Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (25 page)

Stryker did not stop to see whether his victim still lived. He sucked in a sulphurous breath that stung his throat. ‘
Charge
!’

Like a legion of ghosts rising from the earth, the Royalist defenders left the shelter of the rocky outcrops and bolted down the slope. Some had loaded muskets, and they emptied them first, but most either carried spent firearms or swords, and they knew what their captain expected of them. Further down, the steel-encased Roundheads fired what few shots they had left, holstered their pistols and drew swords. This was to be a fight of the bitterest kind. Hand to hand, and face to face.

‘King Charles!’ Stryker roared as he pelted down the slope, boots thudding into the soft earth, heart clanging in his chest, blood rushing at his ears. He leapt a small boulder, dodged a dense gorse thicket and ducked beneath the slicing blade of the first Roundhead he met. He ran on, leaving the man to flail in his wake, and dropped his shoulder, bowling into the chest of the next enemy in line. The Parliamentarian’s broad tuck was poised for the attack, but Stryker’s sheer speed beat its arc, and the pair smashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and metal. In a flash both men were up, and, to Stryker’s alarm, the cavalryman had kept a grip on his sword during the fall. That sword now scythed the air at his face in a blow that would have cleaved his skull in two, had he not raised the empty musket to meet it. The sword hammered into the outstretched barrel, bounced clear, and Stryker brought the heavy wooden stock across to crunch into one of the trio of bars that made up the Roundhead’s visor. The thin strip of metal, hanging vertically from the helmet’s hinged peak, was no match for the bludgeoning stock, and it crumpled inwards, mangling the flesh it was supposed to protect. The cavalryman staggered back, blinded by his own blood, and dropped his sword. Stryker hit him again, this time stabbing the musket butt straight ahead in a blow that destroyed another of the bars and pulverized the recoiling man’s nose.

He moved on quickly, parrying the next man’s sword thrust with the improvised club. The blade snapped under the jarring hit, and its owner tossed the useless hilt away. But he was a tall man with a remarkably long reach, and he surprised Stryker by lurching forward while the Royalist was off balance and grasping him in a bone-cracking bear hug. Stryker felt the wind explode out of his chest as though he were a giant set of bellows, the pain of the crush amplified by the big man’s plate armour, and the strength left his arms, forcing the musket to drop to the ground. Feeling himself getting weaker with every heartbeat, he desperately searched for an escape. The only weapons he could bring to bear were his teeth, and he yearned to clamp them on to the huge enemy’s nose, but the visor was fully down. So Stryker spat. He drew up as much phlegm as his powder-dry mouth could muster and sprayed it into the Roundhead’s eyes. Just for a moment, the man’s grip faltered, and Stryker worked an arm free to reach for his belt. He jammed the dirk upwards at an angle, trying to slide it between the Roundhead’s ribs, but, even though the area was not protected by plate, he could not penetrate the thick coat of buff-leather. He reversed the blade, plunging it low, slashing down at the cavalryman’s thigh. That worked, for the grip was suddenly released, and Stryker staggered backwards, heaving air into his throttled lungs as though he were half-drowned. He realized he had found flesh when the huge Parliamentarian came at him again, for he was disabled by an exaggerated limp, one hand clamped tight over a spurting knife wound on his upper leg. Stryker lunged, ducked a wild punch, and kicked the big man on the place where the blade had entered. The cavalryman roared in pain, and Stryker kicked him again, this time in the balls. When the injured man doubled over, both hands now clutched at his lower regions, Stryker released his own ornate broadsword and plunged it deep into the Roundhead’s neck, showering them both in a fine crimson spray.

Save for the few men on both sides who had hung back to keep firing from a distance, the shooting had all but died away. Muskets and pistols had been emptied in those first exchanges, but, since the Royalists’ charge, there had been precious little time to reload the awkward pieces. And yet all around him the fight raged. Stryker’s pikemen had led the charge, finally able to ply their trade, and Stryker could see at least three skewered Parliamentarians on the slope. Most, of course, had dropped their cumbersome ash shafts after first coming together with the black-plumed assailants, instead drawing swords for the close-quarters melee. Alongside them many of the musketeers still brandished the butt ends of their muskets, preferring the heavy clubs to thin steel. It was hot, dirty, cruel fighting, where technique and training gave way to tenacity and the will to stay alive. It was the kind of fight Stryker’s men relished, and as he watched the individual duels play out all along the tor’s north-west face, he knew that they would win. Cavalrymen were not, after all, cavalrymen because they enjoyed fighting on foot. They had had the advantage of surprise and the cover of darkness, but both of those had vanished now, and they had found themselves in a pitched gutter-brawl still too far from their target.

