‘Ah, hell.’ She kicked the horse, and it chose that moment to rear, dumping her off onto the ground. She hit her head and lay for a moment, stunned, and the dress the giant still held unwound from around the heavy roll of silver.She lunged for it. Maybe she could still escape on foot.
Several things appeared to happen at the same time, as the girl made a weak attempt to flee with the horse, got shaken off by the perturbed animal and in the folds of the dress on Cedric’s arms gold came to light.
Mordred saw the movement of the young woman out of the corners of his eyes and quickly he jumped forward, grabbing her by the upper arm, pulling her backward. “Forget it, girl,” he declared coolly, fingers pressing into her skin, holding her tightly.
“Don’t be so stupid… they are going to kill you,” he whispered sharply into her ear, “And I bet this is not what you want…”
The other men yelled with delight, crowding around Cedric who held the gold high into the air, a fat grin gracing his quite handsome face.
“You can have a fun time trying,” she hissed back at the one holding her — the man the others had seemed to defer to a little bit. Well, some sort of deference, anyway. There was a weird edge to it, of unwillingness. The words were sheer bravado — spinning her magic out right now was out of the question. There were too many for either skill to take on, and it would be entirely too obvious to nudge the leader in her favour — not to mention she still wasn’t sure which man /was/ the leader.
“Do you propose to protect me?” she added, then, ceasing to struggle.