Never mind swords.

Those rascals are not worth it,' shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the passage brandishing his heavy thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and the next moment recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged in--and surged out again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined force of his weight and arm, hewed his way straight through them, felling a wretch at every blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.
They were but just in time.

The four white blood-horses were plunging and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild monks clutching at him.

'Monks again!' thought Philammon and as he saw among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril's courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through him.
'Mercy!' shrieked the miserable Prefect--'I am a Christian! I swear that I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!' 'Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch! Tear him out of the chariot!' yelled the monks.
The craven hound!' said the Amal, stopping short, 'I won't help him!' But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.
'You are safe, my lord; don't struggle,' whispered he, while the monks flew on him.

A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he was safe.