Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (34 page)

‘But, sir—’ Skellen protested.

‘Why are we here, Sergeant?’ Stryker cut across him.

Skellen, sat on his captain’s right side, long legs stretched out in front, scratched a spot on his rough chin. ‘’Cause old badger ballocks wants our wagon.’

Stryker raised a hand to his own chin, noting how the unkempt stubble had now become a short beard. ‘He wants the wagon
we
took from him.’

‘That’s war, sir,’ Skellen retorted firmly.

‘Aye, but we took it on my orders. We kicked the hornet’s nest on my word, and they’ve chased us up this damned tor.’ He thought of Hogg then, and of Broom’s pathetic corpse swaying in the breeze, and of Cecily Cade’s juddering sobs as the witch-finder accused her of witchcraft. ‘And now Osmyn Hogg and his Spaniard are here, threatening all with the noose. And that is most certainly not war.’

‘Well, like I said,’ Skellen persisted doggedly, ‘Wild and Hogg and their bloody diego chum can go and stick their noose where the breeze don’t reach.’

‘Well said, William!’ exclaimed Stryker’s other sergeant, Moses Heel. He leaned across to slap Skellen on the shoulder, but looked at Stryker. ‘The men are with you, sir.’

Stryker nodded his thanks, only to turn and catch sight of Andrew Burton for the first time. His second-in-command had been sitting on his blind left hand, and out of Stryker’s field of vision until now. Burton’s expression was stony in the extreme, pallid and tight, his eyes fixed on the woods. ‘Something vexes?’

Burton turned to face his captain. ‘It is no matter, sir.’

‘Andrew?’ Stryker pushed, unconvinced.

Burton chewed the inside of his mouth for a second, screwed up his face as he considered his next words, then gazed off into the middle distance. ‘May we speak later?’

Stryker nodded, suddenly feeling a strange sense of disquiet. ‘Of course, Lieutenant. Come and find me when the time is right.’

‘I will, sir, thank you.’

‘We’ll face Wild’s guns, then,’ Skellen said suddenly, tone artificially jovial.

Stryker blew out his cheeks. ‘Aye. Seek Wisdom warns they come soon.’

‘Where is he?’ Skellen asked. ‘Ain’t seen him since he led Barkworth down that coney hole.’

The intimation was stark, and Stryker had a hard time masking his own concerns. ‘The old palliard made it very clear he wouldn’t be back with Wild’s cannon on their way. And Barkworth will be free and on his way to Launceston.’ He studied the woodland where Gardner had said the tunnel ended. ‘I’m certain of it.’

Rushford, Devon,
6
May
1643

‘Get yer bliddy arses movin’, damn yer pox’n eyeballs!’ the burly sergeant bawled, spittle flecking the wiry bristles of his auburn beard. He levelled his vicious halberd, prodding the long-staffed weapon’s blade – point at the centre, axe on one side, and billhook on the other – at the air close to the prisoners’ backs in undisguised threat. The dozen greycoats, marching in front of their Royalist captors, picked up the pace in bovine obedience.

‘They move so damnably slow,’ Captain Lancelot Forrester growled as he watched the snaking column at the roadside. ‘We have made dire progress. It is like herding bloody elephants.’ Angrily he tamped his pipe. ‘What was it the Bard said about delays?’

There was a giant at Forrester’s side. A man almost two feet taller than the sandy-haired captain, with limbs like the masts of a man-o’-war. ‘Delays have dangerous ends,’ he replied in a tone that made Forrester’s chest vibrate.

Forrester craned his neck to glance up at Anthony Payne. ‘Quite right, sir.’ He shook his head, irritated by his own slip in knowledge. ‘This damned task has my mind fogged, I swear it.
Henry VI, Part
2
, eh?’

‘Part
1
,’ Payne corrected.

Forrester’s tamping became quicker. ‘Damned mission.’ In truth, the mission to locate an important man on Dartmoor had not been his mission at all, but Payne’s. But that did not stop Forrester’s feeling of irritation, of anger, at its failure.

‘But you are in the right of it, sir.’

‘Oh?’ Forrester grunted as he thrust the clay pipe stem into his mouth.

