The horses plunged down into the stream as the melee evolved, hooves kicking up sprays of cool mountain water. Natasha thrust her spear into a boar headed monstosity with four sets of disturbingly human arms. The spear buried in the things chest too deeply to recover and Natasha let it go. She pulled the carbine from her saddle, and fired it point blank into a human headed beastman with enormous porupine like quills instead of hair. It rocked back, skull split and quills blazing from the muzzle flash, filling the air with the stink of burning keratin. Screaming a kislivite battlecry she reversed the weapon in her hand and stove in the skull of a beastman with the butt before thrusting it back into its saddle tie.

"Up! up!" she yelled to Marius, the whirl of combat had slowed them and a stag headed beast, braying like an angry bellows, tried to grab Konya's bridle. The warhorse bit down on its hand with bone grunching force, the stag realing back and screaming in paine. Whether Marius understood her or Dagbhert was experienced enough a warhorse to do it for him, they both splashed through the river and up the other side of the bank. The second wave of beastman was almost upon them, rushing down to finish what the shattered first wave had begun. Konya didn't need to be encouraged with anything so crude as spurs. She bounded up the bank and into the second wave as Natasha unshipped her buckler and saber.  She flicked aside a rusty pitchfork and crashed into the second line, cutting down another beastman as she passed through. An arrow flicked past from somewhere out of her sight but there was no time to worry about that.

"Go, go, go!" she shouted as Marius crashed through the beastmen in her wake. The horses thundered up the rise and away from the braying beastment. She turned and scanned for the archer but it was lost in the mass of beastmen surging up behind them. There was no time to worry if Marius could keep his seat on the rough road. They charged down the road at full speed, headless of the risk. They rushed down the wood flanked trail, opening the distance between their pursuers.

"Whoah, whoah," called after ten minutes at a flat gallop. Marius almost barrled past her but she reached out and grabbed his bridle, helping to slow him down. The horses slowed, breathing hard and shivering with ammoniac sweat. They weren't spent but they had to preserve them against the need for later action.

"Is dengerus road da?" Natasha observed, wiping the blood off her saber and resheathing it. She pulled the carbine from her her saddle and methodically began to reload it.

"First baytel da? You ok?" she asked Marius.