He might have suspected the bard of something approaching arrogance, but the words were tinged with nervousness that no bravado could hide. Eragos no longer felt the same fear - he was not super-human, but after a great many encounters with his sword in hand the fear became something else. Grim determination. I have not died yet, it seemed the feeling would say, and I do not intend to begin today. Eragos could sometimes feel the stirrings of panic. It was infrequent. And it never came when he was menaced by two such as these. The knife was for a change, a surprise, and not a particularly clean way to fight. Clean combat was different from honorable combat. He had to remember that. Two against one was not a fair fight for them. Only because neither had his skill. It showed in the way they'd stripped off their armor, thinking to make themselves light. Yet their swords were heavier, longer than his own.
Two was not the trouble.
The trouble was Xias. The captain had appeared as if from nowhere, staring at them as they approached the White Rider. Yet he made no move to intervene. Thinking perhaps that Eragos would disdain to fight, or that his men would simply embarrass the White Rider and leave it at that. Xias did not know Eragos well enough to know what would happen if those soldiers pulled steel. It would be their end, because he did not leave an enemy alive to return to him. Not this far from home, with no place to put them but in the barred wagon that served as a sort of mobile cell. Not when these men had friends among the guard, friends who could release them to do foul work.
If they drew, they would die.
"You got a big mouth for a White Rider," one said as they came to a stop, some few feet away.
"Used to be a man with a big mouth had to back his own play," the other agreed.
"Disperse," Eragos told them without moving. "Or I will disperse you."
They all heard it at roughly the same time. Just that their reactions were very different. A snap, the sound of tree sap exploding in winter, shot through the air. Eragos could feel the pressure of the sound against his skin. While the two soldiers looked this way and that, checking for the source of the sound, Eragos looked up. A sliver of white energy, trembling like water, was falling from the sky. Almost as a raindrop might, but infinitely slower. Slow enough that it could be tracked instead of fading into a blur. Those soldiers followed his gaze - and then made the cleanest assumption their minds could summon.