Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (46 page)

‘Here, Tom, she’s cut but she’ll live,’ Penn said, mounted and leading a stocky dun mare by the reins. Tom saw that his friend had also collected his blankets, knapsack and carbine from his dead horse, for which he was relieved because it meant he did not have to see the poor beast with its brains leaking from its skull.

He thrust the wheellock into his sword belt and took the mare’s reins, putting his hand near her muzzle so that she might smell him and whispering soft greetings though his body still trembled with the battle fury. She had taken a cut on the forehead between the poll and the eyes, so that her fair forelock was stained red. Gently and with a shaking hand Tom parted the animal’s mane to reveal an open bloody gouge that looked horribly painful though she was steady and uncomplaining.

‘You’ll be fine,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘we’ll see to this soon, brave girl.’ He looked up to Penn. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, then adjusted the stirrups, loosened the saddle girth a touch
and mounted. And that’s when Trooper Dike, alone at the crest of the rise, began to shout.

‘Pikes and muskets! Too many, sir, and coming with purpose!’ Dike pulled his horse round and came down the slope, his single-bar pot doing nothing to hide the horror in his face.

Penn cursed. He was not alone, as men grabbed powder flasks, took spanners to wheellocks, put helmets back on or pulled face guards back down. Tom looked across at Colonel Haggett, expecting him to order the retreat.

‘Form up!’ Haggett yelled. ‘For the love of God form up now!’ And so they did, making three ranks of seventeen with the colonel out in front, and, leaving their dead and wounded behind, rode in good order up the furze-strewn slope. And when they got to the highest point, which Tom could now appreciate was the tip of the northern spur of the escarpment, there was a collective murmur from the men, cut with no few prayers. For an army was coming to take the hill.

Someone let out a soft whistle.

‘God’s fucking teeth,’ another man growled.

‘There’s not less than five hundred men down there,’ Bowyer said. Now the colonel did not look so sure and nor was Tom surprised given the sight before them. Three troops of foot were doggedly marching up the escarpment to the beat of their drums. A company of pikemen made the centre with a company of musketeers either side. On the enemy’s right flank rode the remnants of their horse, those troopers with which Haggett’s men had already mingled that morning.

‘We cannot hope to hold this hill,’ Colonel Haggett announced, scratching the new bristles on his sallow cheek, his eyes fixed on the advancing enemy. ‘Not against that.’

Tom turned from the immediate threat and glanced westwards, down to where Parliament’s regiments moved in cumbersome masses, some of their ensigns unfurled to greet the new day and whatever fate lay in store.

‘We could give ’em a volley at least, sir,’ Trencher suggested.

The colonel shook his head. ‘On that ground we won’t be moving fast enough,’ he said, ‘and any such volley would receive too vehement a reply. They would shred us.’ Nervously, he rubbed his mare’s poll. The animal snorted and nickered. ‘No, we’ve done our best here but we cannot hold.’

‘With respect, sir, we’ve got to damn well hold.’ It was Corporal Mabb and he did not look any more eager for a fight than Haggett, and yet there he was pressing for one, a well-worn resignation engraved in lines on his old face. ‘The bastards’ll haul cannon up this hill in half a sparrow’s fart once that lot are standing here where we are now. And if they get guns up here,’ he said, thumbing to the west, ‘our lads down there will take a rare drubbing.’ He leant over, hawked and spat, then looked at his companions. ‘I don’t know why our betters never thought to take this hump before now, and God knows I wish it weren’t us sitting atop of it this morning, but seeing as we are, it’s up to us to keep it.’ He sniffed, turning back to Colonel Haggett. ‘Sir.’

Haggett grimaced and looked back towards the King’s men coming up the slope. There was a man whose conscience was on the rack, Tom thought.

‘I’ve seen that face before,’ Will Trencher murmured beside Tom, ‘in a painting of Abraham taking his only son for a walk up the mountain.’

‘This hill’s as good as an altar,’ Penn said with a shrug. ‘Besides, God saved Isaac at the last. The Lord will provide.’

‘The Lord will watch us kill them,’ Tom said, willing Haggett to stay and fight, for Corporal Mabb was right. If the enemy took that hill they would put their big guns on it and those guns would sing and the day might be lost. No battle, no fray. And Tom needed the fray. He fed upon it. Only in the fray might he wreak his vengeance against man and God. Only in the slaughter might his enemy, William, Lord Denton, be put before him and thus might Tom kill the father as he had killed the son.

