Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (33 page)

The horseman shouted a challenge and Lisette looked over her shoulder, her long hair billowing out over her shoulders as her hood fell.

The greycoat turned. He held up his tuck, tip trembling in unsteady hands, and the horseman grinned like a gargoyle, wrenching at his mount’s taut reins so that the beast veered to the left. As the horse flanked the infantryman, its rider’s sword was free in a blinding flash. Lisette and Cecily had stopped dead now, transfixed by the spectacle. Metal winked at the Parliamentarian’s boot, and Lisette caught sight of the bright spur as the horse snorted and lurched forwards with a sudden burst of speed that caught the greycoat flat-footed. In a heartbeat the long cavalry sword was above him, scything down in a heavy arc to cleave at his head. He went down without a sound, a scarlet curtain drawn across his face.

The blackcoat surged on without respite, letting his mount’s hooves maul the body as he spurred it through the brush. He let it circle round, finishing only when the women were trapped between him and the road. He offered a smart bow, even as more of his comrades cantered along the pathway his skewbald beast had beaten.

Cecily turned to Lisette with pleading eyes, but the Frenchwoman could only shake her head. ‘It is over.’

CHAPTER 13

Near the cathedral, Gloucester, 15 August 1643

Nikolas Robbens glanced at himself in the looking glass. His skin was utterly smooth, shaven down to nothing along his angular jaw, while his golden hair shimmered in the sunlight as he lent against the frame of the large window. He noticed that the coloured silken strands of his ear-string had become twisted during the night’s exertions, and he took a moment to smooth them out, draping them across the bony surface of his naked shoulder. Happy with the result, he set the glass down on the wooden sill and padded back to the palliasse, where, sprawled on her front across his straw mattress, a woman waited.

She twisted slightly to look up at him, her long hair fanning over the pillow like a mousy halo. ‘Why are you here?’

Robbens scratched at his flaccid member. ‘Because English tavern girls have the tightest cunnies in all Christendom.’

She pushed herself on to her elbows. ‘No, Nikolas,’ she complained, though her pout betrayed the hint of a smile as she noticed his eyes shift to where her pale breasts hung invitingly above the sheet. She turned on to her side, showing him more. ‘Why are you in Gloucester?’

Robbens felt himself stiffen, and he moved to stand over her. ‘To fight your tyrannical king, of course.’

An argument broke out on the road outside, four or five different voices haranguing one another over the destination of a cartload of wool sacks bound for the defences, and she waited for them to finish with a roll of her eyes. ‘Don’t they have tyrants in France?’

‘I am Dutch, Molly,’ he chided. ‘From Holland.’

She wrinkled her nose to show that she cared little for his provenance. ‘Don’t they have tyrants there?’

‘Oh, they do, Molly. That they do.’ A stink of powder smoke and scorched flesh invaded his nostrils, and he had to fight the sensorial memory that returned him to a quivering child. He had been born into the struggle against the Habsburg Empire, a revolt that had laid waste to his beloved homeland in a manner so brutal that this pathetic English squabble almost made him laugh. An image of his disembowelled father ghosted across his mind, as it so often did, and he swallowed back the bile as he remembered his mother frantically clawing at the sticky mess between her legs after the Spanish soldiers had had their fill of her. They had left her with a swollen belly and a broken heart, and she had taken a blade to her own wrists. He blinked hard and stared down at Molly. ‘How old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Then you are too young to know enough of life. I am thirty.’

She stroked his hairless thigh. ‘Old man.’

He ignored her. ‘And I have learned that every nation has its tyrant.’

‘Then why do you not fight in Holland?’

He often asked himself that question. Was it simply the money? After all those years honing his skills on the throats and hearts and flesh of Europe’s Catholics, he had established a reputation that made him wealthier than he had ever thought possible. His work had kept him away from his home, for the contracts had been in France and Spain, Bohemia and now England. But would he ever have returned to the place of such grief ? He offered a weak shrug, for it no longer mattered. This would be his final adventure. ‘Your king is particularly bad, and my business is to punish him.’

‘What business?’

