It was a strange time to ride, but the last light in the village had dimmed a few hours ago, and all the curtains had been drawn. Now he was sure that he wouldn’t be seen and had chosen to disappear under the inky night sky. The figure was wearing a billowing black cloak, and a silver dagger was just visible tucked into his belt. His hands were covered by thick leather gloves.

The disgruntled neighing of a jet-black stallion trailed behind him. The horse didn't belong to him, and from its sheer size he could only guess that it belonged to one of the nobles. He didn't mind stealing from them. It was hardly like they needed the dozen horses in their stables. The man straddled onto the horse’s back. He didn't have enough time to gear up, so he was riding bareback.

He forced the horse into a slow trot, until he approached the point where the path narrowed and was covered with trees. He grasped some strands of the horse’s mane as he prepared to speed up.

Suddenly, a large raven swooped down to greet him, cawing loudly as it recognised him and settled on his shoulder. He kicked the horse into a gallop, and the deafening crunch of its horseshoes on the gravel broke the silence as he sped out of the town, invisible in the eerie darkness whilst everyone slept.

_ The next morning _

Lea woke to the sound of clamoring horns and hoofbeats. She ran to the front porch, not even bothering to put on shoes, to see what all the commotion was for. The sun was not yet up, but its earliest rays cast shadows on the village square.

A troop of mounted riders stood in the center of the square, knights with green and gold heraldry she had never seen before. Their horses were broader than the ones in town, and steel swords flashed at their belts. Traveling soldiers came through Stillsbury on occasion, but never like these ones. These men were clearly on a mission.

Young enough to be curious, but not young enough to be afraid, Lea walked right up to one of the knights. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

He flipped up his visor to look down at her, revealing the reddish beard and light blue eyes of an easterner. Once he saw her face, he laughed. "You're just a girl."

"My ma says I'm a fighter," Lea protested. "You're on a mission, aren't you? What is it? Did somebody kidnap a princess?"

Another knight, mounted on a golden stallion with hawk's wings worked into his armor, trotted up next to the easterner. This was clearly the man in charge. He looked down at Lea with a mixture of impress and amusement. "We're chasing after someone," he told her, voice deep like a bear's growl.

"I knew it!" she exclaimed. "Bandits? Outlaws?"

"A man known as Blackbird," said the head knight. "A thief who works by night, kin to the creatures of darkness. He passed through here last night around midnight, riding on a black horse. Have you seen any sign of him?"

Lea thought about it. "No, I was sound sleeping. But there's a farmer up the hill who's awake at all hours. Maybe he's seen 'im." She pointed toward a small path, where the bleats and squeals of animals were audible even at this early hour.

"Excellent." The head knight nodded his head, and without a word, the others surrounded him and prepared to head toward Farmer Cass's house.

"Wait!" Lea said. "Take me with you! I wanna go on an adventure!"

The head knight turned around just long enough to look her in the eye. "Not this one," he said, a dire sound to his voice.

She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust, then sighed, kicked a rock, and went back inside. There had been something strange in that glimpse she got of the knight's eyes. They weren't brown, like a normal man's, but the cold yellow of a predator who hunted and killed for sport.

Farmer Cass was a simple man. He had only one goal in life, and it was to spend his days peacefully tilling the earth and sowing what he reaped. It was what one might call his guilty pleasure, but there was nothing guilty about honest work.

What was not his goal, was to be harassed by a couple of cocky knights on a day where he was supposed to help his cow Mathilda deliver her calf. "Looks like the ol' girl will hafta handle herself." he murmured under his breath, eyeing the loitering group disembarking from their horses with barely concealed disdain. He placed a hand on the sturdy wooden doorway to his cottage, hoping it would signal to their pea-sized brains that he didn't want them inside for tea.

"You go by the title Farmer Cass. Do I presume correctly?"

The man addressed struggled to suppress a scowl at the knights' stick-up-his-arse attitude.

"Ya do. And?" He felt a little seed of fear planted in his heart as he watched the knight draw himself up straighter, removing his helmet and tucking it beneath his arm to speak more coherently. He really didn't need to do all that. Cass could understand him just fine with it on, obscuring his hardened features that seemed to scream One wrong word and this sword will find itself in your chest quicker than you'll be able to scream.

"We have been informed by an anonymous source that you may have been the last eyewitness of our suspect. Does the name, 'Blackbird', mean anything to you?"

Farmer Cass felt his hand fall away from the doorway, hanging limply by his side. One of the horses nearby stamped his hooves impatiently, chuffing at him and blowing his straggly hair away from his face. "Well, sure I have. Anybody with they head on right know that name." He gestured in the general direction of the town. "I ain' see no stranger passin' this hill here, but ya might have better luck downtown."

The knight who had spoken previously opted to stay quiet this time, studying Cass's face like a portrait in one of those high and mighty galleries a poor man like himself had only heard stories about. He knew it was an intimidation tactic to get him nervous and jumpy, and by God it worked.

"I- uh- see..." he gulped as subtly as he could, his eyes trained on where the knights' hand rested loosely on the hilt of his sword. One wrong word and...

Those sharpened eyes, yellow like the hawks that preyed on Farmer Cass's cats, zeroed in on the movement of his Adams' apple in his throat, tracking every subconscious reaction like it would reveal the secrets of the universe to him.

"Anything else you wish to mention? Any other... rumours that might give us a helpful nudge in the right direction?" The knight spat out the word 'rumours', as if it tasted sour on his tongue. Maybe talking shit was below a noble's paycheck, something only the peasantry and the other dirty citizens of the working class participated in.

"Nun' that I can think of. Like I says, you'd be best askin' the folk down this old hill. I'm sure they have somethin' you be lookin' for."

"We've just arrived from the town below. They insisted you would have information we might deem useful. But I suppose they were wrong." Farmer Cass let loose the breath he hadn't realised he was holding in as the party turned away. The man with the strange golden sheen glossing over his eyes hoisted himself up onto one of the brilliant steeds, settling his helmet back over his head.

He made eye contact with Cass just before he lowered the face shield with a clang, urging his horse ahead of the other knights to lead them down the hill. He and his fellows soon disappeared from sight, leaving no trace they were ever at Farmer Cass's humble abode in the first place.

He trundled over to his barn, sliding open the door to find that Mathilda was accompanied by a new calf. "Well done, ya beauty. Time to get you fed." He fixed up a bale of hay by her side, before turning his attention to the darkened corner of the barn.

Farmer Cass nervously approached the corner with a bucket of grain, setting it a fair distance from the beast that lurked there. "Now, don't you go makin' too much noise, ya hear me? No fussiness in my barn."

A beautiful high-class stallion, of a breed Farmer Cass knew was too expensive for him to know, stepped out of the shadows. His body was sleek and shone wonderfully, the onyx coat reflecting and contrasting the dim lighting of the barn. His eyes were just as dark, and they seemed to hold the semblance of intelligence. Though he was a formidable creature, the man who had passed the ownership of this horse was far more menacing. Practically cloaked in danger, emanating the spirit of a man who had committed a great many sins in his lifetime.

But Farmer Cass couldn't pass up on the opportunity to acquire this breed and eventually sell it for good gold. Who knows how much more cattle he could purchase after selling this one horse?

Even if it meant he had likely just associated himself, unbeknownst to those conceited knights, to the fierce being they called 'Blackbird'.