Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (28 page)

Something in Hogg’s tone must have struck a chord, because the man’s shoulders suddenly sagged in acquiescence. ‘Broom.’

‘Well now, Mister Broom, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Please answer me this; what is your relationship to a man named Stryker?’

Broom peered into his face. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Osmyn Hogg, Mister Broom.’ Hogg casually examined the polished knot at the top of his stick. ‘And I am a catcher of witches and warlocks.’

Broom’s angular jaw fell open. ‘But I am no witch, sir.’ He lifted his arms out straight. ‘See? Inspect me, sirs, and witness a body devoid of marks.’

‘I see that,’ replied Hogg, glancing up from his stick. He shot a well-exercised look at Ventura, and the Spaniard immediately produced a long, needle-like implement from his belt. ‘But Satan is a sly fiend. A foe never to be underestimated. He has ways to hide his marks. To conceal the teats that would surely betray his followers.’

Ventura stepped forward, brandishing the needle before him, the wan light from the doorway glinting at its keen point. Broom began to shake, his legs losing their solidity, and a shrill mewing sound escaped from his throat.

In the more contemplative moments since leaving Okehampton, Osmyn Hogg had wondered at the morality of this task, at Collings’s idea that a small amount of torture and a hanging or two might expedite an end to the stand-off. He knew the task had nothing to do with witchcraft and everything to do with instilling fear into the tor’s defenders. Ordinarily, of course, the scheme would have been anathema to him, but this time things were different. This time his prize would not be spiritual, but in the shape of a man. The man he despised more than any other. He had been forced to agree to ply his trade on behalf of the Parliamentarians in return for riding into the moor with the fresh dragoons. It was, he reflected, the only way to get to Stryker. And it was eminently worth the trade.

‘Pricking is a difficult skill to acquire,’ Hogg intoned slowly. ‘One must thrust the point deep,’ he said, aping the described motions in the air with his stick, ‘twisting it as hard as is possible, levering flesh from muscle, and muscle from bone. But eventually the mark will be exposed.’

‘Eventually,’ Ventura repeated the word with chilling relish.

Hogg planted the stick hard into the stinking bird shit and leaned forward to press his point. ‘You will tell me what I wish to know, sir, or Señor Ventura will prick the very skin from your skeleton. Do you understand?’

Broom took a rearward step, slipped, and slammed into the wall behind. His legs shook, his eyes seemed like glass sceptres in the dark, and yet still he shook his head defiantly.

Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg shrugged. ‘Be about your business, José.’

CHAPTER 11

The Peter Tavy Inn, Peter Tavy, Dartmoor,
4
May
1643

It was an hour past midnight, and Captain Lancelot Forrester was ready to turn in. It had been a hard day’s march, made slow by the interminable terrain and the word, from a local drover, that a reasonable Roundhead force was stalking the area east of Tavistock. He had seen nothing during the day, and wondered whether the frightened man had cooked the tale somewhat, assuming the juicier – and, by turns, more useful – his information, the less hostile the soldiers would be. Nevertheless, it had been a painstaking march west, made all the more sullen by the failure of their task. At least, Forrester thought as he ground grubby palms into tired, stinging eyes, they had found the tavern, so that a decent repast could be enjoyed prior to their journey’s final leg.

Forrester placed his hands on the table and pushed himself up off the creaking bench. His head swooned a little, though that was down to exhaustion rather than drink, for he had only imbibed small ale this evening. The reports regarding enemy activity had disquieted him, and he had taken it upon himself to stay up late in order to keep an eye over the building. His men, however, had been allowed free rein. They had first shared a tremendous meal that earned many a hearty handshake for the landlord and his goodwife. Rose-watered loaves of soft manchet had been torn eagerly, shared about the grasping, grit-nailed fingers. Heavenly salted gammon had followed, with barley pottage and even a fresh batch of custard pies. In short, it had been a veritable feast, and the men had decamped in boosted spirits to smoke, dice, or regale their comrades with ribald stories at the big hearth.

Now, though, most were enjoying their dreams of women and home. The tavern was not big enough to support so many bodies, so they huddled in corners, slumped against the rough-hewn walls, reclined on and under the sticky tables, and snored at the tobacco-blackened ceiling beams.