He ran his gaze across the exquisite twin hills of her rump, between the two dimples at the small of her back, and up to the fragile shoulder blades across which her long, brittle hair cascaded. He reached out to stroke some loose strands away from her dark eyes. ‘Never you mind.’

She frowned. ‘Soldierly business.’

‘Soldierly business, aye,’ he said with a nod, though his thoughts had drifted to the tiny balestrino crossbow adorned with images of prancing stags that lay under the floorboards beneath the bed. He could hear the creak of the straining bowstring in his head; the music of death. It would play soon enough, and a man would die, and Robbens’ employer, the one they called the Butcher, would achieve his goal. He forced a smile. ‘Business that has brought me to fair Gloucester.’

‘And are you pleased you came?’ She did not take her eyes off his, but her hand snaked out to reach between his legs, making him gasp. She began gently to massage him, her dextrous fingers working faster as he swelled in her grip.

Robbens flexed his thighs, arched his back, and tilted his head to the beams above. ‘Oh yes, my love.’ He staggered backwards suddenly as the heat built in his loins, breaking from her damp palm. When he had gathered himself, steadied his breathing, he went to her again, this time pushing her on to her back. She squealed as he moved between her legs, bit her lip as he entered her, and clamped her eyes tight shut as he began to move. Robbens dropped his head and rasped into her ear, ‘Very pleased indeed.’

The East Gate, Gloucester, 15 August 1643

The tour of the walls was a grim affair. Though the bombardment seemed to have abated, the ramshackle defences still inspired little confidence. Edward Massie, joined by his usual group of senior officers, save Captain Lieutenant Harcus, who was leading a small sortie down towards the Rignall Stile, was pleased enough with the work on the small breach, for it was now filled almost to its previous height with wool sacks, timber and earth. But no one could be so blinkered as to think a concerted assault by the vast numbers of enemy troops would result in anything but defeat.

‘We must keep at them, Stryker,’ Massie said as he stared down from the East Gate at what had once been a vibrant suburb of the city. Now it was a vision of hell, of homes reduced to rubble, abandoned trenches and crow-pecked corpses, twisted and blanched in the sun. The soil was sodden, the water lying beneath the dry surface of the fields having been freed by the Royalists’ digging, and bloody pools gleamed where once grass grew. Further back, beyond the enemy lines, pits were piled daily with the besieging dead, killed by raiding parties, sharpshooters on the ramparts or Gloucester’s numerous small cannon. ‘If they attack from all sides, we are finished. We must keep the buggers busy. Raid their saps and kill their men, though God knows it is costly enough for us to undertake.’

Stryker had deemed himself well enough to join the tour, though Skellen shadowed his every move. He peered down at one cadaver through the glass handed to him by the governor. It was half-naked, its eyes long plucked out by carrion birds, and its skin mottled blue. The face was permanently frozen in a parody of a grinning jester, lips draw back over black teeth and gums. One of the man’s hands seemed to reach out to him, clawing the air, and he looked quickly away. ‘How long can we hold out?’

Massie closed his owlish eyes. ‘God only knows. The Parliament must know of our plight by now. I pray reinforcements are already on the road.’

Vincent Skaithlocke was, as ever, at Massie’s side, and he cleared his throat loudly. ‘There is a raid planned for the morrow, Stryker. Do you think you are well enough to join it? We need your expertise if you are able to give it.’

Massie turned to look down on the city, at a wagon-load of sodden turfs being dragged against the sticky glacis below, and Stryker took the opportunity to deflect the question. ‘More for the walls, sir?’

Massie nodded. ‘Naturally. I intend to line the drawbridge at the South Gate with earth. Make it cannon-proof. I would also bolster the bastions at the North Gate and Friar’s Barn. We must do whatever we can.’ He looked down at the cumbersome wagon. ‘Would you take this for me, Stryker? I have other business to which I must attend.’

Stryker nodded, relieved. ‘Gladly, sir.’ He looked at Skellen, who slid away down the slope with a nod.

The party moved on, slipping along the earthen battlements a little way down from the bullet-riddled rampart. Skaithlocke paused to shake Stryker’s hand. ‘Glad to see you’re well,’ he boomed. ‘Though you look damned awful.’

