Mithos put his head down and I felt his muscles clench across his back and shoulders. Then, as if waking from a nightmare and finding that reality was just as bad, I felt the rolling leap of the horse as it powered forward like a tidal wave. We were charging them.

The three soldiers in front of us were almost as surprised as I was, but they recovered rather quicker. As I clung to Mithos’s waist, barely daring to look around him to see what was happening, they formed a tight line across the street. Mithos raised his sword and dug his heels into the mare’s flanks. She leaped on, but she was distracted and scared. I doubted she’d try to break through all that muscle and steel. Not that I could really blame her.

The impact, when it came, was more of a thud than a crash. The soldier in the middle panicked and dropped his spear as the horse’s great breastbone barreled into him and sent him sprawling. The man on his right held his position but abandoned his lunge to defend himself from Mithos’s fearsome sword strokes. The other stabbed at us from my left with his spear. Crying out in terrified desperation, I kicked wildly at him.

He dodged my boot, like someone avoiding a wasp, and stepped back. This was no retreat, however, but a way of better picking his striking spot. His spear was poised in his right hand, pulled back and ready to plunge into me with full force as I sat there with no weapon or armor to protect me.

With a cry of aggression, the product of a dubious marriage between horror and bravado, I flung myself on him, falling from the saddle and sending him sprawling backward.