Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (62 page)

‘Your Majesty, I—’

‘You requested an audience,’ he said, his voice suddenly cold, ‘and you will receive one.’ He turned abruptly on his heels. ‘But at a time of my choosing. N-not yours.’

Stryker was as startled by Cecily’s pallor as he was by her unexpected entrance. She was a shadow of her former self. His inability to keep her safe had brought her to this. She was still a beauty, dark-eyed and fragile, but her cheeks were hollow, the fine wrinkles at the corners of her mouth were more defined, and her lips had lost their fullness.

She stumbled into Lisette’s waiting arms.

‘Miss Cade,’ Stryker said.

He might have thrown ice water in her face, for she stared at him in bewilderment. ‘Captain.’

Stryker felt suddenly embarrassed between the two women. ‘Good to see you well.’

She was already looking at Lisette. ‘He would not listen.’

Lisette offered a consoling smile. ‘Give him time.’

If the Frenchwoman had been aiming for calm, she was well wide of the mark, for Cecily’s face suddenly filled with a scarlet hue, as though a fire had been fanned within her. ‘Time? Time?’

‘You are here, Cecily,’ Lisette persisted gently, the compassion in her voice startling Stryker, for he had not considered her capable of it. ‘You are not going anywhere, and you are safe. The King will listen.’ She shrugged. ‘But at this very moment, his grand siege is failing. His plans for the war crumble about him. He can consider little else.’

‘I cannot,’ Cecily mumbled softly, then louder, ‘I
will
not wait.’

Stryker was alarmed by the desperation in Cecily’s voice. When last he had encountered her, she was cool and level-headed, effortlessly manipulating whomsoever she saw fit. ‘Do not do anything foolish, Miss Cade.’

She rounded on him. ‘Foolish, Captain?’ Her tone was becoming bolder now, echoing in the forecourt, and more of the rag-tag assembly was turning to look at her. ‘I have protected my secret for too long. Too many good people have suffered for it. You know that more than most.’ She made to accost the king, who was deep in discussion with several members of his entourage, but Stryker took a fistful of her sleeve. She pulled against him, leaning her entire weight into the tussle until she dangled at arm’s length like a landed fish. ‘I will
make
him listen,’ she hissed.

In the gloom of the sagging timber shack, Nikolas Robbens depressed the thumb trigger on the upper surface of the crossbow’s steel stock, ensuring it would move freely. All seemed well. He reached into the snapsack again and brought out a steel shaft, barbed at the tip with a razor-sharp bodkin that had been dipped in his own faeces and allowed to dry so that the wound, if not immediately fatal, would be infected, ensuring a slow, agonizing death. He turned the bolt in his hand, letting the wan light dance along its shaft. One bolt was all he had. It was all he needed. It was all, he reflected with a pang of fear, he would have time to loose before the guards descended. He closed his eyes, swallowed hard to clear the acidic lump that had formed at the back of his mouth, and waited for the feeling to pass.

Outside, the king was speaking to the dourly upholstered Lord Falkland and a flamboyant-looking staff officer swathed in silver and purple, whom Robbens did not recognize. They were busy now, but Robbens sensed that he would soon take his leave. He knew he must act.

He placed the bolt on the ground and turned the screw at the base of the stock. The creaking cord eased back, inch by groaning inch. He gritted his teeth, prayed that no one would hear, and stared out through the open doorway at the men milling about the courtyard. The king had turned and was walking back to his horse as he spoke to one of the officers. A mad woman ranted in the background. It was now or never.

The bow was fully spanned, and he snatched up the bolt, setting it in the quarrel channel so that the nock at the bottom end of the shaft nestled perfectly against the straining string. With a final, deep breath, he placed the empty snapsack over the bow, concealing it for the last time, and stood.

Stryker held Cecily firm. She writhed against him, jerking her wrist in his iron hold, but he would not let her enrage a king whose temper was already dangerously frayed. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered.

She tried to twist away. ‘Damn you, Stryker, let me go. Let me go!’