‘The delay is not ideal.’ Payne dipped a vast hand into his snapsack and drew out a desiccated piece of meat, tearing a piece off with his front teeth.

Forrester located his tinderbox as Payne chewed, and lit the pipe. The tobacco was cheap sotweed, not the kind he would normally favour, but it was all he had left. Nevertheless, when the smoke billowed into his lungs, it was a welcome feeling. ‘You’d rather be away to Stratton,’ he said on his cloudy out-breath.

Payne swallowed the meat. ‘I would, sir.’

Forrester nodded. Of course the big Cornishman would prefer his home to traipsing back to Launceston with the red-coated men of Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot, but Forrester had insisted that he and his six men remain with the larger force. Forrester had less than forty under his command after the bloody scrap at Peter Tavy, and, now that he had a significant number of surly prisoners to escort, it was imperative that he maintained as strong a unit as possible. He had agreed to head south and west, pushing back towards the main road to Cornwall now that they were beyond the dangers of Tavistock, but that would be his only concession. He sucked on the pipe again. ‘You’ll be free to head north as soon as we find a garrison capable to taking this raggedy bunch.’

Payne was clearly unhappy, but, now that their original mission had ended in abject failure, any power he had held was now forfeit. Forrester was the sole officer here. ‘Understood, sir.’

The final rank of redcoats filed past them, followed by Payne’s half-dozen. Forrester upturned his pipe, tapped the bowl so that the contents scattered over the muddy road, and thrust it into his snapsack. ‘Let’s see if we can’t pick up this snailish pace.’

‘Just fucking go round, you buffle-’eaded lummox!’ a voice boomed from further along the column.

‘What now?’ Forrester muttered, leading Payne up the road, striding rapidly past the ranks that had suddenly come to a complete halt. He eventually came to the head of the marching force, where the sullen greycoats, stripped of weapons, coin, and food, were milling uncertainly before a massive tree that had fallen across the road. The bearded sergeant, eyes bulging with ire, was still screaming at them to walk around the wide spread of branches, but the sides of the road were almost entirely smothered in wicked thorny gorse, and the Parliamentarians were not inclined to negotiate such an unforgiving gauntlet.

‘Cap’n, sir,’ the sergeant said as he saw Forrester, snatching off his hat in quick salute. ‘Road’s blocked.’

‘I can see that, Briggs, thank you.’

Sergeant Briggs planted the hat back atop his thinning pate and pointed at the gorse hedge with his halberd. ‘Bambry buggers won’t go through, sir.’

A young man, barely more than a child, pushed his way to the front of the down-trodden Roundheads. ‘Have you no shred of honour, sir?’

‘Have a care, Lieutenant Jays,’ Forrester said.

‘You cannot ask my men to wade through these needles,’ Jays went on indignantly. ‘I really must protest.’

Forrester wagged a reproachful finger. ‘Hold, Reginald, or I will toss you in there myself.’ Sergeant Briggs smirked, and Forrester turned to him. ‘Get some of our lads over here.’

Briggs’s jaw slackened in consternation. ‘But, sir, you don’t mean to—’

‘So that they might cut through this wretched barricade with their tucks, you dull witted oaf!’ Forrester snapped.

Briggs blushed, nodded, and set sharply to work.

Forrester drew his own blade and, along with the men Briggs had corralled, began to slash at the vicious foliage. A gap rapidly began to open, a breach in the armoured bush that soon deepened, becoming a passageway the width of three men. The air was alive with the sounds of scything steel, grunting men, and rustling undergrowth.

But suddenly a strange new sound could be heard. It was a low, guttural growl, like an ale barrel being dragged across gravel. Forrester ignored it at first, determined as he was to make inroads into the dense gorse, then unexpected movement caught his eye. The redcoats must have noticed it too, for, as one, they stopped, straightened, and turned to stare at the road.

The toppled tree, vast, sprawling, and ancient, was moving. Its massive branches shook, leaves fluttering on to the road in their droves, and as though a great miracle occurred before their very eyes, the soldiers saw light emerge between the broad trunk and the road.

Lancelot Forrester stared goggle-eyed at the scene. He watched as the tree slowly rose into the air, hovering at the height of a man’s waist. Vacantly he sheathed his sword and sketched the sign of the cross over his chest. ‘God’s blood,’ he heard himself say.

