The Black Horseman

Chapter 13

                                                                                    XIII

Tar Navarra rode into Solarii just after midnight on a dirty brown sway back he was forced to appropriate in Millvale. The horse, if you could call the beast that, was the best readily available animal in the town, and he could not waste time searching about for something better. He reached Solarii in a very bad mood, and to make it worse he was challenged, albeit briefly at the gate. Though the guards there said nothing, Navarra could feel their eyes going from him, to the horse and back. They undoubtedly were laughing at this very moment. Navarra tried to put it from his mind as he headed directly to the stables. No one was up at the moment, but it took only moments for him to find a stable boy sleeping in one of the empty stalls. Navarra kicked him on the upper thigh.

“Who…” the boy yelled, immediately alert. He sat rubbing the wounded spot on his leg, an angry retort on his lips, but he wisely closed his mouth when he recognized the Executioner.

“Saddle my horse,” Navarra ordered with a glare.

The boy stood up quickly. “Which…”

“Chaos. Have him ready in ten minutes,” Navarra barked, though Chaos was a mare. “I’m going to find something to eat and collect my dogs.”

The boy blanched at the thought of the large canines, which followed the Executioner about at times. The dogs were well trained, but whenever he was close to them he could swear they were salivating for a taste of his flesh, wanting nothing more than to attack and eat him. He got to work right away.

It was near one in the morning when Navarra finally left Solarii again. Chaos, a big dapple gray mare, trotted easily into the night with Vesania and Furia, the dogs, trotting along behind. Navarra would have liked to sleep, but the girl was already a full day ahead of him and he wanted to be back at the Fultan estate before noon tomorrow. He would travel another hour or so to an inn outside the hamlet of Danbridge. It started to rain before he was half way there and so he arrived cold, wet and angry.

He pounded on the door and woke an innkeeper named Lou, who was smart enough not to protest. In turn, Lou woke his son to rub down the horse. The dogs, much to the innkeeper’s dismay followed the large man dressed in black inside and up to the room at the top of the stairs. Lou started a fire as Navarra took off his wet clothes and hung them on a rack to dry.

“Wake me at sunrise,” Navarra said as the man was leaving. “Knock. If you try to enter they will kill you,” he added, motioning to the dogs. They happily jumped up on the bed as the Executioner climbed under the covers. He found sleep immediately.

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Samantha arrived at Stanton Falls nearly an hour before noon, and though Nancy and Bane could use the rest, she still chafed at the thought of not moving on. She could feel the Executioner coming, and for the thousandth time wished she had put an arrow in him instead of his horse. With a sigh, she dismounted and allowed both animals to drink and then she led them a short way to a field where tiny new shoots of grass were just appearing. She hobbled them so they wouldn’t wander too far and then moved back to the falls. Stanton Falls were not high as waterfalls go, only about twice the height of a man, but the river was wide and the falling water created a thunder of noise making it impossible to hear anyone approaching. She moved onto a flat, damp rock far enough from the falls so that she would not get overly wet from the mist created by the falling water, then she knelt carefully on the water’s edge. She put her hair completely in the cold water to rinse off some of the dirt from her travels. She combed her fingers through it and when her hair felt relatively clean she twisted it dry as best she could then moved out into the meadow. She took the short ropes from the legs of Bane, but stayed near him in case she had to leave quickly.