‘We must hold them off for as long as we can, sir,’ Tom said.

‘Don’t presume to tell me my job, trooper,’ Haggett snarled, ‘and that goes for you, too, Corporal.’

‘With respect, sir, it ain’t just your job,’ Corporal Mabb dared. ‘We’re here to fight. For God and Parliament. Ain’t we, lads?’

One or two ‘ayes’ but nothing convincing, even given Mabb’s popularity within the troop. Tom supposed most of them would rather ride away before the advancing infantry took ten more steps. Let the hill be someone else’s problem.

Mabb lifted his face guard and put a leather flask to his lips. ‘We can kill some of the buggers,’ he said, taking a swig.

‘Another word and I’ll have you on a charge, Corporal,’ Haggett blurted, his close-set eyes boring into the older man.

‘Corporal Mabb is right. We can bleed them, sir,’ Tom said. ‘If we thin them they’ll most likely retreat. Regroup to consider their options. That will buy us time to send to Lord Essex for reinforcements.’

‘You’d have us ride against pike, Rivers? Are you mad?’ Haggett glanced at his men but only for a heartbeat, his desire for their approval outweighed by the need to make the decision alone, to lead well men who needed leading.

Tom shook his head. ‘I’d have us ride away from them, sir. Just over this brow. Let them think we’ve seen sense, that they’ve scared us off.’

‘But?’

‘But we’ll be waiting. Just out of sight on the reverse slope. We’ll lie flat until they’re almost at the crest and then we’ll tear them apart with a volley.’

‘You’d let ’em practically stand on us?’ Crathorne said.

‘Like an adder in the grass,’ Trencher put in with a savage grin.

‘But we ain’t bloody infantry,’ Ellis Lay said, beardless chin jutting. His horse was savaging the bit in its mouth, eager to run. ‘It ain’t our job.’

Tom shrugged. ‘They’ve got muskets. We can’t match them at range.’ He pulled the two pistols from his boots to make his point. ‘But up close we’ll give them reason to think again.’

‘And if they keep coming?’ Colonel Haggett asked.

‘Then we mount and leave them the hill.’

‘What if they send their horse before we have time to mount?’

‘They won’t,’ Tom said.

They might
, he thought. But the horse flanking the infantry coming up the hill towards them had already bled that morning, had already lost a score or more dead or wounded. And Tom thought that their commanding officer would rather see the foot do a share of the work before sending his men into another fight.

‘Damn it but I have already lost too many. Including a fine young corporal.’ Colonel Haggett was talking to himself, looking at the oncoming enemy, torn between duty to his cause and duty to his men, and for a moment Tom pitied him. He knew that deaths of the likes of Corporal Laney weighed heavy on Haggett and Tom was glad he was not an officer with an officer’s responsibilities. Nevertheless …

‘We must hold this hill,’ Tom said, ‘whatever the cost.’

Haggett made no sign of having heard, his eyes fixed upon the musketeers and pikemen below, his teeth worrying his thin bottom lip. But then he nodded.

Tom saw Trencher close his eyes and offer up a prayer, the spiritual communion no doubt petitioning the Lord’s assistance in the coming butchery. Matthew Penn looked at Tom, one eyebrow lifting as he dipped his head, a gesture that said
good luck
and
kill well
all at once. Dobson mumbled a filthy curse into his unkempt beard.

‘If I get killed up here I’ll blame you, Rivers, you goddamned carbuncle.’

‘No fear of that, Dobson. There’s a length of rope waiting somewhere for you,’ Tom said, at which the big man grinned savagely and cursed again.

‘Fall back!’ Colonel Haggett called, circling his arm above his head. ‘Fall back!’ For a moment Tom feared he had judged the colonel wrong, that Haggett really was going to leave the spur to the King’s men. But then their eyes locked, just for an instant, and Tom saw, for the first time since he’d known the colonel, hard resolve. A purposefulness charged with the acceptance of grim violence and possible death. ‘We will hold this hill for as long as we can,’ he said loudly enough for those around to hear and those further away to get the idea of what he intended, as his troopers turned their mounts, showing the enemy – who were just about in musket range now – their backs as they moved off the crest.

‘Keep coming, you swaggering bastards,’ Tom growled down the slope, then hauled his mare round and joined the others, some of whom had already dismounted and were pulling pistols from saddle holsters.