It was then that he saw the man. Stooped as he was, straining against the huge trunk around which his arms were hooked, the figure was still a colossus. He trembled with the weight, face scarlet and etched deeply by lines carved from the strain, yet the tree kept rising. And then he roared, a visceral, pain-wracked explosion that sounded more lion than man.

‘Help him!’ Forrester shouted suddenly, startled into action by Payne’s scream. ‘Get in there and help him, damn you!’

Ten redcoats dropped their blades and shoved their way through the clawing branches to thrust palms beneath the trunk. Alone they could never have hoped to budge the tree, but together, with Anthony Payne at the very centre, the once immovable bar slowly started to shift. It moved just a fraction at first, stubbornly refusing to shift, but then, amid much howling and straining, backs slammed against the bark and heels dug deep in the earth, it began to swing away from the road.

The men had to run with it, for the sheer momentum of the huge object would certainly have crushed any who might have thought to rest, and finally, with one last bellow from Payne, it had moved sufficiently to unblock the thoroughfare.

The ten redcoats scuttled clear of the trunk and branches, the rest crowed their delight and, with a crash that might have woken the hounds of hell, Anthony Payne let the tree smash to the ground.

The Royalist infantrymen applauded. They raised muskets and swords in salute to the unmatched power of Anthony Payne. He was immense, terrifying, but he was theirs, and they knew the war would be won with men like him in the king’s ranks.

Forrester shook his head in disbelief, joining the applause and grinning with his men. ‘Glad I kept you!’

Payne, bent low with hands on knees, heaving air into his huge chest, glanced up at Forrester with a wry smile. ‘Glad I could help, sir.’

The shot rent the air with a shocking crack. Forrester spun instinctively away from Payne to face the greycoats, drawing his sword once more. He fully expected to see the Parliament men in open revolt, having snatched muskets from their guards as the Royalists cheered their Herculean champion. But there they stood, huddled nervously together, as mesmerized by the enormous Cornishman as their captors had been.

‘Down there!’ a voice called from somewhere to the rear of the column.

The men near the tree turned as one at the alarm, seeing a wispy pall of smoke drift clear of a musket barrel, its shooter pointing into a stand of trees further back along the road. Another musketeer, evidently the one to have issued the warning, was pointing at those same trees. ‘He’s there!’ he shouted again. ‘I seen ’im!’

The man who had fired lowered his weapon, looking at his mate. ‘Did I get the bugger?’

‘Dunno, Clem. Diff’cult a’tell.’

‘Report!’ Forrester barked as he reached the rearguard.

The shooter stood rigid, staring at a point somewhere beyond his captain’s shoulder. ‘Bein’ tailed, sir.’

‘By?’ Forrester snapped. ‘Colours? Numbers?’

‘Dunno, sir.’

The second musketeer cleared his throat nervously. ‘Didn’t see, sir. There’s someone down in them oaks though, sir. I saw ’im move back when Clem shot.’

Forrester angrily shook his head, hoping his over-eager men hadn’t just holed an innocent local. ‘Get half a dozen of the boys together, Musketeer Pett. Get down in that copse and flush this fellow out.’

‘That’s six lads you’ll be buryin’ then, Captain!’ came a shout from within the trees.

The musketeers immediately twitched their weapons level, muzzles wavering out in front, searching for the target.

But Lancelot Forrester stepped in front of his men, presented the formidable broadsword, and ordered them to hold their fire. He marched a little way down the slope towards the copse. ‘You really think you could take all six?’ he called in the direction of the dense canopy.

The voice came back, loud but hoarse. ‘Don’t you?’

And Captain Lancelot Forrester beamed, because he knew that voice as well as any. Harsh, constricted, and in a broad Scots brogue. ‘What the devil are you doing here, man? Come out and show yourself.’

The low-slung branches of the copse began to rustle, eventually parting like a pair of leafy drapes. And from beyond the tree line stepped a tiny figure. An adult, certainly, dressed in the grey wool of the Scots Brigade, but a fellow whose head would not have reached Anthony Payne’s waist.