Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (33 page)

‘Sir, your orders?’ Laney said, at last seeming to find his backbone. Others too, some of them struck with the disease, yet busied themselves with wheellocks and back-and-breasts, jaws set in grim determination to discharge their duty in protecting the carts’ precious cargo.

For a moment Haggett watched them, a flash of pride in his
sunken eyes. ‘I will not let my men die here,’ he said, finding his own resolve albeit a resolve not to fight. ‘I will not see my command cut down, these brave men murdered.’ He turned those eyes back on Tom, trembling with rage or fever. ‘I am no Varus,’ he spat. ‘My bones will not lie here to be picked clean by birds.’ He looked up into the canopy through which dawn light was beginning to filter and then put his hands before his face as though he expected rooks or crows to dive down and savage him with their beaks.

‘You would give up the coin without a fight?’ Tom said, the accusation of cowardice running like a cold current through the words.

The colonel stared a while longer at the foliage above, then seemed to shudder as though he had been struck. ‘Look around you, boy!’ He pointed a skeletal hand at three of his men who had not risen but still lay shivering in their blankets, their own night soil gleaming wetly beside them. ‘You expect them to fight?’

Tom did not, but there were at least thirty men who
could
fight and if each fired two pistols at the right moment, such a volley might be enough to see off the enemy.

‘The Earl of Essex will expect us to fight,’ he said, ‘and so will the men to whom this silver is owed.’

‘Who are you, boy?’ the colonel snarled, cracked lips pulled back from his teeth. ‘Who are you to tell me what I must do?’ He shut his eyes tight against some pain in his head and turned to Corporal Laney who was glancing nervously over Tom’s shoulder as though he expected Prince Rupert to gallop into their camp followed by his monstrous hunting poodle, Boy. Instead it was Trencher who forced a way through the blackthorn, grimacing as a barb gouged his right hand.

‘They’re close,’ he hissed, thumbing back the way he had come. ‘But they haven’t seen us yet. Might go straight by.’ He sucked the blood from his hand. ‘Might not,’ he added.

‘I will offer our surrender … seek terms,’ Colonel Haggett
said, bending to pick up his sword, but Tom kicked the weapon away and the colonel stumbled and fell onto all fours, arms trembling and elbows threatening to give way.

Round-mouthed, Corporal Laney raised his pistol but Trencher snatched it off him and shook his head, wagging his finger.

‘How dare you?’ Haggett said, still looking at the floor, his voice as weak and tremulous as his body.

‘You can barely walk, sir,’ Tom said, ‘and you are not fit to command.’ Tom sensed Haggett’s men drawing in, armed now and likely to kill him for his insubordination, and he almost smiled at that thought, of his defying this Parliament colonel. Of his being a rebel amongst rebels.

‘Take your positions to defend the carts,’ he snarled at the troopers, eyes raking them, daring them to defy him. Trencher, Dobson and Penn bristled, weapons raised. Despite their hodgepodge war gear they had all the aura of seasoned killers, something not lost on the nearest of Haggett’s men, Tom saw by their conflicted expressions.

‘You will hang, boy,’ the colonel muttered, then attempted to rise but fell again. Corporal Laney tried to help him but Haggett shrugged him off and lay back on the forest litter shaking, grimacing like an old skull.

‘Do your damned work, Corporal,’ Tom hissed, ‘and get these men into their positions. No one is to give fire unless I give the order, is that clear?’ Tom eyeballed the young corporal, who, to Tom’s surprise, nodded and turned to his fellows.

‘Our charge remains the same,’ Laney whispered to the troop, ‘to see this coin safely delivered to Thame.
I
am in command now, and you will not give fire until
my
order.’ He glanced at Tom then and Tom nodded in acceptance, knowing, or at least hoping, that the young corporal would still look to him when the time came. Then Haggett’s men hid themselves as best they could, crouching behind brambles and thickets and the thick trunks of oak and beech. Some, including those too sick to fight, positioned themselves behind the carts which were covered with
foliage and at first glance seemed nothing more than a part of the woodland. Corporal Laney all but carried Colonel Haggett, who was barely conscious now, over to one of the carts, and then joined Tom and the others amongst the blackthorn and hazel. Lying on their bellies, carbines, wheellocks and firelocks loaded and cocked, swords unsheathed ready beside them, they peered through mean gaps in the briars at the thick woods beyond, their breathing slowed but their senses keen. Shafts of dawn light cut through a haze of mist rising amongst the trees.

