The horseman had his bow aimed at Jason. “I am Stanus, an imperial servant, and I demand your immediate and unconditional surrender.”
Jason gazed at the creatures flanking Stanus. They stood upright like tall men, covered in rounded shell-like armor that curved up over their heads. Shiny black compound eyes stared out from the barbed masks protecting their faces. Hooks and spikes protruded from their armored bodies in all directions. Each creature had four arms bristling with cruel blades of varying length and shape. Various grinders and graters covered their torsos. Jason could tell the manglers were aptly named.
“Dismount!” the horseman repeated harshly.
Jason swung out of the saddle to the ground as the other horsemen pulled up behind, blocking their escape. Rachel dismounted as well.
“If you do not resist, we will not harm you,” the soldier vowed. “You are trapped and outnumbered. Surrender your arms.”
Jason glanced back at the men behind him. He assumed the horsemen were conscriptors. One of the three, the horseman who had come from directly behind, wore no armor and bore a longsword. A patch covered one eye. The other horsemen wore helmets that screened their faces.
“Choose now,” Stanus said. “Do not force us to lay hands on you.”
Jason reached into his cloak, his hand closing over the haft of the poniard. There were too many adversaries both in front and behind.
“We have to surrender,” he told Rachel. He wondered if it was too late to bargain using his invitation to Harthenham. It was worth a try.
“We’re putting our weapons down,” Rachel called, revealing her crossbow.
As she spoke, Jason heard a sound like breaking glass. A brilliant flash originated behind a mangler, followed by a deafening explosion. The mangler blew apart, showering shards of blade and armor in all directions. A neighboring mangler also went down with the explosion, and Stanus was unseated from his horse as it reared and toppled over, a long fragment of a blade protruding from its side.
Jason fell flat after the explosion. His borrowed mount bolted back down the ravine, away from the blast. Had Rachel somehow thrown the orantium? How had it landed behind the mangler? Through the smoke Jason saw one of the manglers charging at him with alarming speed. Rachel thrust the crystal sphere into his hand. “You’re the pitcher,” she said urgently.
From his knees he flung the globe at the attacker. The crystal sphere shattered against the creature’s spiked chest. For an instant the stone flared an intense white; then it exploded with a fiery roar.
As the hot blast wave washed over him, Jason pressed his face into the ground and clapped his hands over his ears. When he looked up, what remained of the mangler lay in a twisted ruin twenty feet farther away than before. A curved blade was planted in the earth inches from Jason’s head.
Jason rose to his knees and turned to face the horsemen behind him, raising his poniard. Rachel aimed her crossbow. A long-haired man was bounding down the slope, a sword in one hand, a heavy doubled-up chain in the other. He headed toward the three riders, who appeared to have forgotten Jason as they faced this new threat.
Leaping the last twelve feet to the floor of the ravine, the newcomer swung the four-foot length of chain like a flail, taking the helmet off one of the riders and unhorsing him. The long-haired man rolled under the horse and regained his feet. The man with the eye patch was bearing down on him, brandishing his longsword. The long-haired man somersaulted toward the horse, just enough to one side to avoid being trampled, staying low enough to avoid the rider’s reach. From the newcomer’s kneeling position, a well-timed swing of his sword slashed the charging steed’s foreleg, and the horse pitched forward, churning up chunks of soil. The rider took flight, landing violently.
Jason saw the conscriptor with the lance bring his horse around. He nudged Rachel, who aimed her crossbow carefully at the horseman and pulled the trigger. The quarrel did not fire. The safety was engaged.
The long-haired man did not require the help. As the rider reached him, he spun, using his sword to chop off the head of the lance, then the chain to slam the rider from his saddle. Pouncing, the newcomer stabbed the rider as he struggled to rise, the sharp blade finding a gap in the rings of his armor.
The rider who had lost his helmet was on his feet and approaching with an ax. Rachel, who had now released the safety, fired the crossbow. The quarrel missed by inches.
The long-haired man left his sword in the back of the fallen rider and held both ends of his doubled chain. With the chain he intercepted the downswing of the ax, turning the weapon aside. Lunging past his attacker, the long-haired man swung the chain in a vicious backhand that struck the rider’s unprotected temple. The man collapsed and did not stir.
The enemy with the eye patch rose unsteadily, his clothes stained with dirt and grass, an ugly gash bleeding on his forehead. He stood ten paces away from the long-haired man, longsword grasped in both hands. “Jasher,” he growled. “You chose the wrong day to interfere.”
“I do not know your name,” Jasher said, brushing some of his long hair out of his face, “though I am far too familiar with your kind.” A good portion of his hair was caught up in a roll at the nape of his neck. To either side it hung more than halfway down his torso. He wore loose brown robes, and his feet were bound in animal hides with leather thongs. A leather baldric held a sheath across his back.
“I am Turbish.”
“Are you ready to die, Turbish?” Jasher walked toward him, his chain held casually. He made no move to retrieve his sword.
“What makes you think you can best me?” Turbish snarled. Jasher laughed lightheartedly.
The chain suddenly unfurled to its full length, snapping like a whip. Turbish’s head jerked back, and one hand flew to cover his nose and mouth. When Turbish removed his hand, his nose lay broken sideways across his face. A second adroitly aimed lashing left Turbish cradling his remaining eye, his sword falling from his hands.
Jasher doubled the chain again, and a harsh blow to the jaw sent Turbish’s head bouncing across the ground. The headless body lunged at Jasher, who sprang nimbly aside and tripped it.
Jasher retrieved Turbish’s longsword, approached the displacer’s head, and finished him. He promptly withdrew the sword and put the horse with the missing foreleg out of its misery. Leaving the longsword planted in the horse, he retrieved his own blade.
Weapons in hand, Jasher trotted past Jason and Rachel without a glance, over to where the manglers had exploded. He inspected the mangler bodies, thrusting his sword into one. The creature shrieked at a pitch almost too high to apprehend.