I could hear the sound of the hoofbeats behind me, louder than the gasping efforts of my own mount. I urged my horse to greater speed, but the poor beast simply didn't have it in him; he stumbled, and I threw myself from his back before he could collapse on me. It was a rough landing, but at least I didn't have to worry about the horse; the rider wouldn't care about him.
The bridge was close now, mere yards away, and I made a dash for it: a covered bridge, its interior darker than the night around us, but spanning the stream that marked the edge of the rider's domain.
They drew up at the last possible moment, his black horse skidding to a stop before rearing up and screaming, its hooves no more than an inch from the first of the wooden slats. The rider held his seat, seemingly without effort, saber balanced in one hand as he drew back the hand that held his decapitated head. Its eyes were blazing with a horrible orange fire as he hurled it at me.
Fortunately, I had retained my cane. A gentleman should never be so undignified as to lose track of his hat, his coat, or his cane; and my cane, when I snapped it out to the side, extended a silvered blade from the tip. I pivoted, bringing the blade up at an angle, and sliced that accursed skull in half.
The rider drew back as if struck, the shift in his weight enough to cause his horse to stagger as well. For a moment we just stood facing each other: myself unharmed and staring, and the horseman headless but turned as if to look at me.
"All right, motherfucker," I said. "Let's do this."
The Horseman raised his saber, but his mount was too close to the bridge to charge. My blade parted the beast's throat, and it dissolved into unnatural black mist before fading away entirely; the horseman landed neatly on his feet, already placing himself en garde.
That was when Geoffrey hit it from behind, with a glass bulb of oil followed almost immediately by a lucifer to set it alight. The horseman whirled around, only to get generous coating of thrown salt; that was when I ran him through with my silvered blade.
Silver and salt, oil and fire. He was an old spirit, a strong one, but he couldn't stand against that. He writhed, cutting and flailing, but his time of reclaiming heads from the living was over.
And this, my eager pupils, is why we always hunt in pairs.
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