"Look what a pretty filly we've found here," said the bald one. "Do you think we can afford her?"
"Oh, we might not even need to do that," replied his friend. "After all, a filly that runs wild doesn't have an owner that will be too worried, even if we just borrow her for a while."
"I don't have an owner at all," Bedelia said in indignant Arabic, right before she realized that perhaps admitting this was not such a clever plan.
At her statement, the men's eyes glowed with a kind of acquisitive fervor, and her heart leaped into her throat.
She felt as if she were standing in frozen water, but slowly, ever so slowly, she forced her hand down to the pocket in her trousers, the one where she kept a slender little metal canister no larger than three fingers held together.
"Oh well, of course you must let us try you," said the bald man. "If you have a pleasant enough pace, and a hot enough temperament, we can give you a good home, can't we?"
The bearded man gave a chuckle that made Bedelia a little sick, and then, faster than she thought they could move, they both grabbed for her.
She took two rapid steps back, her hand coming up smoothly as she had been taught. There was a fraction of a second where she ascertained that the orange nozzle was pointed away from her, not towards her, and then she sprayed a fine mist of pepper spray straight into her attackers' eyes.
They shouted with fear and pain, clawing at their faces, and the bearded one stumbled forward, lurching for her. He didn't find her, but he did run right into the hindquarters of the gray cob she had ducked around. The cob had had quite enough of this nonsense, and with a stamp of a rear hoof, ground the bearded man's foot into the ground.
When he screamed, Bedelia had a moment where she thought that she was going to get away all, but then the bald man caught up with her. To her dismay, she could see that while his eyes were read and weeping, it was his companion who had borne the brunt of the spray.
"You little dog," he snarled, and she was too slow to stop him from latching a powerful grip around her arm. She tried to raise her pepper spray again, but he knocked it from her hand, and when he raised his hand to strike her, she knew there was nothing she could do about it.
Bedelia raised her free arm to try to cushion the blow, but it never fell. Instead, a dark shape seemed to blot out the sun, and she looked up to see that a man astride a tall horse had captured the man's arm in a grip that looked as solid as iron.
"I would not do that if I were you," the man said calmly in Arabic, and in a strange moment of shock, Bedelia recognized the man's copper eyes. It was the same man who had calmed the black earlier, and it was that same black that he was riding now.
She was surprised, but that was nothing compared to the shock on the face of the bald man. He went ashen, and he started speaking in such a torrent of Arabic that there wasn't a chance in hell that she could understand him.
More importantly, however, his grip on her arm went limp, and she was able to twist away. The man on the horse started to say something to her, but she was too smart to push her luck. Bedelia pulled away, narrowly missing tripping over the man who had gotten the worse of the spray, and was off through the crowd.
She thought she could hear the man with the copper eyes calling after her, but she would not stop for anything.