Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (38 page)

Stryker laughed. ‘I believe you would.’

They ducked when the falconets coughed their iron round shot once more. The ball coming from the west whipped in with a hellish scream, slamming hard into the rock to their right. Wicked splinters spun in all directions, and all across the crest Stryker caught sight of red-coated bodies shrinking back lest they be filleted by the deadly hailstorm.

‘The delay,’ Lieutenant Burton’s grim voice reached him from further along the ridge, ‘was due to the ordnance. Wild wished to give those falconets time to soften us up.’

And that, thought Stryker, had worked. He might have lost only one man, but the continual barrage could not go on forever. They were too exposed on the tor, too easy a target and with little hope of rescue. Wild could bombard from a distance or advance on foot, alternating the attacks until eventually the Royalists could stand no more.

Stryker peered beyond his sergeant’s long-limbed frame to catch sight of Burton. ‘He means to throw them at us.’

Burton ignored him as he had since the pair had resumed their vigil at dawn. Burton was still the company’s second-in-command, and there was never any question as to whether he would do his duty, but the young officer had refused to look his captain in the eye even once. It was as though the bond between them had been utterly and irreparably severed.

Skellen chuckled blackly. ‘Don’t he remember what ’appened to the last lot what took a stroll up this hill?’

Stryker, still smarting from Burton’s snub, peered gingerly above the boulder, studying the approaching dragoons. ‘These are ones he can afford to lose.’

Burton clambered to his knees to watch the column. ‘He’ll use the dragooners and cannon to force us off the tor,’ he said, pointedly addressing Skellen, ‘and save his feather-heads for the chase.’

That was the size of it, thought Stryker. The chase. Those fearsome, brooding, glinting harquebusiers would hold back, letting the expendable dragoons weed the Royalists out, and then, when Stryker’s force was out on the plain and with nowhere to run or hide, they would go to work.

The next shot exploded to the south. Shouts rang out across the summit to confirm that none were harmed, but even Stryker inwardly admitted that his nerves were beginning to fray. Part of him would rather have taken his chances out in the open, and he considered making a break for the slopes. But that, of course, was what his enemies wanted.

‘Hold!’ he bellowed as loudly as his parched mouth would allow. ‘Hold, I say, or you’ll deal with me!’

The falconet to the west bolted backwards as its black mouth spewed fire and smoke. A dread silence reigned for a second as the defenders awaited the inevitable, and then, like a thunder clap immediately at their heads, the little projectile struck home, taking a sizeable chunk of rock from the tallest obelisk. Stryker winced, Skellen cursed, and somewhere back within the safety of the avenue Cecily Cade screamed.

Cecily Cade. The image of her in that moonlit cave came to Stryker’s mind. The woman who was so desperate to leave the tor that she had attempted to seduce him. He had chosen Lisette, the woman he loved and hated in equal measure, yet would never admit how close Cecily had come to succeeding. But why had she done it? He had not spoken to her since those surreal hours of darkness, and now, as the enemy approached once more, he wondered if her reasons would ever be revealed. Instinctively he looked across at Burton, and found that the lieutenant was staring at him. The young man’s gaze was steady, unblinking, and malevolent.

A cry of alarm went up before Stryker could think of something to say, and he inched his head above the natural barricade, only to see the dragoons spurring into a gallop. They had spread out, near threescore of them, dividing into two sections, one maintaining its course, the other veering away to the south.

‘Here they come!’ someone bellowed away to the rear.

‘Muskets!’ Stryker barked. ‘Muskets down on the slope! Pikes go with them!’

In that moment he had understood that the dragoons were mounting their attack, and the ordnance, for now at least, would be forced to keep silent, lest they shot at their comrades’ backs.

‘Lieutenant! With me!’ Stryker barked, and scrambled to his feet.

Keeping as low as possible in case his assumption proved wrong, he scrambled quickly back to the tor’s epicentre. He straightened when he reached the avenue, protected now from any round shot, and sprinted along its length until he was on the southern periphery of the hill. There, crouching low again, he observed the advance of the detachment of dragoons. They swept passed the smoking falconet, kicking their mounts on, desperate to reach the foot of the tor while the Royalists were gathered at the summit and hence too far away to bring their muskets to bear.