But her words were suddenly quiet in his ears, as though she spoke from behind a wall, for his eye had settled on a point a little way along the courtyard. Or rather, it had settled on a man. He was rather nondescript, dressed in plain breeches and coat, his frame bone-thin and his face unassuming. His head was completely bald, and across his forearm was a snapsack, empty and limp. What caught Stryker’s attention did not register at first. It was as though he knew this man yet could not fathom why, like some half-memory from childhood.

And then, with thudding, pulse-quickening, gut-churning understanding, he realized. The man had strands of coloured thread looped through the left lobe of his ear. As he turned his head they moved with him, sliding along his shoulder, and to Stryker’s mind it was as though they were a beacon for him alone.

He surged forwards without thinking, releasing Cecily and bounding across the forecourt with a bellow of warning.

Nikolas Robbens held out his right hand, dragging the draped snapsack away with the other to expose the balestrino, revelling in the cold touch of the steel. A tiny weapon, easily concealed, beautifully crafted, accurate and powerful. An assassin’s bow.

The world seemed to slow. He was less than ten paces from the king now, and he called out, even as another shout echoed between the low buildings. Charles’s head jerked round at the hail, exposing a lace-fringed neck. Robbens shut one eye and took aim with the other. The next moment something hit him.

Stryker collided with the assassin’s flank with all the force he could muster. The would-be killer was tougher than he looked, and Stryker had the dread feeling that the frail man might yet resist, but his legs gave way, crumpling before the force of the soldier, and he collapsed like a tree in a gale. People were shouting all around them now; bodies swirling like autumn leaves. Stryker heard a jolt as they fell, felt a powerful blow kick through their bodies, and wrenched the man round so that his arm pointed away from the crowd. The assassin landed on top of Stryker with his face turned to the sky. A woman screamed. Stryker saw that the bow had been fired.

Nikolas Robbens heard the scream and prayed as he fell. He prayed his shot had flown true, prayed God had guided the bolt even though the shot had been so cruelly disturbed. A woman was screaming, and he hoped it was because her sovereign’s life-blood was pumping over the filth. The man beneath him was clawing at his face, so he tossed the spent bow away and swept back his elbow in a vicious blow. It missed, for he felt soft earth, but the second strike connected, jarring his bony elbow joint in a manner he knew would be agony if the all-consuming need for survival did not smother any but the most base of senses. He had imagined a glorious end. A murder, a quiet prayer, and a quick death at the hands of the king’s armoured protectors. But the king was not as well guarded as he had expected, and Robbens’ every instinct shrieked at him to fight. He lashed his arm down again, gratified by a muffled yelp that came from below, and then the grasping hands were free, the vicelike arms falling away.

Robbens felt a surge of elation as he scrambled to his feet. He had done it. There, in the centre of the courtyard was the thing he most yearned to see. The king was gone, as though vanished to nothing. Men clustered around the place where he had stood, shouting and bustling and tearing their own clothes to fashion bandages Robbens knew would be worthless.

He looked for a way out, hardly believing his luck. The yard was teeming with musketeers, but their weapons were not loaded. Stunned into slack-jawed inaction by the sudden attack on their king, they were now regaining their senses, moving in from their small groups on the forecourt’s periphery. They would have him surrounded in moments. He had to think fast. And then he saw the horses.

Stryker’s hands went to his nose, feeling the blood gush between his fingers and turn his vision to a blurry crimson. All around him men bellowed. It was chaos. He released one clamping palm and pushed it into the soft earth behind, heaving himself to a sitting position. His head swam, images tumbled, colours melded and parted. The king’s entourage had descended from their prized mounts, converged on one place like wasps around a sugar plum. He knew with sickening certainty that he had failed. The king was dead.

He cast his gaze away. A horse was turning. A lone rider when all others had rushed to their stricken monarch’s aid. The assassin.