‘Into Cornwall ’pon the morrow.’

Forrester peered through bleary eyes at Anthony Payne, who stood hunched in a doorway leading to one of the tavern’s rear rooms. ‘Aye, and a good thing too. It is not safe in this cursed county.’

‘For king’s men, leastwise.’ Payne stepped through to the taproom, forced to stoop to clear the lintel. He went to the counter, peered into several large blackjacks, and lifted the first one he found to be full. ‘Let us drink to Cornwall, Captain.’

Forrester rubbed his stinging eyes, and smiled. ‘To Kernow.’

The musket shot seemed to shake the very timbers of the sleepy tavern. Its ball, fired from somewhere out on the street, blasted through the window shutters in a spray of splinters that had Forrester flattening himself face down on the table. When he glanced up, he saw Payne still standing where he was, but now his meaty paw was empty and his head and chest glistened with ale. The blackjack, it seemed, had taken the bullet’s ire, plucked clean from Payne’s grasp to twirl away to the wall beyond.

‘
Down
!’ Forrester barked.

Payne ignored him, running nimbly over to the inn’s main entrance with a speed that belied his colossal frame. He wrenched the heavy door back quickly, snatching a risky look outside, before slamming it shut again. ‘Foot, sir, judgin’ by the matches.’

‘Numbers?’

‘Least a score, I’d guess. P’raps more.’

‘Whose are they?’

‘Can’t tell. Greycoats, by the looks of them.’

‘Ensign?’

‘Can’t see one.’

‘God’s wounds, man, where are the damned sentries?’

The men of Captain Forrester’s Company of Foot were stirring now, heaving themselves upright, grinding the dregs of sleep from their eyes with grimy fingers. More shots came, four or five in quick succession, cracking against the stone front wall. Another came through the thin wood of a shutter, annihilating a pewter jug that perched on a shelf above the counter.

Forrester crouched as low as he could and scuttled across to the opposite corner of the tavern. Here, farthest away from the dangerous embers of the hearth, were half a dozen muskets, loaded for emergencies and ready to kill. He snatched two up, tossing them – stock-down so that the ball stayed against its charge – to the nearest men, then turned back to take the next pair, allocating them as well. The final two he kept, dashing to the front wall, flattening his back against the cold stone to the side of a shutter. Further along the wall Anthony Payne hefted a stout length of timber into place to bar the door and shuffled along to take position on the opposite side of Forrester’s window. The captain handed one of his muskets to Payne and the big man immediately used its heavy stock to smash the shutter to kindling. An incoming shot cracked the stone a yard or so away, and they both shrank back, but a second later Forrester thrust his weapon through the remnants of the splintered wood and pulled the trigger. Everything immediately vanished in the powder smoke, the familiar stink of sulphur filling his nostrils. He had no hope of telling if his shot flew true, but at least the men in the tavern were returning fire, forcing their attackers to think twice before approaching.

‘Who are they, for Christ’s sake?’ Forrester hissed, glaring up at Payne.

Payne bent down to shove his own firearm through the hole, flicked back its pan cover and sent the leaden ball racing through the darkness beyond. ‘Buggered if I know, sir. Must’ve jumped the pickets.’

‘Clearly,’ Forrester muttered laconically as he feverishly reloaded his musket with the spare powder and shot he kept in his snapsack. To his relief the shots coming from outside seemed to be steadily more sporadic, a symptom of the attackers’ sudden need to find shelter, compounded by the fact that they now had to reload their own weapons. ‘One hopes they ain’t ours!’

‘Parliament!’ a lone voice rose up from the lull outside. It was shrill, pitched high, and Forrester wondered if they had been engaged by a force of women and children. ‘Jesus Christ and the Parliament!’

‘There’s your answer, sir,’ Payne said with a twitch of a smile. ‘I think we’re free to shoot them.’

