Enjolras, a critical few steps behind him in this peculiar magical chase, crests the hill in time to see Bahorel throwing himself towards the stranger -- and towards two soldiers' charging horses. Throwing himself bodily into the gap, wholehearted and unhesitating, as always. There are hooves flying, and swords slashing down, and Enjolras is unarmed and too far away--

and a sword slices through Bahorel's leg--

but it slices through, without tearing fabric or flesh, without blood, without the slightest cry or flinch from Bahorel. As if Bahorel were so much smoke -- or as if the soldier and his sword were. And it's only as he pounds up to them and wheels round to face the soldiers that he sees it.

The landscape is different here: strange trees, a dusty track, new mountains. And he can, faintly, see it through the soldiers' bodies, like one of those photographic experiments Combeferre and Bahorel are both so fond of.