Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (12 page)

‘Give it ’ere then, you big girl,’ Trencher said, but Scarron raised a palm and went muttering to the handcart, lifting it with the fluid ease of long practice and setting off, shaking his head with Gallic disapproval.

‘You’re welcome,’ Dobson growled after him, sharing a look of disgust with Weasel, who hawked and spat a green string onto the track.

‘Hard to think of war with springtide in the air,’ Penn
announced, slapping the bulbous end of his wooden club against the leather-bound palm of his left hand. They all carried some such crude weapon as protection against outlaws and every ten or so paces Penn would toss his club so that it turned once end over end then catch it neatly. It was a habit which Tom had been tiring of for the last two miles. ‘That was a winter I’ll happily forget,’ Penn went on. ‘Froze my nutmegs off a dozen times.’

‘Old Jack Frost did well to find your gingamabobs, lad,’ Trencher replied, shooting Tom a grin. But something else had caught Tom’s eye: a smithy, perhaps a mile away on the near edge of a clutter of dwellings spreading northwards along the fringes of woodland. There was barely a breeze to talk of but what there was came from the west, bringing with it the faint ring of hammer on anvil and dogs barking. Smoke curled into the sky, a dun smear against amethyst, and far away figures could be seen making their way back towards the village, some of them driving sheep or cattle.

‘Crafte never said we had to sleep under hedges, did he?’ Dobson said, his own club – a three-foot length of ash with a six-inch nail through its end – resting on one massive shoulder. ‘No point in waking damp as a whore’s crotch if we don’t need to.’

‘Aye, a bed of clean straw is all a weasel needs,’ Weasel said, knuckling snot from the end of his pointy nose. ‘Not much to ask.’

‘We can’t risk it,’ Trencher put in. ‘I’m surprised we’ve not met any King’s men as it is.’ He nodded towards the settlement. ‘But if we go upsetting any locals we’ll have a troop of dragoons on us in the time it takes to fill a piss pot.’

‘Then we won’t upset any locals,’ Dobson suggested with a shrug.

‘Trencher’s right,’ Tom admitted reluctantly, for he would have chosen a bed or some old straw in a barn over another night under the stars. ‘The less attention we draw to ourselves
the more chance we’ve got of getting into the city. We don’t need people asking questions. Not unless your French has improved since we left Richmond, Dobson.’

‘Can’t be so hard if this lot can bloody speak it,’ Dobson grumbled, at which de Gombaud muttered a filthy oath which Tom was relieved none of his companions understood.

‘We’ll overnight in those woods. Keep ourselves to ourselves,’ Tom said. ‘We can’t be many miles from Oxford.’ He looked up to see the first stars pulsing like embers immeasurably far above the streaks of grey cloud. ‘It won’t rain tonight.’

‘It rains much in England,’ Tristan said, the young Frenchman’s first words of English since leaving Richmond.

‘If you don’t like our rain why don’t you bugger off back to France?’ Weasel suggested, at which Tristan pursed full lips and scratched his short black beard as though he was considering doing just that.

In time, they were into the woodland and looking for a good place to make camp a fair stone’s throw from any of the smooth mud tracks that spider-webbed through the woods. Rooks squabbled high up amongst the branches of beech and oak, but otherwise there was a stillness, in large part due to the lack of wind but also, Tom sensed, because it was the twilight hour, when the daylight creatures make themselves scarce and those of the night have yet to venture out. He and Scarron hefted a corner of the handcart on their shoulders whilst Trencher and de Gombaud held a handle each out above their heads because this was easier than pushing the thing over root tangles, deadfall and brambles. And by a big storm-felled elm from whose prostrate yet still living trunk sprouted a row of healthy new branches, they made camp for the night. As it had fallen the tree had wrenched up its roots along with a great circular clot of mud and this whole mass had mossed over, creating a wall behind which they could shelter. Penn soon had a fire going and small beer was being poured into cups and even the ass seemed happy enough relieved of its burden and
tethered the other side of the fallen elm. Pipes were thumbed full of tobacco and lit and Tristan, who it turned out had no small skill for concocting something almost delicious from basic provisions, had won himself two new friends in Dobson and Trencher by the time the last light seeped from the world and the woods were given to the night.

And none of them had thought there would be blood.

Tom was woken by someone prodding a finger into his right shoulder. He opened his eyes to see de Gombaud’s square face much too close to his own.