Stryker shook his head, spat out a torrent of blood, and forced himself to stand. Sure enough, the man who had wielded the crossbow with such calm efficiency was winding the reins of a big grey about his knuckles, lashing them at the terrified beast in order that it should carry him towards the archway and out on to the road. It seemed to slew sideways, hooves skittering and head thrashing, unwilling to obey this unfamiliar master. Stryker knew it was only a matter of time before he gained control, and the redcoats around the yard could not hope to block the path of a galloping warhorse. For a second he thought of running anyway, reaching the sentries at the entrance to the priory complex and ordering them to raise the alarm. But who could respond? The entire body of cavalry had gone with Prince Rupert, ridden into the Cotswold Hills to delay the Earl of Essex.

Then he remembered the lone harquebusier who had accompanied the king. He was now on foot, but his saddle would be holstered with pistols. He ran to the bay gelding, swung himself uneasily into the saddle, and coaxed the horse into a ragged trot. Even as the beast hesitated, he could see the assassin’s grey beginning to break into a more measured stride, and knew the killer would be away in moments. He drew one of the pistols and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. It was not loaded. Swearing viciously, he kicked hard at the horse, causing it only to rear, and had to cling on lest he be thrown clean away.

Up ahead, the grey had reached the arch. And it was there that it fell.

Nikolas Robbens had known he was not safe. There was the packed Royalist encampment to negotiate, the teeming road and the surrounding miles of hill and forest. Yet he had started to believe that he might just escape when the tall, reed-thin soldier had stepped into the archway. Even then he had not been unduly concerned, for one man on foot could do nothing to stop a galloping horse.

But the man had carried a long staff. And on that staff was a monstrous three-fanged beast of oiled steel, comprising a hook, a sharp point and an axe. The soldier had stepped into the roadway as casually as though he were taking the air, bent one leg so that he was in a balanced crouch, and swept the halberd across the ground in a huge, savage arc. The grey screamed. It shuddered beneath Robbens, a spray of red mist jetting up and out in all directions, and then it careened forwards, toppling over its head and neck, flipping the Dutchman from its back as though he weighed nothing.

Robbens flew, and for a serene moment he wondered if he was already dead, rising up to heaven to leave this vile country in his wake. When he hit the ground, his arms snapped and his spine felt as though it shattered like glass, he knew he was mistaken.

‘Well done, Sergeant!’

William Skellen doffed his cap as Stryker rode past. ‘Pistol, sir?’

Stryker tossed him the flintlock and an ammunition pouch he found hanging from the bay’s expensive saddle, then kicked out past the twitching grey until he had reached the prostrate form of the man who had broken his nose and killed a king.

‘Hatton?’

The man’s face was crunched into a perfect picture of agony. He broke into a racking cough that made him wail in pain, tears streaming down his cheeks, and Stryker realized he had been trying to laugh. ‘Hatton never existed. I am Nikolas Robbens.’

Behind them a pistol shot cracked out, echoing around the priory and up to Gloucester’s southern walls. Stryker looked back to see Skellen standing over the horse that he had so brutally and crucially maimed. It was still and silent, wreathed in powder smoke. Further back, scores of men were coming through the archway. Forth’s fortified camp was on the rising ground beyond the old monastic site, and his regiments were spilling out of their billets at the spreading news. Out in front were Stryker’s own men, his beloved redcoats, and they flanked a lone woman with long, golden hair.

‘Nikolas Robbens,’ the assassin said again. ‘Remember that. My name will go down in history.’

Stryker took a knee beside Robbens, drawing the thin dirk from his boot. ‘No, sir, it will not.’ He drove the blade down through the assassin’s eye as hard as he could, putting his entire weight behind the bone hilt, forcing the keen tip through flesh and gristle until there was no steel left exposed. He left it there to quiver in the bloody socket as Robbens shuddered, a small sigh escaping between his lips.

When Stryker stood, Lisette Gaillard was standing between him and Skellen. Her face was a mask of sorrow, bleak and colourless. ‘
Mon amour
.’