From Proclamation: Poetry will be the death of me:
“Thirty riders cantered along the bank beside the ditch, their horses’ breath hanging heavy in the chill air before it gradually dissipated into the never-ending mist.
Their short capes fluttered behind them, but all else was still. As still as death. Even the trees hung limply, their branches weighed down with rivulets of moisture that slowly trickled down their gnarly twigs and across their glistening leaves, until in a near constant stream the droplets took a final plunge towards the earth or perchance another intervening leaf.
Last night, in the inn beside the crackling fire, the ale-soaked talk of Celtic warriors rising from their waterlogged graves to prey upon unwary travellers had seemed childish and fey. But now the men shivered and spoke only occasionally and even then only in tremulous whispers, fearful of attracting unwanted attention. The horses tossed their heads, spittle flying from their muzzles and the whites of their eyes showing as they picked up the nervous tension from their riders.
At a signal from the leader, three men angled away toward a forlorn manor house, perforce leaving the bank and crossing the waterlogged field, their mounts immediately slowing their pace to a high-stepping trot. Each hoof fall was a splash and each step a sucking squelch as the leg was pulled from clinging mud.
The men flailed at their horses’ flanks to keep the tired beasts moving forward until they rode gratefully into the yard of the house.
Belying his aches and pains, the shortest of the three leapt down, quickly pulling a sheet of paper from his saddlebag. Two swift blows and he had nailed it to the door, the hammering echoing off the banks of mist as though a dozen ghostly carpenters were mocking his efforts.
Without waiting for a response from the occupants, the man remounted, swinging himself back up into the saddle, and the trio cantered away from the house, following its own farm track toward their compatriots on the relatively dry bank.”