Cnán swiveled in the water and mud just in time to see a colossus thundering up out of the river’s channel, over the crest of the little sandbar, then springing nearly over her head, hooves plowing the air. She fell to the ground more from vertigo than anything else and lost sight of it for a moment. Twisting about again, she saw the bankhar somersault backward, a red missile hurtling from its shoulders to tumble along the sandbar.
Stumbling in reeds and muck, catching herself and straightening, she identified the colossus: a man on a horse. The setting sun was on his back, and his armor shined in her eyes. His left hand held the steed’s reins; his right gripped a short staff whose head was lazily orbited by a fist-size lump of black iron studded with spikes. The spikes threw off a thick spray of the dog’s blood.
The bankhar had skidded to a halt and lay on its back, one hind leg jerking. Half its head was missing.
The interval between the bankhar and the lead Mongol was a long stone’s throw. Percival, in full gallop, took it in a few thundering hoof strikes. The iron ball, tracing an unhurried and inexorable path at the end of its taut chain, accelerated suddenly and passed without apparent loss of speed into the side of the Mongol’s face—for he was attempting to turn away—and out the back of his skull.
Percival studied the reeds. “A spare!” he remarked casually.
Dumbfounded, she realized he was addressing her.
“Should I…” she fumbled.
“No. Reach the other side of the river,” he said, and ignoring the two Mongols who were down at the river’s level, spurred his destrier forward hard and steered it directly toward what looked like a low place in the bank. The steed faltered, then understood, drove itself at the notch in the skyline, and attempted the leap. Its front hooves came up on the top. Its hind legs had to scrabble at the bank for a few anxious moments, peeling off shovelfuls of dusty earth. But then its massive hindquarters bucked up into the air, and it was on the lip of the scarp. With a cry of triumph or encouragement, Percival drove it hard to the left, headed, apparently, straight for the lone Mongol who had made it to the top earlier.
And then Cnán lost sight of him.
The two Mongols remaining on the sandbar were finally unlimbering their bows. She doubted that they could hit her from this distance if she kept moving and made use of cover, but one could never tell when a lucky shot might strike home, and so she was disinclined to wait around and see what happened. She completed the move she had been trying to make while fleeing the bankhar, sidestepping across the bar to the main channel of the river. She had to take her eyes away from the Mongols for a few moments as she picked her way over a slimy fallen log.
When she looked back, one of the Mongols was settling awkwardly to his knees, reaching up as if to make some adjustment in his helmet. Then she noticed a shaft going in one side of his neck, angled downward, and she concluded that an arrow fired from the other side of the river had struck him.
She turned, dove, and swam for a dozen strokes. The current was sweeping her downstream toward the concealed archer, but she reckoned that was not a bad thing, and so she did not fight it, putting all of her energy instead into crossing the channel.
When she felt the bank rising beneath her feet again, she turned to look, letting only the top few inches of her head jut out of the stream. Now came the same thunder in the earth that had preceded the demise of the bankhar, and sure enough, Percival’s head—and that of his warhorse—rose majestically above the edge of the bank. He had holstered the flail he’d used to such effect against the dog and the first Mongol, and now held a bloody lance in one hand and a teardrop-shaped shield in the other. Two arrows jutted from the shield, suggesting that the second Mongol had put up more of a fight. Thus encumbered, he let the horse find its own way down to the riverbank. Percival kept a sharp eye on the one surviving Mongol, who had sought cover in the reeds and was raising his bow. Percival was plainly visible from the bank’s top. With an easy plunge of his shield, the armored knight collected a third arrow that would have pierced his mount’s shoulder.
A shaft flew directly over Cnán’s head and arced downward into the reeds; a bowman on her side of the bank—she guessed it was Raphael—was hoping for a lucky shot.
The destrier crashed down into the reed bed, Percival leaning so far back that he was nearly supine on its hindquarters. After a few moments of staggering about and realigning, horse and rider were once again united, and Percival now did something that—hard as it was to believe—made Cnán feel sorry for the Mongol: he wheeled on the firmer, sandy bed and charged, lance fixed at a low angle.