‘King Charles!’ Stryker bellowed at the top of his hoarse lungs.

‘Stryker’s!’ another man shouted, and his call was repeated all across the tor.

They were winning, edging the Parliamentarians on to the back foot with each bloody second. Stryker saw one of the enemy plunge his sword into a pikeman’s eye, gore and fluid shooting in a stream all the way along the blade’s fuller. He ran to engage his comrade’s killer, hurdling a stone and sweeping his ornate sword sideways at the man’s head. The cavalryman turned at the last moment, his lobster-pot helmet taking the brunt of the blow, causing Stryker’s weapon to glance away. Stryker was forced to duck below the Roundhead’s own thrust now, and only just managed to bring his blade up to meet the second stab. The pair separated, circled, both blades red and glistening, hovering before one another like fighting snakes.

The Roundhead moved first, lunging forth, making a powerful play for the artery at Stryker’s groin, but the Royalist was equal to it, blocking the blade in a snapping parry and shunting it to the side. As he forced the sword away, he let his own steel slide all the way along his opponent’s until the guards met in a wrist-numbing clang. He flicked his wrist in a savage jerk that twisted the hilt from his opponent’s grasp, the weapon clattering noisily against one of the big stones, and he immediately stumbled rearward, desperate to be out of range of the scarlet blade.

And Stryker let him go, because a new order was echoing throughout the lower part of the slope, and down on to the flat. It was the order for the Parliamentarians to withdraw. Retreat.

He stood and watched the silver-backed troopers dash pell-mell down the hillside and away from the tor, exultant redcoats crowing in their wake. They disappeared as quickly as they had come, swallowed whole by the blackness of the night, gone, no doubt, to rejoin their mounts left somewhere out in the wilderness. They would be back, that much was certain. But for now it did not matter.

The Royalists had won.

CHAPTER 10

Gardner’s Tor, Dartmoor,
3
May
1643

Not a single person on the tor slept for the remaining hours of darkness. The night’s tribulations had been exhausting in the extreme, but the sudden carnage on the tor’s north-west face had put the survivors on edge, fraying nerves and keeping eyes pinned wide and watchful.

As dawn came, a new scar stood out on the lower ground to the south and east, adjacent to the ruined village. A brown blemish on the green landscape, freshly dug soil conspicuous against the carpet of heather, bracken, and grass. It was a pit, deep and wide, carved out amongst the stones and bushes of the tor. The final resting place for twenty men. Eleven had been Wild’s harquebusiers, stripped of their weapons and armour, dumped side by side in the mass grave, while the remaining nine were Stryker’s, five pikemen and four musketeers.

‘Never gets easier, sir,’ Sergeant William Skellen said as he came to stand beside Stryker. His face was gaunt, deep eye sockets sepulchral.

‘Never,’ Stryker agreed.

‘Still, could’ve been worse. If it weren’t for those burning faggots we’d have all been rotting.’

Stryker was staring absently into the pit while a team of grunting redcoats used swords, stones and feet to backfill the huge hole. ‘We have Seek Wisdom for that,’ he said without looking up. ‘What a goddamned failure.’

‘Failure, sir? We won didn’t we?’

Now Stryker met the taller man’s hooded gaze. ‘Won? We’re still trapped here like rats in a barrel, Will. Wild will replenish his forces, his supplies, his weapons. He’ll change his bloody horses and send the buggers in again. And again and again, until there’s no one left to defend this grand pile of rocks. It’s a failure, Sergeant, because it was my ambition that led us here.’