Even before the Cornishman had closed his mouth, the first of Forrester’s redcoats began to give fire. They ran quickly to the tavern wall, either side of the twin commanders, and smashed through any window they could find, jabbing muskets out into the chill night air. The crash of so many shots let loose in such a confined space was near deafening, and Forrester could barely hear his own voice as he bellowed to the rest of his men – those bigger, stronger street brawlers who specialized in hefting the great pikes into battle – to exit the tavern via the rear door and make haste round the building’s flanks. It was dangerous, for they did not know how many enemy guns waited for them out in the darkness, but to stay cooped inside the tavern was to invite the Roundheads to simply take their time wearing the Royalist defenders down, whittling their numbers and gnawing their morale. They were stuck here, trapped and forced on to the back foot, and all Forrester’s instincts told him that it was a bad place to be.

A bullet found its way through Forrester’s window, hissing past his nose to smack into the wall beyond. His musket was finally ready to fire, and he thrust it out to face the enemy and jerked back the trigger, only vaguely taking aim at the grey figures some twenty or so paces away. Payne, still at his side, had reloaded too, and his shot immediately followed the captain’s. More musketry crackled all along the tavern’s face as his redcoats took turns at pumping lead out into the night, hoping against hope that some of their shots would find flesh.

‘That’s it, my lads!’ Forrester screamed, voice straining above the din of gunfire.

Another bullet somehow found its way through one of the windows further along the wall. It sped whip-quick through the room, cuffing the side of a musketeer’s head, taking a big chunk of skull as it went. The man brayed like a gut-stabbed ox, reeled backwards into one of the tables, and collapsed on to his back. Forrester ran back into the room, dropped his weapon and knelt beside the man. ‘Johnny,’ he said gently. ‘I’m here, Johnny.’

The musketeer peered up at him through eyes that seemed to have turned to glass. ‘Mammy?’

‘Aye, lad, it’s your mammy,’ Forrester replied, a lump forming tight in his throat. ‘I’m here for you.’

A single tear welled at the wounded man’s right eye, fattening until the lids could not contain it, and tumbling down to his ear. ‘Is it bad, Mammy?’

Forrester looked at the musketeer’s damaged head. A huge, ragged, hair-fringed hole had been torn open by the passing ball. A wide, gaping mouth of glistening blood and bone, speckled with gelatinous grey lumps beyond. ‘No, son,’ he murmured. ‘You’ll be right as rain.’

The musketeer lurched then, his torso curving upwards as though God Himself pulled at his sternum. He opened his mouth wide, lips peeled back in a grotesque mask of agony, preparing to let loose the worst cry of pain a man could muster. But no sound came. Johnny’s body suddenly sagged, thumping back on to the hard table, and all that seeped from his mouth was a pathetic stream of air.

Forrester ran his blackened fingers over Johnny’s eyes and retrieved his empty musket, returning rapidly to the window.

‘Ready, sir!’ a shout came from outside.

Forrester recognized the voice instantly and risked leaning through the window. One of Payne’s cannon-barrel arms shot out to haul him back, but not before the captain had bellowed, ‘Now, Sergeant Briggs!’

A great cheer went up outside, growing from a breeze to a gale in less than a heartbeat, and the enemy musketry suddenly ceased. Still Forrester could not make out any detail in the Roundhead ranks, but he could well imagine the scene that was unfolding out in the street. Orders would be barked by frantic corporals and sergeants, muzzles would be swivelling away from the tavern to face this new and unexpected threat, and those whose muskets were empty would be desperately reversing the heavy weapons to brandish their wooden butt ends like clubs. Because Forrester’s pikemen would soon be upon them.

‘Reload!’ Forrester bellowed, desperate to be ready in support of his pikemen. ‘Reload, damn your sluggish hides!’

Without the incoming fire, the Royalists inside the tavern felt free to hang their heads out of the windows, craning necks to the left in order to see the charge of their pike-wielding comrades. Those comrades emerged out of the gloom like a huge leviathan. A fearsome creature of flesh and muscle, topped with glinting scales and rows of lethal spines. The red-coated monster snarled oaths to the black sky with its score of voices, and then, with its phalanx of ashen shafts levelled as one, it slammed into the Roundhead flank, sweeping men asunder like pebbles dashed by a wave.