Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (24 page)

Stryker grabbed Cecily’s arm and bolted back up the slope.

They passed a score of soldiers on their way, though this time the redcoats were in a state of high agitation, strapping on bandoliers and lighting match-cord. Stryker continually looked back and to the sides, anxious lest the attack be coming from this flank, but the crackle of firearms seemed concentrated on the far side of the hill. ‘They’re coming from the west,’ he rasped.

‘Could it not be drill?’

‘No,’ he replied without slowing, ‘the higher-pitched shots are small arms. Pistols and carbines. We don’t carry those.’

When they reached the tight mass of granite topping the tor, Stryker took a spare musket that had been loaded and primed for him by one of the men, and then halted. ‘In there!’ He pointed to the lawn corridor between the two largest stone piles. He saw the carter, Marcus Bailey, and Sir Alfred Cade’s bodyguard, Otilwell Broom, shrinking down against one of the lone standing stones. ‘You too! Get inside!’

The group made their way into the interior, Stryker in the lead, until they reached one of the small caves formed by the coming together of irregular-shaped boulders. ‘In there!’

Cecily and Bailey went first, stooping into the pitch blackness, with Broom at the rear.

‘Not you!’ Stryker snapped.

The bodyguard turned in surprise, the red inner lining of his slashed doublet flashing in the moonlight as he moved. ‘Not me?’ he spluttered. ‘Why the devil not?’

‘No hiding tonight,’ Stryker replied, a little more harshly than he had meant. He had allowed Broom to keep within the defensive circle when Wild first attacked, but that had been for Cecily’s protection, not his. This time she could keep safe within the tor, flanked on all sides by granite thicker than castle walls, and Broom was needed elsewhere. ‘Can you ride?’

‘Of course I can bloody ride,’ Broom snapped waspishly.

‘Then I have a task for you.’

‘What about him?’ Broom thrust an accusatory hand at the mouth of the cave, causing Bailey’s wan face to reappear.

Stryker looked at the carter. Even in the darkness he could see that the man was trembling violently. ‘He’s in no state, Mister Broom. With a musket in hand he’d kill one of
us
, like as not. And I’d wager he is no horseman. Bailey?’

‘C—Cap—Captain?’ the skinny man replied falteringly.

‘Stay in there. I’m trusting you to see Miss Cade is protected.’

The last comment seemed to put some renewed steel into Bailey’s demeanour, for he nodded stoically. ‘Aye, sir, you may rely upon me.’

Stryker looked back at Broom. ‘Take one of Wild’s horses from the pen. Ride south to the road, and then strike westward.’

Broom swallowed thickly. ‘To what end?’

‘Find our people, Mister Broom. Bring them back. We cannot lift this siege of our own accord.’

Broom’s eyes darted nervously left and right as though seeking some unlikely escape. ‘Can you not send one of your men?’

Stryker nodded. ‘I could. But you’re a gentleman, Mister Broom. I’d wager you’re the superior horseman.’ He stepped closer, seizing Broom’s finely upholstered elbow. ‘We need you tonight, sir. One way or the other. Pick up the reins or pick up a musket. The choice is yours.’

Stryker was both surprised and impressed when Otilwell Broom nodded. The man he had taken for a weak-hearted dandy took his hand in a firm shake, and disappeared into the night, their hopes resting on him.

Without further discussion Stryker turned, grinding the earth beneath his heels, and, gathering men as he went, dashed further along the avenue to the cave where the wagon was kept. ‘Fetch what you need,’ he ordered, not wishing to approach the vehicle himself in case a spark from his match-cord drifted free. ‘Then meet me on the west slope.’

Leaving the group to gather arms, he ran to the westernmost fringe of the tor, took a few knee-jarring paces down the slope until he reached a stout-looking boulder, waited a moment, and edged out to scan the scene. Many of his men were already in place. The hillside was awash with granite lumps, some as big as a large dog, others the size of Sir Alfred’s coach, and all ideal for defence. The redcoats had placed themselves at regular intervals behind those stones, and resting their long musket barrels on the smooth tops they were pouring fire down on to the lower ground. In amongst them were pikemen, holding out their huge spears to present a steel-tipped barrier.

