Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (35 page)

Up ahead the rebel infantry was still settling itself into battalia, having right-wheeled to face the south-west and the fluid threat of Mun’s troop. But the two troops of horse out in front were steady now. More than that they bristled with violent intent, eager to restore their honour and blood their enemy. Mun could see it about them even across four hundred paces, and yet he led his men on, the wound in his right thigh beginning to scream again.

‘Dragoons!’ Trooper Milward called out.

‘Keep going!’ Mun bellowed, for he too had seen the dragoons in two columns either side of the infantry moving forward, but he would not stop his troop so short. He could not.

‘It’s only dragoons, lads,’ O’Brien hollered, ‘neither fish nor fowl and nothing to worry proper soldiers like you.’

The rebel dragoon columns flowed out wide across the vale, taking up flanking positions either side of the harquebusiers that sat their horses patiently in the tall grass that stirred like a lake in the breeze. It was the obvious move from the rebel commander, for even if they remained mounted – as they surely
must – those two hundred dragoons would add their firepower to that of their comrades.

‘They’ll flay us alive, Mun,’ O’Brien growled in a voice low enough that only Mun and a few others would hear.

‘We will draw them west, Corporal,’ Mun replied.
Towards the Prince who will butcher them where they stand
, he thought.
If
the Prince was coming. ‘Draw them west for as long as we can. Bleed them as they come.

‘Let them fire too soon. Just once more,’ Mun murmured, but he knew the rebels would not fall for the same trick again and so, gripping Hector with his knees, he sheathed his sword, his left thumb guiding the blade home, and pulled his carbine round. ‘Prepare to give fire!’ he yelled, knowing that to ride further would be to spring the trap, and then he pulled up, Hector whinnying in frustration. ‘Fire!’

The world exploded, lead shot shredding the air, and a ball smacked into Mun’s breastplate again, throwing him back in the saddle. A man beside him screamed, his face torn open so that white bone gleamed and teeth and bloody shards littered his falling band. Horses were squealing and madness was king.

‘Up you get,’ someone said and Mun was buffeted by another horse as a big hand thrust into the space between breastplate and buff-coat and gripped the iron, hauling Mun upright in the saddle. ‘Come on, Sir Edmund, you’re all right, laddie.’ Mun glanced at O’Brien and then towards the rebels. ‘Aye, they’re eager to make our acquaintance,’ the Irishman said, for the cuirassiers were charging towards them and with them the two troops of harquebusiers. The sound was like the denizens of Hell pummelling fists against the roof of their fiery prison, as Mun leant back, tugging a rein, and Hector stepped gracefully backwards despite the chaos. Those armoured riders were bearing down on them, roaring as they came, and Mun thought his troop must be overrun.

‘Heya!’ he yelled, his heels pressing Hector’s flanks, and drew his two long pistols, gloved wrists pulling both cocks back, and
then he sensed a wave flowing with him, heard The Scot bawl at the troop to give fire, and he pulled the pistols’ triggers so that they roared like ferocious beasts. He saw armoured men punched backwards and gouts of blood flung from man and beast, and the smoke was everywhere, thick as fog.

‘Now back we go!’ O’Brien bellowed. ‘You too, Jonathan!’

Mun rammed his pistols back into their saddle holsters, pressed a knee against Hector’s heaving side and hauled the stallion round. ‘Away, Hector!’ he said as the stallion’s great muscles impelled him into a gallop. And those that could raced off as though a great black cloud of death were on their heels.

‘Five men down!’ John Cole said, wheeling his mare, letting the beast work out its excitement rather than trying to hold it still. ‘Maybe dead, maybe not.’

Mun looked back to where the rebels had stopped and were milling whilst their officers issued commands.

‘Seems they dare not stray far from their fellows,’ Jonathan said, bristling with the mad thrill of the skirmish, his eyes blazing in his handsome face.

‘Your father would kill me if he knew where you were,’ Mun gnarred, trying to read his enemy’s intentions. The rebels had made a chase of it and Mun had dared to hope they would follow them all the way to Oxford, but then after only some three hundred paces they had pulled up, the pursuit abandoned in favour of prudence.

‘That’s two more of my men dead, Sir Edmund,’ The Scot barked, walking his horse through the press towards Mun.

‘And two of mine, sir,’ Mun replied, like the ring of sword on sword. The other casualty was one of Prince Rupert’s men.

The Scot shook his head, undeterred. ‘This game is nae worth the price, lad. Nae for just a regiment o’ the bastards.’

‘Sir!’ a trooper called. ‘Sir!’ It was Trooper Banister and by his face Mun could not say whether the young man was jubilant or terrified. ‘More dragoons are coming up yonder plain. Lots
of them and all out of Thame on Parliament’s shilling by the looks.’

Mun craned his neck, trying to see north past the great knot of enemy horse and their infantry beyond, but he could not spy Banister’s dragoons. Yet he had no reason to doubt the lad.

‘That’s the Devil’s own grin upon your face, sir,’ O’Brien said to Mun, slapping his big mare’s neck, teeth splitting the bristling bush of his beard.

Even The Scot, who was also tall in his saddle peering north, nodded before giving his men the order to form up once again facing the enemy. For dragoons coming south out of Thame, towards the unmistakable sound of battle, most likely presaged another regiment on the march. Another regiment they could lure onto Prince Rupert’s sword.

‘P’raps it’s Essex’s whole bloody army,’ O’Brien suggested, thick fingers busy cranking the spanner on his wheellock. ‘Never know our luck now, do we?’

