"Use us in other ways?" Phaedra asked innocently, controling her restive warhorse with practiced ease. Mounts bred for combat were not always ideal for such formal tasks. The smell of steel and leather made the horse brace itself for battle. What the beast made of the envoys perfume she had no idea. The envoy glared at the Miravet commander with beady hatefilled eyes. In Atvari society women lived highly proscribed lives undert the control of fathers and husband all of their lives. Even a widow would find herself under the thumb of an adult son.

"You debased Imperial women are suitable only for Atvari recreation," he sneered.

"Right but you have some plans for us after that first thirty seconds right?" Phaedra asked with an angelic smile. Both of her cataphracts snickered and Brasidas' pair made choking sounds as they tried to stifle their own laughter. The envoys pudgy face went white with fury and he lifted his fly whisk and struck at her. Things started to move very fast. A spatha, and the huntress knew how Thalia had drawn it so quickly, flashed down and intersected the envoys wrist. The overhanded blow lopped the hand from the envoy with the delicacy of a pairing knife cutting away an apple core. The envoy shrank back, his eyes wide and flicking from the bleeding stump to the severed hand that lay in the dust, still clutching the fly whisk. 

"Freedom is that way!" Phaera shouted to the bearers of the envoys palanquin. By now the occupant had begun to scream and the Khareeds whose reactions seemed slow but in truth had taken less than a second, were drawing their own weapons. The slaves stared at her with wide eyes, then one of the great black men dropped his pole and bolted across the dirt. The others hesitated for a second but the fleeing man shouted something in his own tongue. Whatever it was the remaining slaves dropped their poles and joined him in flight, spilling the envoy to the ground.

"Charge!" Phaedra shouted, knowing there was no way they would outrun the cavalry bows of fifty Khareeds. Suiting action to word she whipped out her own spatha and kicked her horse forward. Not that she needed to have bothered, the warhorse knew the smell of blood even better than that of leather and steel. The stallion rode over the squealing envoy, seeming to take a murderous pleasure in trampling him under hoof as it leaped forward. Thalia, the cataphract who had started the fracas already had her sword out and followed at Phaedra's side, Alkmini, her second bodyguard, was only a second behind, taking position on Phaedra's right. As she had hoped the sudden charge through the Khareeds into disorder. She stabbed her spatha down into the neck of one of the great stallions and then yanked it free, turning the momentum into a back hand cut which knocked another rider from his mount. At nearly five to one odds, their only chance was to drive through the enemy and confuse them long enough that the rest of the army could even the odds. Fortunately horns were already blowing back at the village and armed riders were already beginning to race across the three hundred yards towards the one sided fracas.