Their dress and
arms, their uncouth cries and wild assault, marked them as
banditti--such men as had slain the Englishman upon the road.
Waiting in narrow gorges with a hidden rope across the path, they
watched for the lonely horseman as a fowler waits by his
bird-trap, trusting that they could overthrow the steed and then
slay the rider ere he had recovered from his fall.
Such would have been the fate of the stranger, as of so many
cavaliers before him, had Nigel not chanced to be close upon his
heels. In an instant Pommers had burst through the group who
struck at the prostrate man, and in another two of the robbers had
fallen before Nigel's sword. A spear rang on his breastplate, but
one blow shore off its head, and a second that of him who held it.
In vain they thrust at the steel-girt man. His sword played round
them like lightning, and the fierce horse ramped and swooped above
them with pawing iron-shod hoofs and eyes of fire. With cries and
shrieks they flew off to right and left amidst the bushes,
springing over boulders and darting under branches where no
horseman could follow them. The foul crew had gone as swiftly and
suddenly as it had come, and save for four ragged figures littered
amongst the trampled bushes, no sign remaining of their passing.
Nigel tethered Pommers to a thorn-bush and then turned his
attention to the injured man.
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