Then the colonel told a man named Meshman, who had a slashed right arm from the earlier tangle with the King’s Horse, to ride back to Lord Essex or Sergeant-Major-General Skippon, or else the first senior commander he came across.

‘Tell them that Colonel Haggett would deny the enemy the advantage of this hill, which could prove of crucial importance in the coming battle, for as long as is humanly possible. Press upon them that we must place cannon on these heights before the King does.’

The man nodded, turned his horse and galloped off westward, back across the furze-covered escarpment towards Parliament’s army.

‘Lucky bastard,’ someone murmured after him.

‘No man shall say we did not do our duty this day,’ Haggett said, as much to himself as to his men it seemed.

‘Bloody duty? Not very inspiring, is he?’ Dobson muttered, wincing as he pushed his hands into the small of his back, stiff from riding, and riding poorly at that, he’d be the first to admit. ‘A drop of brandywine would put more fire in their bellies.’

‘They’ll stand,’ Tom said, handing the reins of his horse to a young, pox-scarred trooper named Jeffes, one of eight men whom the colonel had tasked with holding six animals each steady until the order was given to retreat in the face of the enemy. This left just forty-three men crouching or lying on the dew-wet grass out of enemy sight over the crest of the round hill. Forty-three against not less than five hundred, Tom reflected. But those forty-three had borne hardships. Through battle or disease they had been halfway to Hell’s gates and they had endured. Furthermore, whatever Tom thought of their commanding officer they were loyal to Haggett and respected the man. They would have followed his lead instead of Tom’s that day in the woods with Parliament’s silver had the colonel not been struck down with fever.

‘If they don’t it’ll be a shambles,’ Trencher said, grimacing as he lay awkwardly on his belly, the ridge of his breastplate digging into the ground.

They’ll stand, Tom thought. And if they were lucky they would survive.

‘We’ll give them one good volley. Two if we can,’ Colonel Haggett said, gripping his pistols in claw-like hands. ‘The slope is steepest just below the ridge and that will slow them, giving us more time than it would seem.’

The enemy’s drums were louder now, their monotonous beat seeming to swell and lift up and over the crest.

‘If ye haven’t already, now would be a good time to double shot those pistols,’ Corporal Mabb said, stirring a flurry of activity as nervous hands fumbled at drawstrings and pulled out cold lead balls.

It was a good idea and so Tom went about double shotting his own firelocks. Given that every one of the forty-three troopers waiting in the wet grass had two pistols, that meant a volley of eighty-six bullets. Nearly half the men had carbines too, several taken from the dead – theirs and the enemy’s – that very morning. If every man double shotted his weapons,
which, given the slope and the proximity of the enemy when the order to fire came, was a good tactic, they would send a hail of around two hundred and twelve lead balls ripping into the densely packed ranks. Enough to get themselves noticed, Tom thought.

Then, in contrast to the flat beat of the drums, an insistent thin piping drew Tom’s eyes heavenward. A pair of red kites high up against the iron-grey sky, soaring gracefully, oblivious of the carnage soon to be unleashed below. Or perhaps not oblivious at all. Perhaps waiting, Tom thought. Sent by some higher power to bear witness to man’s folly.

‘They’ll feed on more than worms and sheep carcasses today,’ Trencher said, following Tom’s gaze as he wound his second wheellock. He passed his spanner to Tom who used it to wind the wheellock he had taken from a dead Cavalier earlier. Then he thrust the pistol into his baldrick where it sat snug against his breastplate.

‘Well they’re not getting me,’ Penn said. ‘Let them have the King. For his tyranny and his hubris.’

‘And his damned taxes,’ Dobson said. ‘The haughty bastard.’

‘No one is to give fire until I say,’ Colonel Haggett called, looking left and right along the firing line. ‘No one will show themselves until I give the command. It is imperative that we do not give ourselves away until the very last.’ He caught Tom’s eye then. ‘Until they are almost upon us.’ Tom gave an almost imperceptible nod, approving the instruction, for holding fire until face to face with the enemy was how Prince Rupert won every cavalry encounter he fought in. It took an iron nerve but it could be done.

Haggett looked about to give another command but thought better of it, for beyond the crest the enemy was close enough that their stink, of sweat and damp wool, stale pipe smoke and worse, filled Tom’s nose. The drums were a dogged, incessant noise now, threatening to drown out a man’s very thoughts. But that was good, Tom thought, because the Cavaliers would
not hear the nickers, snorts and neighs of the twitchy horses being held less than twenty paces behind their position.