‘I don’t sleep,’ the Frenchman whispered, so that Tom could smell tobacco on his beer-soured breath. ‘Not enough to drink,’ he said, answering Tom’s glaring eyes as to why he was not snoring along with the rest who lay beneath blankets, their feet towards the fire that still popped and spat, working its way into a thick oak limb. They had not set a watch; had not thought it necessary, but Tom now suspected he’d got that wrong. ‘People are here,’ de Gombaud hissed, eyes wide, jerking his chin off towards the direction in which the great elm had fallen. ‘They are … sneaking. Don’t want us to listen them,’ he said, tugging an earlobe. Tom pushed himself upright, noting that Trencher on his left and Penn on his right were as still as the dead. His heart was buffeting his breastbone, his lungs clenching on their breath to allow his ears to scour the night. Then, without another word and still crouching, de Gombaud brushed past Tom’s left shoulder and scrambled over the fallen elm out of the reach of the fire’s glow and was gone.

‘Will, wake up,’ Tom growled, grabbing hold of the two-foot-long cudgel he had carried in his belt since Richmond. The smooth ash was warm in his hand and he felt anger bloom in his gut, rising and spreading through his limbs with the promise of violence. ‘We’ve got company, Will,’ he hissed, knowing it was true though he had yet to hear or see the interlopers in the flesh. In a heartbeat Trencher was awake, his club in his hands,
and Tom was waking Penn when the unmistakable click of a firelock being cocked stopped him cold.

‘Don’t move. Don’t even piss yer breeches or ye’ll be pickin’ bits o’ brains out yer muzzles.’

‘Ballocks,’ Dobson muttered, sitting up and scratching his bushy beard and taking in the sight before them. Five men stood in their camp, their wild-looking faces sheened by the fire’s copper glow. The one who had spoken had a face as thin as a hatchet and looked as though a stiff breeze might knock him down. But he was the one holding the pistol and to Tom’s eyes his thin arm looked steady enough that if he pulled the trigger Tom’s insides would adorn the fallen tree behind him.

The other outlaws were armed with crude-looking blades but for one who held a blunderbuss, a weapon to inspire fear because, although it was short like a handgun, its bore was almost an inch, greater than a musket’s.

‘What do you want?’ Tom said. ‘We have nothing worth stealing.’

‘Talk again and we’ll kill the lot o’ ye and piss on yer corpses,’ Hatchet Face said, the skin stretched tight across his cheeks so that he looked like a living skeleton. Tom glared but held his tongue. ‘My friend’s dragon has seven balls down its throat,’ the outlaw said, jerking his pistol across towards the grey-haired thief holding the blunderbuss. ‘’Tis his greatest pleasure in this world to fire the thing. He’d rather wave that thing around than put his cock in a nice warm notch, so ye don’t want to be givin’ him any reason to tickle its trigger.’

The grey-haired man hawked and spat a gobbet into the fire, where it sizzled as he grinned like a fiend waiting at Satan’s elbow for a sinner of his own to torment.

Hatchet Face gestured for one of his other accomplices – a boy, perhaps even his son from the look of his long thin face – to go and see what treasures might be waiting for them in the handcart and he hitched across the clearing all but dragging a lame leg behind. The other two took this as their cue and edged
closer to their victims in a move that spoke of long experience, their blades pointing threateningly, and Tom saw that all of his companions were awake now, rubbing eyes and trying to make sense of their situation.

‘Tools,’ the boy said, opening a sack to let the fire’s glow reveal its contents. ‘Hammers, chisels and the like.’

‘We’re stonemasons,’ Scarron said. ‘Our tools are all we have. Without them we cannot work.’

Hatchet Face turned his pistol on the Frenchman. ‘Ye speak when I tell ye to speak, ye foreign bastard.’

‘There’s nothin’ else, just tools,’ the boy said disappointedly.

‘We can sell ’em,’ another outlaw said, his sword favouring Dobson and his ballock dagger pointing at Tristan who was closest to the wall of roots and earth ripped up from the ground.

Hatchet Face shot the man a withering look for stating the obvious, then looked back to Tom whilst gesturing with the pistol’s barrel towards the empty bedroll between Dobson and Scarron. ‘Where’s yer friend, hey?’