‘
Muskets
!’ he bawled again. It was then that he turned back, relieved to see that Burton had obeyed the order to follow. He had half expected the lieutenant to ignore him. ‘Andrew, you command here. Get the musketeers down on the lower ground and shoot the buggers as they come in.’

Burton’s surly nod annoyed Stryker, and he considered slapping some sense into his subordinate there and then, but this was not the time. Leaving the southern face in Burton’s capable hands, he ran to check on the eastward slope. The squad of harquebusiers, stationed there when the first cannon position had been abandoned, were already advancing, safe in the knowledge that the redcoats were fully occupied with the dragoons. The first of them had crossed the river, and three or four, dismounted and with blades drawn, were cutting the tethers of the white-eyed destriers. Colonel Wild had his horses back.

When Stryker returned to the western face he was pleased to see that Skellen and Heel had organized the musketeers and pikemen into pairs, placing them at intervals all the way down to the flat plain. They were giving sporadic fire from the advanced positions, desperate to turn back the charging dragoons. But those horsemen, far from abandoning their assault, slewed to a mud-flinging halt at the foot of the tor and dismounted, moving quickly behind the bodies of their snorting mounts. Thus protected, they unslung their own muskets, propped them across the terrified horses’ spines, and returned fire.

This was what Stryker had feared. The far greater range and accuracy of the dragoons’ muskets made them a deadlier force than Wild’s pistol-wielding cavalry. It was as though the Parliamentarians deployed infantrymen against the tor, except these men brought their own living, breathing shields to battle.

For a time it seemed as if the fight had reached an impasse. The Royalists, freed by the lack of artillery fire, were far enough advanced to make their shots meaningful, while the dragoons, evidently hard-bitten men of experience, held their positions stubbornly.

And then the falconets fired.

It was as if time stood still in those first moments. The cannon out on the west plain coughed, recoiled, and, to Stryker at least, it seemed as though every man at the tor, Royalist and Parliamentarian alike, froze in utter horror. Every pair of eyes flickered skyward, every man prayed that it would not be him picked out by the hurled lump of iron.

The round shot roared in above the shocked dragoons, missing their heads and impacting midway up the slope. It took one of Stryker’s pikemen in the shoulder, tearing away skin, muscle, and bone as though the man were made of water. The pikeman screamed for his mother, fell back on the turf, and vanished amid the fine spray of his own blood as it pumped wildly from his shattered torso. He kicked suddenly, flailed as Otilwell Broom had flailed, and then fell still.

All at once the fight changed. Stryker’s redcoats began to retreat, albeit falteringly and in good order, and the dragoons, suddenly emboldened, emerged from behind their horses and ran to the slope’s first granite outcrops. They had a foothold now, and it would be harder to repel the new invaders. Stryker’s veterans had done it before, of course, for Wild’s first attack in the dead of night had penetrated this far, but crucially those men had carried inferior weapons. The dragoons were not so hamstrung.

A runner from the southern edge drew up beside Stryker, breathlessly recounting a similar tale from Burton’s position. The enemy were on the hill. ‘Tell the lieutenant to move on my mark. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Aye, sir,’ the messenger nodded, scampering up the hillside like a fallow deer.

The first dragoons began to break free, scuttling up to the next boulder, shrinking back to load their muskets, giving fire and moving on. Again they began to stall as Stryker’s men dug in, the foremost pikemen dashing down the slope to jab with their vast spears in order to disrupt them as they prepared their weapons. But the artillery rent the air once more, another ball sent speeding towards the tor, and the redcoats were forced to fall back, scrambling behind the rocks that littered the slopes. This time the advancing dragoons were caught in the line of fire, and one of their men was cut near in two by the merciless iron, guts exploding forth as the ball hit him in the small of his back.

