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street away.
     
    "We needed the horses," he muttered. "We could have gotten across town if we'd had time for the horses."
     
    Sasha was doubtless scared out of words. Sasha said nothing, only walked beside him down one twisting lane and the next, downhill, while he tried desperately to think of sources for horses or clothing less conspicuous. Other thoughts kept edging in—thoughts like being caught, thoughts like himself being skewered and the boy who had helped him being run through on the spot or snatched up in the quarrels of the Yurishevs—
     
    That the boy should slip them out of this by blind luck and the eel's course they had run getting this far—was much too much to ask. Pyetr had the most uncomfortable feeling that Sasha expected something extraordinary of him, something like the hairbreadth tricks he was notorious for in the town—
     
    But that was a Pyetr Kochevikov without a terrible pain in his side. There was no joke about this, not in the least.
     
    He felt of his bandaged side, rubbed his fingers and felt a slight dampness. It hurt less now than it had in the night. He thought that might be a bad sign.
     
    And he was quite well out of tricks, out of friends, out of everything but the few coins in his purse—of which Sasha had kindly declined to rob him.
     
    Then the wits began to work again.
     
    "Wait, boy," he said, seized Sasha by the shoulder, set Sasha's back against a fence, and said, "I have an idea."
     
    Then he hit Sasha across the jaw. Sasha bounced off the fence and started to slide to his knees, but Pyetr grabbed his shirt and hauled at him. "Sorry," he said.
     
    "Help," Sasha Vasilyevitch cried, running breakneck for the gate. "Help me! Murder!"
     
    The gate-guards stood up straight, snatched up their pikes and their lantern, and held up the light as Sasha ran up to them, with the thief-bell still clanging away up the hill.
     
    "God," one said, seeing his face, catching hold of his arms.
     
    "They're killing my uncle!" Sasha cried. "The murderer—his helpers, there's at least three of them! I'm Sasha Misurov, from The Cockerel, and my uncle Fedya—We were trying to catch this man, they found him in our stable—He ran and we ran after him before the watch could come and we caught up with him, but there were more of them—
They're killing my uncle, oh, please
—"
     
    "Calm down, boy, calm! Where is he?"
     
    "Up there!" Sasha pointed a trembling hand toward Ox Street. "My uncle, oh, they're killing him, please, run,
stop
them! There's at least three of them!"
     
    The guards left at a run.
     
    Sasha Vasilyevitch ran up to the tall gates of Vojvoda, lifted the iron latch of the small parley-gate in the shadow of the arch and shoved it open, terrified that Pyetr was not going to show up, that something disastrous could have happened since their courses had parted. Pyetr was bleeding, he had confessed it—Pyetr could have fallen, could be still back on Market Street, and he might be alone here, free of Vojvoda, but with no idea where he should go or what he should do after that. Pyetr was the one who knew, all of it was Pyetr's plan, except to tell the guards at the gate that it was Pyetr and not robbers—and if Pyetr did not come now he had no idea where he should go or how he should live.
     
    But somebody came running up behind him just as he got the gate open, just as the bar swung up with a terrible clang.
     
    "Move," Pyetr said, hoarse and panting.
     
    Sasha slipped through into the dark of the road and it was Pyetr who had the presence of mind to shut the gate after him, after which the bar thumped down.
     
    "It locked itself again!" Pyetr breathed. "That's luck!"
     
    Sasha hoped that it was. He was wishing hard enough, much harder than he had ever wished to make Mischa come to grief.
     
    He was shaking at the knees and wishing he had a heavier coat, here in the wind, and suddenly thinking that he wanted to be back in the kitchen of The Cockerel, he wanted to