Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (29 page)

Forrester, watching the sudden carnage from inside the tavern, ran across to the heavy door. ‘Get that cursed thing open!’

Immediately Anthony Payne was there, prising the bar from its slots as though it were nothing weightier than a dry bulrush. He tossed the chunky length of timber away and kicked the door wide open, Forrester and the musketeers swarming past him on both sides.

Outside, the air was murky with drifting smoke and the road was slick and treacherous. It had not rained, and Forrester wondered whether it was water that covered the turf or something altogether more sinister. He reached the first man, who, he could just about tell in the darkness, was kitted in a coat of dark grey, bandolier clattering at his breast. The Roundhead’s face was shadowy, obscured by a thick beard that made the whites of his eyes glint all the more brightly. His teeth appeared then, exposed by a maniacal grin that told of a man ready to kill or die, and Forrester saw that the musket he held was pointing at his chest, muzzle out.

The shot burst forth. Forrester threw himself to the slippery ground, elbows crunching as he desperately fought to keep hold of his own weapon, empty though it was, and his heart felt as though it would surely explode as the racing ball whistled across the top of his head, snatching his hat clean away.

Ignoring the sudden wetness springing about his burning scalp, Forrester scrambled to his feet. The Parliamentarian, he guessed, would still be squinting through his own gun smoke, eagerly awaiting the prone form that would tell him of a successful shot. There was no room for delay, and he stepped into the roiling cloud, screwing his eyes into slits so that they would not water, reversing his musket as he went. Even before he could see his opponent, the Royalist captain slapped the brutish stock upwards in a speculative blow and sure enough the heavy wooden club crunched into something solid and metallic. It was the greycoat’s black muzzle, wisps still meandering from its gaping mouth, and its owner staggered backwards in shock. Forrester gave him no respite, bringing the stock to bear once more, hammering it down against the bearded man’s own musket with as much force as he could muster. The weapon jolted free of the Roundhead’s numb-fingered grip, clattering on to the bloody ground between them, and Forrester stepped in again, merciless, ruthless, jabbing the butt end into the Roundhead’s face. Lips and teeth smashed together, blood sprayed darkly over the stricken man’s beard and neck, and Forrester tossed the musket at him, one last barrage to keep him on the back foot. As the greycoat held up clawing hands to protect his face, Forrester whipped the long dirk from his belt and stepped in one final time. The musketeer wore no plate or buff leather, and the blade slipped easily through the wool of his coat. Forrester felt fleeting resistance as the honed point skittered off a rib, but he drove it onwards, forcing it through the flesh and into the chest beyond.

Forrester stepped past his victim’s body as it went to its knees, air gushing from the holed lung like giant bellows, and waded into the chaos. He still had no clue who the greycoats were. It was enough that they were the enemy. What mattered was their strength. It had been a surprise that the attackers had not surrounded the tavern and approached from all sides. They seemed to have simply disposed of his pickets and launched into a frontal assault. Perhaps that was reasonable, he considered, given the logical assumption that the Royalists were sleeping and unprepared, but now the plan had tumbled like a blazing thatch. Forrester had a sizeable force, and the greycoats had clearly hoped to pin them inside the building. But now the vengeful redcoats were out in the open, bringing their charging pikes to bear against ill-armoured musketeers, and the attacking force was shattering like a glass goblet.

Still, though, the Parliament men were putting up quite a fight, and Forrester was keen to finish it before he took any more casualties. He moved further into the fray, ducking a scything blow from a singing tuck and driving his dirk deep into his assailant’s belly. The man, a craggy-faced fellow of around forty, doubled over, clasping hands to his opened guts, desperate to hold in the slippery entrails as they snaked between his fingers. Forrester kicked him hard on the knee-cap, sending the greycoat to the rapidly blood-washed ground, and strode on, seeking the man whose death he knew would end this fight.

There he was; a slight figure, grey coat, glinting gorget and broad tawny sash giving his status away despite the night’s shroud. Forrester wiped the dirk on his sleeve, sheathed it, and drew his sword, revelling in the extra range and power it brought. He moved on through the melee, eyes never leaving the Parliamentarian officer, but a heavy-set sergeant with short arms, stumpy legs, and no neck stepped into his way, brandishing a formidable halberd.

