We were taken wholly by surprise whereas our assailants were ready and agreed.

For a moment it looked like a rout for us, our horses and mules rearing and kicking, our whole caravan in confusion, jammed together higgledy-piggledy, with all our attackers headed for the carriage, mistaking Marcia for Greia.
Marcia never screamed, never moved, sat still and silent, apparently calm and placid.
They all but dragged her out of the carriage.
In fact we should indubitably have been frightfully mauled and Marcia carried off had it not been for Murmex and Tanno.
At first onset Tanno had yelled explanations; but almost with his first yell he rolled out of his litter, snatched a spare pole from a relief, and with it laid about him; Murmex did the like.

The two of them, one on the right of the litter and carriage, the other on the left, bore the whole shock of our attackers' first rush and alone delayed it.
Somehow, probably by Tanno's orders, perhaps by their own instincts, the reliefs with the other poles handed them to Hirnio and me as we dismounted.

Three of the clever blacks caught our horses and Murmex's.
Others detached the poles from the litter and the four biggest bearers seized them and used them vigorously.
Thus, actually quicker than it takes to tell of it, eight powerful, skillful and justly incensed men on our side were plying litter poles against the cudgels of our attackers.
I was severely bruised before I warmed up to my work; when I did warm up I laid a man flat with every blow of the pole I wielded.
When my adversaries had had a sufficient taste of my skill to cause them to draw away from me, as far as they could in that press of men, horses and mules, and I had cleared a space around me, I looked about.
Agathemer, light built as he was, had wrenched a bludgeon from some Vedian and was wielding it not ineffectually.
Hirnio was doing his part in the fighting like a gentleman and an expert.
But Murmex and Tanno chiefly caught my eye.
It was wonderful to see Tanno fight.

Every swing of his pole cracked on a skull.