We must fend for ourselves and for Kit.
That was my justification.

I leaned from my saddle towards Croisette--I was riding by his side--and muttered, as I felt my horse's head and settled myself firmly in the stirrups, "You remember what I said?
Are you ready ?" He looked at me in a startled way, with a face showing white in the shadow: and from me to the one solitary figure seated like a pillar a score of paces in front with no one between us and it.

"There need be but two of us," I muttered, loosening my sword.

"Shall it be you or Marie?
The others must leap their horses out of the road in the confusion, cross the river at the Arembal Ford if they are not overtaken, and make for Caylus." He hesitated.

I do not know whether it had anything to do with his hesitation that at that moment the cathedral bell in the town below us began to ring slowly for Vespers.