The sergeant brought the weapon – a full foot taller than himself – crashing down in a blow that might have cleaved a bullock in two. Forrester dodged the lethal blade, feeling the air cut like butter at his right shoulder, and brought his sword across in a horizontal riposte. But as he planted his boot in the soft terrain it lost traction, slipping wildly. He slewed forward, balance all but vanished, and took a knee, stabbing at the sergeant’s ankles in a puny stroke that simply glanced off the man’s leather-clad ankle. The sergeant crowed, spittle showering Forrester’s bare, bleeding head, and raised the halberd once more.

It was then that the night went from dark to utter pitch. For a moment Forrester wondered if the fatal blow had come and he was already heading to the afterlife, but a deep, rumbling snarl, like the lions he had once seen at the Tower Menagerie, rushed into his ears and shook his ribcage. He stared upwards at the black figure that had obscured the victorious sergeant, only to see a face he knew well. Anthony Payne had swatted the sergeant’s halberd aside with the butt end of a musket and smashed his gigantic fist into the grinning Roundhead’s face. It seemed to Forrester as though the sergeant’s features had been wiped clean from his skull, such was the devastation left in the fist’s wake, and the battered man disappeared from view.

Payne stooped to help Forrester to his feet, and the captain felt a surge of relief; victory was assured, for a real, breathing, terrifying giant fought at his side. In seconds the two men were a sword’s length from the Parliamentarian commander. They were close enough now for Forrester to see that the officer was merely a stripling, a man certainly not beyond his teens and perhaps not a great distance into them. Now he understood why that first warning call had seemed so shrill, and, moreover, why the enemy had launched such a rash assault.

He levelled his blade, aiming its tip directly at the young man’s throat. ‘You are beaten, sir. Do you yield?’

The youngster’s face scrunched in a defiant grimace. ‘Never, sir! We shall never yield to base Cavalier rogues!’

Forrester almost laughed. He glanced at the sword that twitched in the Roundhead’s gloved hand. ‘Lay down your weapon, sir.’

‘Never!’

‘Christ, boy, do as you’re damn well told!’

The tone of voice seemed to have more effect on the youngster than the martial odds now firmly stacked against his beleaguered men. It was as though, Forrester later reflected, the enemy officer were a naughty lad scolded by his tutor. ‘I—I—’

Forrester waved his sword at the scene around them. ‘Enough, sir. No more should die this night.’

Gardner’s Tor, Dartmoor,
4
May
1643

The tor’s defenders had not slept. It was not the elements that kept them awake, for the breeze had been weak and the weather clement. Nor was it the impending threat of attack, for they knew Wild, though recently reinforced, would be compelled to spend time regrouping after his defeat. It had been the screams. The blood-freezing, bone-grating banshee wail of a man taken to – and beyond – what he could bear. A sound that would stay with them, seared on to the memory, for as long as they each lived. They did not know whose screams had torn the night apart, nor why such apparent horrors had been inflicted upon him, but they knew well enough from whence the sound came.

Stryker had watched the barn all night. The building, near a mile to the north and west, was obscured by the undulating terrain, the surrounding trees, and sheer distance, yet he had sat, perched on the very peak of a lone granite stack, and stared at it, guessing what terrors lay within. And then, just after dawn, he had noticed activity. It was impossible to tell what exactly was happening at first, but there were figures scuttling about the grey walls like so many ants at a rotten carcass, and his instincts told him the rising commotion meant trouble.

Now, two hours later, he still remained on his high vantage point, like a lookout in a ship’s crow’s nest, and watched the procession moving out on to the barren plain. There were twenty cavalrymen, or thereabouts. All plated in metal, all protected by shining helmets with articulated neck guards – the lobster tails – and decorated with flamboyant cormorant feathers. The small column were not bent on attack, he felt sure, for they walked their mounts with deliberate slowness, ambling from the tree line to the heath that would lead them south-eastward to the tor. Nevertheless, he had ordered his men to stand ready, taking up positions behind rock and gorse all the way down to the foot of the slope.

