The Rider from Rohan

                Leomen halted his gray stallion, Winfel.  He scanned the plains around him.  To his surprise he saw a lone man walking slowly north.  It surprised him because hardly anyone ventured on foot through the northwest corner of Rohan.  Leomen hesitated.  There was something strange about this traveler in black.  An eerie feeling crept into the back of his mind, but Leomen shrugged it off.  Even if this man posed a threat, Leomen had the advantage.  After all, the stranger was on foot.  And how competent could he be if he doesn't even ride?  He thought. 

            Leomen spurred Winfel forward towards the man.  He halted three paces in front of the man.  A black cowl covered him from head to toe.  He slouched feebly and rocked from foot to foot.  He fidgeted uncontrollably and Leomen wondered if the man was ill.  The man kept his head down and didn't look up even when Leomen asked his name. 

            "Who are you?"  He repeated himself.  Leomen didn't know whether it was annoyance or curiosity that drove him to edge his horse forward.  "Are you deaf man?  I said who are---" 

            But at that moment, the man lunged at him with a sword in hand.  Leomen recoiled by instinct alone.  He only had time enough to unsheathe a foot of his sword before the once haggard man bore down on him.  Leomen partially deflected the blow that would have decapitated him had he been on foot.  The brute's slash opened Leomen's right side and sent him sprawling to the tall grass. 

            Leomen rolled to free his sword and stood up hastily, but it wasn't the pain of his wound that brought him to his knees, nor was it another deadly advance by the cowled man, but the sight of the savage upon his horse galloping away.  His horse had been stolen.  Leomen knew he would never catch him. 

            When Winfel vanished from his sight, Leomen finally felt his wound.  He sat down and studied it.  Normally, his shirt of mail would have reduced the wound to a scratch, but not only had the cowled man's swing been swift it had been powerful.  The wound was deeper than expected, but he'd survive.  Leomen was more worried about his horse and about his own future, for what was a Rider without his horse?