The girl rode swiftly closer. The four riders went to meet her, their swords loosened in their sheaths and their spears in their hands. Only Malth Jed relied on his heavy hunting bow as a weapon; the others preferred throwing spears and swords.
"Hardan!" shrieked Ylda, "behind you!"
The frontiersman twisted in his saddle, a throwing spear grazed his vurth-padded shoulder, and he found himself facing the hate-twisted features of the two sarifs who had accompanied him. The strength of Nitka Porn in the wagon train must have been considerable, he thought ruefully, as he crossed swords with the lanky sarif on his left.
The sarif was no swordsman, the cowardly spear had been his only hope, and even as he turned his terrified eyes briefly toward his fellow an arrow bristled from the other sarif's throat. He shrieked and hurled his sword at Hardan even as he dug his heels into the maar's flanks. He went racing away, blood streaming from his sword-pierced upper arm.
Malth Jed reined closer. "Wound you?" Hardan shook his head.
"They killed Dandu Mot—many others—one of the holy healers who rebuked them—and now they loot the wagons." The girl's lips quivered as she spoke breathlessly.
"I guess you get your wish now, Ylda Rusla," he said grimly. "We ride back to Aba to ask for troops to pursue Nitka Porn."
Further conversation was impossible. The first pursuers, augmented now by a score or more of men on foot, were upon them. Spears and arrows were dropping around them as they wheeled their maars about to escape.
Ylda's maar went down, squealing horribly, a spear in her belly, and the girl was hurled over her mount's head into the tangled coarseness of the yellow ulfo grass. Before Hardan could swing back to scoop the unconscious body of Ylda from the ground their pursuers had reached her and surrounded her.
Hardan rode into them, hewing and slashing with his twin swords, letting his maar move as she willed. Blood splashed and spurted before his maddened blows, and the rebellious sarifs fell back momentarily. Ylda screamed. He saw a sarif on foot hoist the girl's struggling form to a mounted man, a huge-bodied redbeard, and the rider's fist smashing down at the juncture of rounded neck and fragile jaw.