Once the Parliamentarians, snaking along a narrow track to avoid pot-holes, tangled brush, and treacherous bogs, were fully out in the open, Stryker was startled to realize that they were not alone. They were Wild’s men right enough, for, aside from the telltale feathers, the head of the serpent had sprouted a black pennant that left no doubt as to the identity of their commander. And yet there were three new figures, two dressed in black, one in a doublet of red and white, mounted at the rear of the column.

Skellen and Barkworth were standing immediately below Stryker’s stone platform. The tall sergeant spat a thick ball of phlegm between his boots. ‘What they playin’ at, sir?’

‘I don’t know,’ Stryker replied cautiously, squinting at the oncoming force.

‘What you wouldn’t give for Dyott’s telescope now, eh, sir?’ Barkworth reflected.

Stryker nodded without looking down at the Scot. Sir Richard Dyott had been one of the Royalist notables trapped with Stryker and his men in Lichfield Cathedral Close during the siege the previous March. His telescope had been a true godsend, allowing them to foil a particularly dangerous ambush.

The red-coated ranks waited and watched for ten minutes more as the procession traipsed ever closer. Soon they were near enough for the whinnying and snorts of the horses to be audible from the very summit of the hill, and a little while later the Royalists could even hear the lead officer barking his orders. The horsemen eventually reached a crooked tree, wind-stripped and ancient, some hundred paces from the foremost of Stryker’s musketeers, at which point the rider at the very head of the serpent called for his men to wheel round and form a long line running across the face of the tor. By the voice, the physique, and the bearing, Stryker knew that the officer was Colonel Wild himself.

‘What the fuck are they about?’ the company’s shortest man, Simeon Barkworth, muttered in his croaking voice.

‘My thoughts precisely,’ Lieutenant Burton said as he came to stand beside the Scot.

‘Summink to do wi’ them cloaked buggers,’ Skellen grunted from Barkworth’s other side. ‘I don’t like the look of ’em.’

Nor did Stryker, his sense of unease building rapidly. ‘They’re not Wild’s men.’

Burton adjusted his arm strap. ‘Dragoons?’

Stryker glanced down at his lieutenant. ‘In heavy cowls?’

‘Does seem strange, but who else could they be?’

By way of an answer, one of the hooded riders lurched from the line. He walked his horse slowly across the flat ground, halting near the foot of the slope. He was well within range of Stryker’s outermost muskets, and matches were given encouraging breath by their eager owners, though none would shoot without an order. The rider seemed to be relying on this, for he did not appear intimidated by the proximity of the weapons as he lifted a gloved hand to draw back his voluminous hood.

From his high stack, Stryker felt a strange feeling of familiarity as the man’s face was finally exposed. It was not a particularly remarkable countenance; plain skin, dark eyes, hair falling straight to his shoulders. But that long nose, hooked like a beak, seemed oddly memorable.

‘My name,’ the cloaked rider shouted suddenly, addressing the tor, ‘is Osmyn Hogg.’

More peculiar resonance, thought Stryker. The name meant nothing to him, but the powerful voice, and those huge, jutting teeth, seemed as familiar as the nose. He shook his head to rid himself of the disquiet, and drew breath to return the introduction. ‘Stryker. Captain, Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot.’

The man named Hogg tilted his head up to stare directly at Stryker. ‘I know who you are, Satan’s servant!’

For a moment, Stryker was utterly taken aback. ‘A strange choice of words, sir,’ he called back, ‘for I know you not.’

‘Oh, but you do!’

Stryker leaned over the edge of his stack to look at his senior officers. ‘Have any of you met him before?’ The resounding response was in the negative, and he turned back to Hogg. ‘I think you have me mistook for another, sir.’

The beak-nosed man shook his head. ‘Nay, sir. There has been no mistake.’ Before Stryker could reply, he stood in his stirrups. ‘Now, I command all here, in the name of the Lord Jehovah, to bear witness to His judgement!’