‘But, sir—’

‘But nothing,’ Stryker said, rounding on Skellen. ‘You think a fine troop of horse spends their days and nights in the middle of this bloody moor for the freshness of the air? They’re here because we’ve got their ammunition cart, and they want it back. Add to that Wild’s oath to personally geld me, and you can appreciate the situation. They will never leave.’ He turned to look up at the tor and its limp red and white flag. ‘Not while my colour flies.’

Skellen followed his gaze. ‘They’ll have a rough old time takin’ it down, sir.’

‘I know,’ said Stryker, appreciating his old friend’s stoicism. ‘In the meantime, we must hope Otilwell Broom made it past Wild’s pickets.’

They walked on, intending to inspect the entire perimeter of the tor in an effort to identify some way of strengthening their defences. But the reality blew away any vestige of hope Stryker might have harboured. The night’s violence had left him with thirty-nine musketeers and just twenty-two pikemen, not nearly enough to hold off another concerted assault.

‘Difficult to man the whole hill,’ Skellen muttered behind Stryker, anticipating his captain’s thoughts. ‘Still, least we won’t run out o’ shot or powder.’

They moved up to the flat summit, weaving slowly between a couple of jagged obelisks and up to the grassy, granite-flanked avenue that had offered such vital protection during their time on the tor. Cecily Cade was there, slumped against the wall of grey, eyes red-rimmed from powder smoke and exhaustion. To his credit, Marcus Bailey, the perpetually terrified wagon driver, was with her, still at her side as Stryker had ordered. Stryker lifted his hat to them as he and Skellen strode past. They went to the far side of the tor, acknowledging pikemen and musketeers alike, stopping briefly to offer words of encouragement to the wounded.

Lieutenant Burton stood on the north-west lip of the crest. His face was dark, a layer of soot mingling with the wispy hairs of his beard. He had removed the leather strap that pinned his withered right arm to his body, instead cradling it with his left, rubbing the chafed skin with blackened fingers. ‘Strange to think the bastard’s just down there,’ he said, nodding at the grey building half a mile away.

Stryker went to stand beside the younger man, studying the barn and the little figures that moved around it. There seemed to be a deal more activity than usual and he squinted in a futile effort to pick out the Parliamentarians more clearly, but soon gave up. ‘Plotting our downfall.’

‘Aye,’ Burton agreed. He looked up at Stryker then. ‘We’re not going get out of this one, are we, sir?’

Stryker shook his head. ‘Supplies are running short.’ He felt thankful that they still had access to fresh water, but that would not fill their bellies or give them the strength to fight.

Skellen cleared his throat noisily. ‘Beg pardon, sirs, but I should see to the lads.’

‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ Stryker replied. When he looked back at Burton, he saw that his second-in-command had turned to face the tor’s interior, staring intently at the entrance to the avenue.

‘Should a soldier marry, sir?’

Stryker was momentarily taken aback. ‘Marry? I—er—I suppose. Women follow the armies up and down this bloody land.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want her following,’ Burton responded tartly. ‘She’d be set in a house where it is safe.’

‘Safe?’ Stryker mused. ‘And where might that be?’

‘Perhaps down in Cornwall,’ Burton said with a nonchalant shrug, though it was clear that he had put some thought into such a union.

Stryker watched the young man carefully for a moment, noticing that Burton’s eyes kept flicking back to the avenue. ‘Christ,’ he said suddenly, ‘you already have a woman in mind, don’t you?’

‘And what if I have?’

‘Easy, Andrew,’ Stryker said, shocked by his subordinate’s combative tone.

Burton cast his gaze to his boots, a crimson tide flooding his hollow cheeks. ‘Forgive me, sir. I—I lost my mind for a moment.’

‘No matter,’ Stryker replied, and was surprised to find that, far from anger, he was assailed by his own wave of embarrassment, for he too had secretly coveted Cecily Cade. It stood to reason that the lieutenant would also find the girl attractive. She was a singular beauty, well educated and forthright, and far closer in age to Burton than Stryker. He forced himself to keep his eye on the barn, in case his awkwardness was etched across his face. ‘She would be quite a catch.’

Burton patted his useless arm. ‘Too great a catch for one such as me?’

‘No,’ Stryker said, wondering if he had responded too quickly, ‘of course not.’