It was the agonized whinny of my horse, and the jolt of my body righting itself automatically from the plunging animal beneath me, that made me realize we had ridden straight on a chevaux-de-frise. I yelled, cursing, shouting to Karamy to get back, get back, but her own momentum carried her on; I saw her light body fly out of the saddle and disappear. The others, rounding the curve in a wild dash, were fairly on the barrier already, and the place was a bedlam, a scramble, with riderless horses milling in a melee of curses and the screaming of women and the threshing of feet. I was out of my saddle in an instant, thrusting Gamine's mount back from the stabbing points fixed invisibly against the dark barrier in the road, shouting to Evarin and Idris. Evarin leaped to my side, catching at Karamy's wild horse, while I tore madly at the barrier where the woman had been thrown. Idris bore down on me, mounted. "Go round!" he shouted. I plunged through the underbrush at the side of the road, with hasty feet twice snaked by long creepers. Past the barrier, the road lay open and deserted, and Karamy lay in a shimmer of crumpled silk, motionless. "Gamine, Evarin--" I bellowed, "No one's here! Quick, Karamy is hurt--" The head and shoulders of Idris' horse thrust through the thick brushwood. "Is she dead?" the dwarf muttered. I bent, thrusting my hand to her breasts. "Her heart's beating. Only stunned. Get down," I ordered. Idris scrambled, monkey-fashion, from the saddle. I lifted the woman in my arms, but she did not move or open her eyes. Idris touched my arm. "Put her on the saddle," he suggested, and together we laid her across the pommel. Suddenly, the dwarf cried out. "What?" I asked sharply. "I hear--" I never knew what Idris heard. His head vanished, as if snatched away by a giant's hand; a rough grip collared me, choking fingers clawed at my throat, a thousand rockets went off in my head and I lay sprawling in the brushwood, eating dust, with an elephant sitting on my chest and threatening hands gouging my throat. My last coherent thought before the breath went out of me, was-- "I'm waking up!" CHAPTER SIX Narayan But I wasn't. When I came to--it could only have been a few seconds that I was unconscious--it was to hear Evarin snarling curses and Idris barking incoherently with rage. I heard Karamy screaming my name, and started to answer, but the steely fingers were still at my throat and with that weight on top of me, I hadn't a chance. The fall, or something, had knocked Adric clean out of me. I was fuzzy-brained, but sane. I was an innocent bystander again. I could see Evarin and Idris in the road, casting wary glances at the brushwood all around them. I could just make out the face of the man who was holding me pinned to the earth with his body. He had the general build of a hippopotamus and a face to match. I squirmed, but the threatening face came closer and I subsided. The man could have broken me in two like a match.