The Noble Outlaw Read Online Free PDF Page B

was tall, with a weathered face pitted with cowpox scars.
    De Arundell rose to his feet, stooping under the damp brushwood of the ceiling. 'Let's get out before the weather gets worse,' he answered in his deep voice. 'If it snows more heavily, we'll never cross the moor. I'm not going to starve for days in this rat hole.'
    While the others gathered their few belongings and as Robert stamped out the embers of the fire, Nicholas thought longingly of the house at Hempston, his manor near Totnes in the south of the county. Though he had not been able to live in it for almost five years, he wistfully recalled sitting out-snowy weather there in the comfort of his own hearth and with his wife Joan to keep him company. Now here he was slinking from hole to hole across a desolate landscape, like a fox seeking its den. True, this place was merely a convenient refuge on the moor, but even their more permanent quarters at Challacombe were hardly an attractive domicile. If any determined sweep were to be made by the law officers, they would even have to flee from that and seek one of their other hideouts, which were little better than this crude shanty.
    Hauling his heavy woollen cloak around him and pulling up the hood, he slung his satchel over his shoulder and grabbed a heavy staff, the top weighted with iron bands to make it a formidable weapon. Leading the way past the outer wall, he emerged into the open and stretched upright, scanning the leaden sky. The snow had stopped for the moment, but a keen east wind was whipping up wraiths of white from the uneven moorland and the pinkish-grey horizon threatened a blizzard to come.
    'We've less than five hours of daylight, so let's get going,' he commanded and set off towards the south, guided by landmarks that had become all too familiar these past three years. The grotesque outlines of the tors, irregular columns of granite standing against the skyline, together with upright stones set up by men long ago, marked the tracks that only sheep and moor men could recognise. In single file, the four men trudged steadily onward, thankful that the snow was only up to the insteps of their leather boots, which had been greased with hog fat to make them at least partly waterproof.
    They marched in silence to conserve their breath.
    Though they had ponies back at Challacombe, they seldom used them for relatively short expeditions: on foot they could drop to the ground and lie invisible when either setting an ambush for unwary travellers or hiding from more powerful forces. With almost ten miles to go from where they had come up on to the high moor from South Tawton, they loped along steadily, occasionally stumbling on rocks hidden under the snow and plodding laboriously when they had to climb out of the sudden steep valleys that small tributaries of the Dart and Teign rivers had hacked deep into the moor.
    As the shortest day of the year was only a week away, daylight faded early, especially with such a heavily overcast sky. By the time they came into the final mile of their journey it was getting dark, and though for a while their silhouettes against the whiteness of the snow helped them to follow in Nicholas's footsteps, soon only their familiarity with the turns and twists of the sheep tracks kept them on the right path. Eventually they descended into a valley where a tiny glimmer of yellow light guided them the last few furlongs. Their approach was soon heralded by the deep barking of a pair of dogs.
    'Gunilda's set that old lantern outside for us, God bless her,' said Robert Hereward. Following a stony stream downwards, they passed through some bare trees to reach an opening in a low boundary wall and came into a tiny settlement of half a dozen stone huts, most of them derelict. The light had been placed on a boulder outside one which still had its roof of reed thatch. Daylight would have shown that this was tattered and rotting, but still held down against the gales by ropes slung over the top