‘Bruising is all,’ Stryker said with a smile. ‘I shall be black and blue a long time yet, but it is no serious matter.’

‘All is well, then,’ Skaithlocke said happily. He seemed to study Stryker for a time. ‘What we have been through, you and I, eh? Do you remember that citadel we garrisoned in thirty-two?’

Stryker nodded. ‘How could I not? Held it against the Imperial troops for a month.’

‘On our guts alone,’ Skaithlocke grinned. ‘We raided their damned lines a dozen times, killed a score and pushed them back with each and every sally.’ He slapped Stryker’s back. ‘Was a good life, in its own way, eh?’

Stryker laughed. ‘Good, sir? I recall almost getting killed many a time holding that blasted fort.’

‘But we won!’ Skaithlocke said. His eyes narrowed a touch. ‘Though, as I recall, you were near blown to kingdom come by a petard.’

‘I was, sir. Ears were ringing for a week.’

‘And who was it dragged you free of the rubble with his own bare hands?’

Stryker remembered the darkness, the stink of burning flesh, and the taste of blood on his tongue. He vaguely recalled being hoisted from that fuming chaos and thrown like a rag doll across muscular shoulders, jolted to the safety of their craggy enclave on the back of his burly leader. ‘You, sir. It was you.’

Skaithlocke nodded slowly. ‘To fight an empire, eh?’ He looked out upon the Royalist siege lines. ‘King Charles is like the Emperor, old friend. He has grown to view himself as a god. And just like the Emperor, it is left to the likes of you and me to see he’s brought back down to
terra firma
.’

Stryker stared at the first man he had truly respected. His muscle had mostly turned to fat, and the auburn curls were fading to grey, but that same sparkle lit his eyes as ever it had. ‘You really believe in Parliament’s cause, Colonel?’

‘Truly. I am no longer a soldier of fortune, Stryker. But a man who can see his homeland for what it is.’

‘And what is that?’

Skaithlocke rubbed his cheeks with thick fingers, breathed out heavily through his nose. ‘England is like a fallen woman. Beautiful but corrupt. We must exorcise her demons. Cleanse her.’

‘I’ve heard other men speak as you, sir,’ Stryker said cautiously.

‘I am not other men.’ Skaithlocke scrambled up to the parapet, leaning his great bulk against a spiked storm pole. It rocked, but held him all the same. ‘Listen to me, Captain, it is a grand thing that you have joined the Parliament’s cause, for we need men like you and your brave sergeant, but you must truly believe in it, as I do.’

‘And what does John think?’ Stryker said, and immediately regretted the question, for the shutters came down upon Skaithlocke’s face.

‘John—’ Skaithlocke’s voice was barely higher than a whisper. He let his eyes fall to his boots, where they stayed for what seemed an age. ‘He is dead, Stryker.’

‘
Jesu
!’ Stryker let his own gaze fall. John Skaithlocke, his comrade from so long ago, had been wise beyond his years and as hard as steel. ‘How?’

‘Musket-ball,’ said Skaithlocke, and his hand went to his thick neck. ‘Here. Killed him outright, thank God.’ Tears welled in the red hammocks of his lower eyelids, and he let them tumble over his cheeks without shame. ‘Near three winters gone and still it pains me to speak of him.’

‘I am sorry, Colonel, truly.’

Skaithlocke sniffed, shook his head. ‘No matter.’ He stepped closer, planting a heavy hand on Stryker’s shoulder and capturing the lone grey eye in the crossfire of his own. ‘I have another son, do I not, Innocent?’

Innocent. Stryker wondered how many men might call him by his Christian name with such easy confidence. He could think of none. ‘Aye, sir, you do.’

Skaithlocke beamed, wiping away his tears. ‘We’ll fight together again soon enough, eh?’ He turned to follow Massie’s party, only glancing back to shout, ‘Brothers of the blade, you and I! Never forget that!’

‘Close with the colonel, sir.’

William Skellen was standing at the foot of the man-made escarpment, hands on narrow hips, as he surveyed his little domain. About him the team of sweaty volunteers grunted and groaned as they hefted the turf into place.