Now the dragoons understood. They would bear the brunt of the fight from both sides. Wild would keep his cannon to their bloody work, and Stryker would shoot down at them from on high. Their only hope was to purge the tor of the enemy once and for all. With a banshee scream, their captain brandished his sword, whirled it like a pirate’s cutlass about his head, and roared his men on. The Roundheads clawed their way up the hill, hand over hand, past stone, bracken, and bush, desperate to reach the summit before the falconets were ready to fire again. Their young cornet was out in front, using his flagpole to jab at the defenders. Half a dozen musket-balls flurried past him in a sudden squall, shredding the colour, but, amazingly, sparing him.

Stryker was on the summit now, staring down at the raging torrent of brown coats that surged towards his men. He went to find Cecily Cade. As ever, she was in the little cave, curled in a tight ball and shrouded by the tremulous arm of Marcus Bailey. He stooped to get inside. ‘
Up
!
Up
!’

The frightened pair stared at him, orb-eyed and shaking. Stryker strode quickly over to them, grasping Cecily’s shoulder a little more roughly than was necessary, and dragged her to her feet. He twisted to look at Bailey. ‘You too.
Out
!’

‘What?’ Cecily shrieked. ‘I am sorry for my actions, sir, but do not offer me to them, I beg you!’

Stryker slapped her. ‘Enough! You wanted to leave; we’re leaving!’ He dragged her into the avenue

‘What about the wagon?’ Bailey’s high-pitched voice came from a few paces behind them.

Stryker ignored him. They could not save it now.

He led them to a point on the west side of the tor that was equidistant between the two dragoon assaults. From here he could see both squads of brown-coated Parliamentarians and both sets of defenders. He turned to his drummers, who had come, as prearranged, to stand behind him. ‘Give the order!’

The drums beat out their call, echoing about the slopes and the granite and into the clouds above and the hills beyond. At once men began to gather. They swarmed to Stryker’s position from the east, where Wild’s cavalry were waiting, from the south, where Burton led the defence, and from the north and west; muskets, pikes and swords brandished, lungs heaving, faces caked in soot and sweat. The dragoons seemed to falter at the sudden retreat, wondering at the reasoning after such a stoic defence, and they peered up at the summit in bewilderment.

Cecily met his gaze. ‘What is happening, sir?’

Stryker drew his sword. ‘Wild believes we will flee to the east, to the village and its walls, for we would be mad to take our chances on the open ground.’

Her eyes widened. ‘But we
are
to take our chances?’

Stryker turned away, releasing his grip on her arm and raising his sword. ‘Follow me! Fight your way through the dragooners and follow me! Don’t look back! Do
not
look back!’

And then he ran. He leapt over the brow of the hill, stumbled as he hit the first sloping turf, and bolted down the slope. The dragoons to the south and west, still mystified from the sudden disengagement, were beginning to realize that the defenders were making a break for freedom, and their leaders ordered them to engage. They scuttled sideways like crabs on the hillside, the most alert managing to waylay the slowest redcoats, and the tor suddenly rang with the clanging song of swords.

But most of Stryker’s company made it to the flat ground unhindered. Stryker regretted leaving Cecily and Marcus, but he needed to move quickly, to show his men where they must run. He sprinted across the heather-swathed terrain, leaping rocks and rabbit holes, sword still high, chest on fire. Then he heard the thunder, and, disobeying his own order, risked a glance over his shoulder. What he saw chilled the very pit of his stomach. Cavalry galloped in their wake. Elite cavalry with muscular chargers and razor-sharp swords, black cormorant feathers sprouting from their glinting lobster pots. A wide, snarling, thundering, metal-crested wave, dark pennant rippling at the head.

Wild and his troop had swept round from the east, where they had gathered, beyond the decrepit village, expecting to cut Stryker’s fleeing men down, not imagining for a moment that the Royalists would run to the south-west. But they had seen the fugitives go and had moved to intercept them, and now he saw the mad bloodlust in the whites of their eyes and the gleam of teeth beyond savage grins as they inexorably shortened the distance. The cavalrymen had had to change tack, certainly, but a fight out here, on the exposed, flat heathland, would be like slaughtering so many lambs.