Somewhere a nuthatch’s
eeen, eeen, eeen
raised the alarm, the nasal, rising notes warning of new intruders. Then a horse whinnied out there and a man growled at it to be quiet. Tom saw riders. Saw buff-coats against chestnut hide, sword scabbards, helmets and bridle fittings catching the new light. He sensed the men around him tense, sensed fingers exert a little more pressure on triggers. Knew breath was being held captive in stretched lungs.

Hold
, his mind told Haggett’s troopers, as though they might somehow hear it.
Hold, damn it! Do not fire
.

And then an invisible fist punched him in the gut. The blood in his veins turned to ice.

Mun!
His brother, mounted on Hector, was a stone’s throw away leading mounted harquebusiers through the woods. The troopers were spread out in loose order, passing almost silently through the trees with carbines and pistols at the ready, heads turning this way and that.
Mun!

The last days had been dry, so that the carts and horses had made barely an impression on the hard woodland floor, but even so Tom and his companions had done what they could to cover their tracks. And yet here were the enemy, close enough that Tom could recognize his brother and the stallion beneath him. All it would take was a whinny from one of their own beasts and they would be hurled into a storm of fire and lead.

Somewhere on Tom’s left a firelock’s cock clicked as it was pulled fully back.

‘Hold your fire,’ he hissed.

‘We could savage them,’ Trencher growled under his breath and perhaps he was right. They could open fire and some men and horses would die. But the range was still too far for pistols. Besides which, there were not enough of them to unleash a deadly volley. It was more likely that they would simply alert other enemy troopers to their position and eventually, because they could not move the carts quickly, they would die where they stood.

‘Hold your fire,’ Tom whispered to Trencher, his heart aching as though clutched by a cold hand, because his brother was there: Mun who had likely saved his life when last they met, first by finding him snow-whipped and freezing in Gerard’s Wood and carrying him down to Shear House, and then by stopping Major Radcliffe’s garrison men beating him to death.

There had also been the time when Mun had killed that big, ugly corporal – a man in his own troop – and soon after that, when he and Emmanuel had risked everything to break Tom out of a gaol, cheating the noose of Tom and his companions.

You are a fool, brother
, Tom thought now. And yet a part of him wanted desperately to call out to Mun, wished, for the first time since the war had begun, he realized, that they could be true brothers again. That they could talk of past times and be somehow removed from their situation. But still another part of Tom knew how ashamed Mun would be to see him with the rebels, could almost see the cold scorn that would harden his brother’s eyes were they to meet face to face.

Hold your fire
, his mind hissed in response to feeling those around him bristle and tense. Then he saw the reason for their unease. The Scot was there too, a little further away than Mun, his men glancing round nervously because they knew Haggett’s men could not have gone far with their burden of silver.

‘Slippery bastard,’ Trencher whispered, his weathered, pugnacious face half obscured by the thicket’s new leaves, and Tom wanted to tell him to hold his tongue but dared not speak the words and risk even the dance of his lips giving them away. Thus he kept his body and head dead still, moving only his eyes. As the riders passed their position and carried on west deeper into the woods.

MUN MUTTERED A
profanity. The sound of the jangling tack and hooves scuffing the forest litter was loud enough to wake the dead and he twisted round in the saddle to see one of The Scot’s men coming up behind them, pushing his mount through the trees as fast as he dared.

‘So much for stealth,’ O’Brien murmured, eyeing the forest around them in case the hidden enemy, prompted by the sudden disturbance, should launch an attack. Mun watched as the newcomer rode up to The Scot and conveyed his message, his horse lathered from hard riding and his own chest rising and falling like bellows. ‘Bad news by the looks,’ O’Brien said, for he too had read the blasphemy on The Scot’s lips, and Mun walked Hector over to them as the rest of the troop, seeing their officers in discussion, stopped where they were, pistols and carbines at the ready, eyes scouring the wind-stirred woods.

