Anest was soon too busy to be much surprised. The next rider tried to run him down, its steed slashing at him with its r azor-sharp spurs. Anest hacked off its right foreleg at the knee. The beast's rider jumped deftly from its back and engaged Anest with its wicked black serrated iron sword. Another rider came from his left, thinking to catch him unawares. With a spinning back-handed slash, Anest cut the goblin down, dancing out of harm's way, and catching the bindle's left rear leg as it passed him. He watched with horror as the rider jumped off its mount and ran towards Lily with its sword upraised. But this time she was neither frozen nor unprepared. Without hesitation, and with an unfamiliar hot ferocity in her eyes, she drove an arrow through her attacker's skull with a sound like an ice-pick piercing a coconut.
Anest's momentary amazement as he looked on nearly cost him his life as he barely sidestepped a slashing spur. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was dimly aware that a horn was blowing wildly as he was beset by two bindle-riders simultaneously. He was knocked off-balance by a glancing blow to his helm, but managed to hack off his attacker's arm before another blow could fall. Screaming in agony and rage, the goblin turned its mount careening into the other, sending them both crashing to the ground right in front of Anest. He was about to finish them off when he was struck a vicious blow from behind that sent him sprawling. Trying to clear the stars that obscured his vision, a black form appeared over him, sword upraised. Reflexively, he reached for his sword . . . and found nothing. As the black shape swung, he put up his arm, reflexively assuming an ineffectually protective posture. But when the blow fell, it fell as the mortally wounded body of his attacker, which, as Anest saw when he rolled the creature off him to one side, had two arrows protruding from its chest.