Dacre's War by Rosemary Goring Read Free Book Online Page A

entry. A net had been thrown over the town’s head, and it remained only to drag it tight.
    Street by street, as the sky darkened, the raiders pressed back the townsfolk, fighting hand to hand and setting alight every house and cottage and hut in their path. After an hour, almost as many English bodies littered the town as those of Jeburgh’s people, but where Dacre could afford to lose hundreds, the town could not.
    By nightfall the place was destroyed. The screams of the dying had ceased, the air was gritted with smoke, and the only sounds, as Dacre departed, were falling timbers, and the whistling whine of fire as it licked from one turfed roof to the next. The crimson glow of the abbey lit a scene of desolation, and brightened his way better than a torch as he galloped after his men.
    Their encampment was safe on a hillside some miles out of town, yet it was here that the baron’s fears came to pass. Anxious in case his night-time visitors returned, he lay beside his brothers, staring through the canopy of trees at the stars. The sky shimmered with lights so serene and comforting one would have thought that all was at peace with the world below. A barn owl swooped overhead, a pale blur against the oaks, and was heard hooting throatily from nearby. Lulled by the owl’s crooning, the baron’s eyes closed. He had fallen into a profound sleep when the woods around him came alive.
    There was a crackling and snapping of breaking branches, a wild rustling of undergrowth disturbed, and a pounding of earth so thunderous it was as if the trees had uprooted themselves and begun to march. Dacre and his men rose sluggishly, slow to make sense of what was happening. Only when they heard the cry ‘The horses are out!’ from lower down the hill did they understand.
    The loosing had been brutal. Hooded figures had pulled up the palisade posts, cut the ropes, and got between the horses. The beasts had shifted uneasily and begun to trot out of their compound, skirting the bodies of the murdered guards. More had followed, but not fast enough, and the robbers had lost patience and started to yell. Whips were cracked, flanks were lashed, and the horses were terrified into flight. Stamping upon each other in the rush to escape, they surged out of the corral, biting and kicking all within reach in their bewilderment and fear.
    By the time the camp awoke, the palisade was emptying fast. The ground trembled under panicked hooves, the terror so great it could be smelled. As the stampede gathered pace and men began struggling out of their bivouacs and reaching for weapons, their shouts were lost beneath the roaring of the animals’ flight, their passing as violent as if they were warhorses on the charge.
    All this was heard in the camp, yet nobody could see what was happening. Blundering through the forest, Dacre and his men reached the palisade and looked in dismay at the empty, trampled grass. Those beasts that had managed to escape the round-up careered through the trees, a danger to the men and to themselves. Some were later caught, others were lost for ever. These were the lucky ones.
    Farther up the hill, the horses were driven on by the thieves, who shrieked and wailed like banshees. ‘After them!’ cried Dacre, and the swiftest of his men were soon in pursuit, following the path the beasts had beaten, leaving behind the scent of broken pines and sweat. The chase had barely begun when it became clear what was happening. This was no robbery. It was far uglier than that.
    The galloping hoofbeats were far ahead of the baron’s soldiers, growing fainter as the distance between them increased, when a new noise cut through the night. Beyond the forest, across the hill, came high-pitched, helpless screams. They came not from one horse, or ten, but from wave upon wave, until it seemed as if every one had emptied its lungs in horror as it plunged to its death. Dacre’s heart clenched. His horses were