But who were they fighting? At first it was only Stryker’s own men that he saw, for the glowing matches and long pikes were conspicuous all around him. Moreover, there was no thunderous rumble of hooves, no shrill whinnying or gleaming sabres. But then a shot burst forth from fifty paces away, near the very foot of the tor, and its bright fleeting flare briefly lit up the man who had pulled the trigger. A man on foot but dressed in tall cavalry boots, buff-coat, back and breast plates, and lobster-pot helmet with hinged visor. As his eye adjusted to the scene, Stryker gradually noticed more of the metallic forms advancing up the west slope.

‘Keep them back!’ he bawled. ‘Make your shots count!’

The game had suddenly changed. Colonel Wild, clearly realizing that a mounted assault against such a treacherous position would be difficult in the extreme, had plumped for an attack on foot. His men would not be comfortable on
terra firma
, cavalrymen were ever thus in Stryker’s experience, but this tactic would at least negate the granite-strewn approach and, to some extent, nullify the threat of the pikes.

‘They match our numbers, sir!’ Lieutenant Burton barked. He had scuttled from a large stone somewhere to the left, and now slammed his back against Stryker’s granite shield. With his useless right arm, Burton could not wield a musket, but had his sword drawn and ready in his good hand. ‘I count at least eighty of the bastards.’

‘He means to punch a hole right the way to the top,’ Stryker responded. He had assumed Wild would surround the tor, make his ascent on all sides, but the colonel had evidently chosen not to spread his force too thin. He would throw all his men into one all-out thrust, an iron-fisted blow that would take him all the way to the summit. ‘But they’re shooting uphill, have hardly any protection, and our muskets have greater range and accuracy.
Tell the lads,’ he fixed Burton with a hard glare, ‘I’ll personally tan the hide of any man who wastes his shot.’

‘But we can’t see the buggers well enough,’ Burton protested. ‘Only when they give fire or their plate catches the moonlight.’

Stryker twisted from behind the boulder to peer down the slope. He could see the enemy right enough, but as his second-in-command had bemoaned, they were cloaked by the night, moving like half-solid wraiths. Conversely, the Royalist defenders would have to stay close to their rocks, keep behind the protective screens as best they could, for their muskets made them vulnerable in a night engagement. Stryker generally favoured the matchlock over the firelock, because the latter was useless if its flint was knocked free, whereas should a matchlock’s firing mechanism become damaged, a man could simply dip the smouldering match into his pan and the weapon would still fire. Under cover of darkness, however, flint-sparking weapons came into their own, simply because they did not present a constantly glowing light to the enemy. The cavalrymen carried such weapons, and that was a problem.

He turned to Burton. ‘Is Barkworth ready?’

‘Sir.’

A bright tongue of flame leapt forth from lower down the slope, and Stryker instinctively flinched. The sound of splintering granite cracked somewhere behind. He peered down, eyes straining for the blue gout of smoke that must be rising in the spent pistol’s wake. There it was. He stepped clear of the rock, shouldered the musket and fired, but heard no yelp of pain, and knew the shooter must have already moved.

More shots rang out from the advancing Parliamentarians, weaving in and out of the rocks and gorse bushes like a horde of ghosts. A pikeman, waiting impotently with his steel-pointed pole for a cavalry assault that had never materialized, was thrown violently back, a carbine ball hitting his chest. Like all Stryker’s pikemen, he wore a steel breastplate, and that seemed to have saved him, for he sat upright and vomited, but when he looked up a second ball hit him, blasting away a chunk of his jaw. He bellowed like a gelded bullock, the sound sickeningly muffled through the carnage of his mouth, black blood jetting freely over his metal-clad torso. The musketeer closest to him darted out from behind a rock, dropping his weapon and hooking hands beneath the wounded man’s arms to drag him out of the open, but another spatter of shots peppered the earth all around.

‘Get back!’ Stryker shouted across at the flailing musketeer.

After one last heave on the dying pikeman’s inert body, the musketeer did as he was told and let his friend slump. As he turned, a bullet screamed close. He flinched, but the lead shot had flown wide, slamming into earth somewhere in the darkness. He looked up at Stryker, catching his captain’s eye with an expression of sheer relief. But even as the soldier offered a tight smile, his eyes seemed to glaze, his head lolled, and he slumped on to his knees. In the gloom Stryker could see the long shard of stone, kicked up by the ball, jutting from the back of the man’s skull.