The Scot turned to Mun, eyes blazing. ‘Essex is coming,’ he said. ‘Haggett must hae had the wit eventually to send a rider to Thame.’

‘How many?’ Mun asked.

‘At least a regiment and more on their heels most likely,’ The Scot said. ‘Damn it but that coin was ripe for the taking.
Haggett was all but shitting through his teeth the last I saw o’ him.’

‘That silver’s hereabouts all right,’ O’Brien put in, ‘I can smell it. We can’t give up now.’

‘Lord Essex is coming up fast, sir,’ The Scot’s messenger reminded them, pressing an arm against his sweating forehead.

‘Keep the heid, man!’ The Scot snarled, then turned back to Mun. ‘Within the hour these woods will be thicker with men than trees, and all o’ them in Parliament’s employ. Even if we found the silver and Haggett’s lot lying dead beside it we’d still nae get the carts oot and away in time.’ He shook his head. ‘We cannae bide here.’

As much as he hated it, Mun knew the man was right. To stay amongst the trees was to invite chaos and disaster, and so they would have to give up the silver as lost.

‘So we’ve come all this way, my arse screaming murder, for nothing?’ O’Brien growled at Mun, teeth dragging red bristles across his bottom lip as though stopping himself from saying more. Behind him Jonathan Lidford looked crestfallen that the chance of glory was slipping from their grasp.

‘Maybe not for nothing,’ Mun said. ‘We may give up on the silver but in doing so seize the greater prize.’ He felt the blood in his veins beginning to simmer now as the scheme wove itself in his head.

‘Go on,’ The Scot said with a frown, one eyebrow curving suspiciously.

‘If your man is right then we have drawn the fox out of his den. Let us draw him further still, out into the open where the hounds may get a proper look at him.’

‘Sir Edmund, I’m beginning to suspect yer aff yer heid,’ The Scot said, yet there was a spark of curiosity against the flint of his gaze. ‘If anyone is the fox it is us, for we are shy of one hundred and twenty men. They are a damned regiment.’

Mun acknowledged this with a wry smile. ‘Then let us play the fox well and give the hounds a good run. Is it not a fine
day for it?’ In his peripheral vision he saw that O’Brien and Jonathan were grinning at each other.

The Scot was not grinning. ‘If ye get me killed today, Sir Edmund,’ he said, pressing with his left knee to turn his mount, ‘be assured I will haunt ye.’ He pointed into the air and made circles with his hand to round up the men. ‘If it means breaking oot o’ Hell to dae it.’

‘Blessed Mary, Christ and all the angels!’ O’Brien said, still catching his breath from the ride and sweating in the midday sun. ‘There must be more than a thousand of the buggers.’

‘And the rest,’ Goffe said, his ruddy, sweat-sheened face revealing a fear that was natural enough given the position in which they now found themselves. Out in the open, in the path of an army.

‘Nothing to worry about, lads,’ John Cole put in, rubbing his mare’s poll between the twitching ears. ‘We’re playing at dragoons that’s all. We’ve got the easy job today.’

For they had ridden west out of the woods onto the gently rolling land just south of the Vale of Aylesbury, one hundred and four troopers in a mostly treeless expanse, like a single hawk against the endless sky. And in front of them, like a blanket of cloud throwing its vast shadow before it, was a rebel army on the march.

‘Your damned idea, Rivers, your command,’ The Scot said as the men milled about them, soothing their mounts with calm voices, checking weapons and muttering prayers up to the pale blue sky. ‘I’ll not sacrifice my men or His Highness’s but I’ll play yer game awhile.’

Mun nodded, pulling Hector round to face the troopers, his heart hammering with the thrill of what he could do, what death he could sow amongst the rebels with over one hundred good men such as these were. But this enemy was no troop of horse or column of foot. This was an army. There would be pikemen, musketeers and horse, and so there could be no
blood-rushing charge, sword and shot carried into the enemy’s heart. Not today. Not unless the rebel horse came at them.