‘He’s got the shits,’ Tom said, as though that was answer enough, and the thief glanced off into the woods over Tom’s head, teeth worrying the crooked line of his lips. Then he swept the filth-stained cap from his head and held it out like a beggar expecting charity.

‘We’ll have yer coin and finger rings if ye please,’ he said. ‘Nipper, load that ass with them tools and we’ll be on our way.’

‘Let’s tear them apart,’ Trencher growled under his breath beside Tom and from the corner of his eye Tom saw the big man’s hand clench around the haft of the club by his side.

‘Not yet, Will,’ Tom murmured, his blood simmering in his veins, demanding savage action. But his limbs were rigid, awed by the promise of death whispered by the muzzle aimed at him, and so he denied his blood’s appeal. And yet they must do something, for without their tools they stood far less chance of gaining employment in Oxford.

‘Joe, do the honours,’ Hatchet Face said, offering the upturned cap to the man beside him, who nodded and took it, starting at the end of the line with Penn who, still sitting, emptied a fistful of coins into the cap.

The thief straightened his sword arm so that the blade’s point was a hand’s span from Penn’s face.

‘If that’s not all of it I’ll stick this cheese-toaster into your belly and give it a good twist,’ he threatened theatrically, giving the impression that he had delivered the line many times before.

And then de Gombaud came back.

The Frenchman burst from the trees behind the man with the blunderbuss and the thief turned just as de Gombaud swung something two-handed – a pickaxe – and there was a boom as the spiked curved head erupted from the outlaw’s back.

Hatchet Face fired wild and Tom felt the ball whip past his head as he scrambled to his feet and swung his cudgel at the fool who had just wasted his one shot, cracking the thief’s skull open with the ferocity of the blow and sending him sprawling.

‘Come here, you scab!’ Trencher roared, throwing himself after another outlaw who had turned to flee, and Tom looked across to see the other swordsman backing off from Scarron, Weasel and Dobson who were edging towards him brandishing their own crude weapons.

‘The boy!’ Tom growled but Penn was already leaping the elm to chase after the lad who had limped off into the woods. Trencher knocked his opponent’s sword aside and swung his club up, taking him beneath the chin with a loud crack of bone and spray of blood and teeth, and another splintered report announced Dobson’s blow to the back of the last man’s skull. The impact had likely killed him but that didn’t stop Weasel and Scarron pummelling his body until it must have been no more than a bag of blood and broken bones.

Vaguely aware of Trencher beating a man to death, Tom walked over to where Hatchet Face lay. The man was moaning
pitifully, his whole world reduced to a swirling maelstrom of confusion and pain, and Tom hated him even more now because it was all over far too quickly and Tom’s blood-lust had not drunk deeply enough.

‘Got the little runt,’ Penn said, a hand snarled up in the boy’s lank hair, hauling him back into the clearing. ‘I’ve seen old timber-toed veterans run faster,’ he said with a grin.

‘Is that your boy?’ Tom asked Hatchet Face. The man moaned incoherently. His eyes were rolled back into his cracked skull to show only their whites. ‘Is the lame boy your son?’ Tom asked again and this time the thief moved his head in what might have been a nod. Tom leant in close so that his mouth was against the thief’s ear and he could smell sweat and fresh blood. ‘I’m going to cut his throat open,’ Tom said. Hatchet Face gurgled and groaned and it was a subtly different sound, different enough that Tom guessed he had understood.

He pulled the knife from Hatchet-Face’s own belt, stood and walked over to where the thin-faced lad stood pissing in his breeches. Weasel glanced at Penn and grinned wickedly. Penn frowned, gave a slight shake of his head and turned away.

And Tom cut the thief’s throat.

DE GOMBAUD WAS DEAD.
The grey-haired thief with the blunderbuss had been quicker than he looked and turning on the Frenchman had given fire just as de Gombaud’s pickaxe spike had punched into his chest and out through his back. The thief had died instantly but at such close range his fearsome weapon had done for the stonemason, spewing a spray of lead that had exploded fully half of the Frenchman’s head away in a spatter of bone and gore. And yet somehow the man had lingered a while with his brains exposed to the night and his left eye, cheek and much of his jaw gone. His body had endured until just before dawn, clinging to life that was far beyond its ambition. Then, with them all gathered around, the dying man’s young companion Tristan weeping silently, de Gombaud’s chest had risen, fallen, and had not risen again.