the bay horse rearing and plunging in hysterics over
Straton’s body. She ran; and a man’s arm grabbed her around the waist and swept
her back to the safety of the doorway. In that moment she had time to realize
that she had just risked her life for a man she knew for another of Hers, for a
man she had seen only twice in her life, who had burst past her down her own
stairs, shoved her painfully against a wall and run out like the devils of hell
were after him.
She could comprehend pain that strong. Ischade’s service was full of it. It was
that fellowship which sent her pelting out after him, no other reason; and now
Stilcho in a terrible slowing of time and motion drew his hands from her waist,
turned in a flying of his cloak, a falling of the hood that normally hid his
eye-patched face-for a moment it was the good side toward her, the sighted side,
mouth open in a gasp for air, legs already driving in a lunge back to the
street. He skidded in low almost under the bay’s legs, grabbed the Stepson by
the collar and one hand and dragged him toward the door-he looked up as he came,
his half-sighted face wild and pale, the dark hair flying, and his mouth opened.
“Get out of there!” he yelled at her, “get out of the way!”
An arrow whisked past with a bloodchilling sound she had heard described and
instantly recognized. She spun back around the comer to the door and the inside