The initial impact might easily have been heard a mile away. Sparhawk and Faran were slightly in the lead, with the others fanned out and back in a kind of wedge formation. Sparhawk stood up in his stirrups to deliver broad overhand strokes to the right and the left as he crashed into the strangers. He split open a helmet and saw blood and brains come gushing out as the man fell stiffly out of his saddle. On his next stroke his sword sheared through an upraised shield, and he heard a scream as his blade bit into the arm to which the shield was strapped. Behind him he could hear the sounds of other blows and shrieks as his friends followed him through the mêlée.

Their rush through the centre of the ambushers left ten down, killed or maimed, but, as they whirled to attack again, a half-dozen more came crashing out of the grove to attack them from the rear.

‘Go ahead!’ Bevier shouted as he wheeled his horse. ‘I’ll hold these off while you finish the rest!’ He raised his Lochaber and charged.

‘Help him, Kalten!’ Sparhawk called to his friend, then led Tynian, Ulath, and the two strangers against the dazed survivors of their first attack. Tynian’s broadsword had a much wider blade than those of the Pandions and thus a great deal more weight. That weight made the weapon savagely efficient, and Tynian cut through flesh or armour with equal ease. Ulath’s axe, of course, had no finesse or subtlety. He hewed at men as a woodsman might hew at trees.

Sparhawk briefly saw one of the two strange Pandions rise in his stirrups to deliver a vast overhand blow. What the knight held in its gauntleted fist, however, was not a sword, but rather that same kind of glowing nimbus that had been given to Sephrenia in the shabby upstairs apartment in Chyrellos by the insubstantial ghost of Sir Lakus. The nimbus appeared to pass completely through the body of the awkward mercenary the Pandion faced. The man’s face went absolutely white, and he stared down at his chest in horror, but there was no blood, and his rust-splotched armour remained intact. With a shriek of terror, he threw his sword away and fled. Then Sparhawk’s attention was diverted by another enemy.