Stryker turned quickly back to the slope. The swarming Parliamentarians were making slow but steady progress. This was not good. They would be in amongst the higher boulders before his men could properly pinpoint them, and then it might be too late.

Stryker put his back to the granite and shouted up to the summit. ‘Now, Mister Barkworth! Light the bastards up!’

Immediately a dozen redcoats appeared on the ridge above him. They were arranged in pairs, one man in each pair holding a large black sphere on the outermost lip of land. Stryker watched as the second man in each pair produced a glowing length of match, touched it to his partner’s sphere, and stood back. The balls, a yard in height and depth, came fizzing to life, first consumed with blinding white flame, then settling into roaring oranges and reds.

A second later, a tiny, childlike figure, dressed in grey madder wool and brandishing a short sword, emerged on the brow. Simeon Barkworth, the smallest yet most fearsome man Stryker knew, jerked his blade sharply upwards, and brought it down in a sweeping arc.

The flaming gorse faggots tumbled down the slope, brushing against rocks as they went, often coming dangerously close to the red-coated defenders. But Barkworth had chosen each one’s course well, and the tightly packed gorse, collected during the day, dried in the sun, and sprinkled liberally with black powder, plummeted rapidly down the slope, the little Scot’s obscenities screaming in their wake.

And the tide had suddenly turned. The lower part of the hillside was now bathed in warm, clear light, transforming wraiths to men, and the Royalists could see their targets.

‘Shoot them!
Fire
!
Fire
!
Fire
!’ Stryker bellowed, his order echoed all along the slope by Burton and Skellen, Chase and Heel, corporals and drummers and pikemen.

The musketeers, emboldened now, emerged from their hiding places. They rummaged in bullet bags, blew on match-cords – both ends, lest one glowing tip be snuffed out – and adjusted the bandoliers that ran across their bodies from shoulder to hip. From those bandoliers hung a dozen wooden pots, each one carrying enough black powder to prime a single shot.

Stryker involuntarily glanced back up at the biggest stacks, to where he knew the wagon waited, protected within its granite cave, and felt a wave of relief that it carried such a plentiful supply of powder and shot. Remembering his own weapon was spent, he crouched low, scuttling across to the rock where the musketeer lay dead, the splinter of stone still lodged deep in his skull. Stryker forced the disgust from his mind and jerked the shard free so that he could turn the corpse on to its back. Quickly he set about unfastening the man’s bullet bag and priming flask, dumping them on the ground at his feet before going to work on the bandolier. But his fingers fumbled unsuccessfully with the buckle and he hissed a savage curse, unsheathing his long dirk and slicing straight through the leather, allowing him to yank the belt free. Checking the first couple of powder pots, he found that they were empty, but the third was reassuringly heavy. The majority of officers in the King’s Army were unused to wielding the long-arm – at least during the panicking heat of battle – but Stryker had grown up on the killing fields of Europe where life was cruel and cheap. A place where a man became expert in as many weapons as possible, if he wanted to survive.

Moving by sheer instinct, he up-ended the musket, thumbed open the lid of the full pot, and tipped the powder into the cold barrel. As soon as the pot left his hand, his fingers were grasping a lead ball and a piece of wadding from the bag of ammunition, popping them into the muzzle. Taking the scouring stick, Stryker rammed the ingredients home, making sure they were as compacted as possible against the charge. He levelled the musket, blew on his match to keep the embers bright, and pulled the trigger gently to bring the glowing cord down on to the closed pan. Satisfied with the positioning of the match, he flicked back the pan cover, poured in a small charge of the finely grained gunpowder that the musketeer kept in his horn, and took aim.

Now, with the makeshift faggots still blazing at the foot of the slope, the horseless cavalrymen were clearly visible. Indeed, their breastplates and helmets gleamed brightly in the flame light, and it was an easy thing to pick out a man. Stryker selected one of the Roundheads who had climbed highest, sighting the black cormorant feather along the barrel, then inching the muzzle down so that it was level with the target’s midriff. He pulled the trigger smoothly, this time with the pan exposed, and the orange match-tip plunged into the powder, in turn igniting the charge in the barrel, and the musket kicked like a donkey as the ball blasted free. The harquebusier screamed as he was snatched back, tumbling down the slope from whence he came.