‘Not so close this time, Sir Edmund,’ The Scot growled, turning his mount to get into position for another charge. ‘Let us keep a courteous distance and leave them wanting more.’

Mun ignored him. ‘Form up!’ he yelled, watching the enemy, his heart thumping with wild elation. With pride, too, that such men as these were his comrades in the fray.

Then his loyal black stallion, the finest horse in all the world, bore him forwards. To lure the rebels unto their destruction.

BY MIDDAY THEY
had joined with Prince Rupert, who had ridden at the head of several troops of horse including his own Lifeguard, towards the distant crackle of gunfire. And neither had His Highness’s arrival come too soon, because it seemed that Essex must have emptied Thame of rebels and sent them all south with orders to give battle to the King’s men and score a victory in Parliament’s name. Mun and The Scot had drawn these men inexorably on, attacking and retreating over and over again, always stinging the rebels enough in pride and blood to keep them marching westwards lusting for vengeance.

‘Sir Edmund, it would seem you have been busy without me,’ the Prince said, reining in on an enormous stallion whose chestnut coat gleamed against the red and gold embroidered saddle. Sniffing the grass near by, his faithful white hunting poodle, Boy, snapped its jaws at a butterfly that flickered up out of reach.

‘We’ve poked a shit with a sharp stick and raised a stink,’ O’Brien muttered beside Mun.

‘The devils are eager to make my lord’s acquaintance,’ Mun said, removing his helmet and wiping sweat-soaked hair from his forehead.

The Prince grinned. ‘
I
am the Devil, do not forget,’ he said, referring to the nickname Rupert the Devil, given to him by the rebels in the early days of the war.

‘As I am certain you will remind them, your highness,’ Mun replied with a tired grin that was mirrored in the young Prince’s face. A mile away the rebel infantry came on in full battalia, ensigns unfurled and rippling in the breeze of the now cloudy day. The monotonous beat of their drums and the sound of yelled commands carried to the Royalists now and then, though Mun knew there could be no pitched battle for the bulk of the Prince’s infantry was in Oxford.

‘Here they come again!’ The Scot, near by, roared, pointing north-east to the seething mass of Parliamentary horse and dragoons which they had been leading on since morning.

‘O’Brien,’ Rupert said, looking down his nose at the big Irishman, ‘Clancy, isn’t it?’

The Irishman’s face flushed, matching his beard.

‘Aye— Yes, your highness.’

The Prince nodded, pulling a rein because his stallion was trying to bite Hector who seemed unimpressed by the beast, his ears flat and his tail swishing. ‘Bring your sharp stick, Clancy O’Brien.’ And with that Prince Rupert turned his horse and began issuing commands to his officers in readiness to join the game and lure the rebels further still.

Now it was mid afternoon, and having engaged the rebels in a series of rolling skirmishes they were near Chiselhampton and tiring. Mun guessed that they numbered some thousand horse but now, fortunately, some of the Prince’s Oxford-based infantry had arrived. Only eight hundred men all counted, but their muskets had made for a welcome sight. He had heard that that morning those men had overrun Parliamentary outposts at Postcombe and Chinnor, but since they were then under pressure from roaming troops of rebel horse the Prince had ordered them to withdraw and hold Chiselhampton Bridge in
case a full-on retreat should become necessary in the face of Essex’s army.

With his dragoons taking up positions in the surrounding hedges, the Prince was setting his ambush and Mun was reminded again of the brief, mad carnage of Powick Bridge and his stomach would have rolled over itself at that thought if he were not already thrumming with the battle thrill after the day’s action.

‘You think they’ll come this far?’ Jonathan asked now, raising the guard of his helmet and dragging an arm across his face, smearing filth and sweat. They were riding back east to face the oncoming rebel horse yet again, which would give the Prince’s infantry time to withdraw back to Oxford and the dragoons a chance to prepare themselves. Looking at the young man Mun was struck by how quickly he had become a soldier.

‘They might,’ Mun said, wincing because the pain in his injured thigh was now too great to ignore. His breeches were stained where blood had begun seeping from the wound. ‘They know His Highness is here, almost within reach. Up close the prospect of getting the better of him is too shiny for them to ignore.’ A stab of frustration announced itself at the reminder of the treasure that had somehow slipped from their own grasp that dawn. ‘But first the Prince will want to bleed them properly. The fools likely think they are winning. Their commanders believe we retreat because we dare not engage.’ He lifted the leather flask to his mouth, pulled the stopper with his teeth and then drank. ‘Rupert will want to disabuse them of this belief,’ he said, ramming the stopper home.

‘O’Brien, you Irish arse-berry!’

They looked over and saw another troop of the Prince’s Lifeguard joining their right wing and amongst them a grinning Richard Downes, who was giving O’Brien a gesture that would make a whore blush. Beside him were Vincent Rowe, Humphrey Walton, Purefoy, Burke, and the raw-boned Corporal Bard who nodded a greeting at Mun.

‘Downes, you seed, breed and spawn of an English whore! May the cat eat you and the Devil eat the cat!’ the Irishman called back, earning no few black looks and mumbled curses from the Englishmen around him. ‘Now we’re all in the shite,’ O’Brien grumbled to Jonathan.

‘Hey, lad! Your father is looking for you,’ Humphrey Walton called across to Lord Lidford’s son. Jonathan shot Mun a guilty look. ‘He’s looking for you too, Sir Edmund.’ Walton was clearly amusing himself, but Mun merely raised a hand and flapped it lazily as though he had heard it all before.

‘Do me a favour and stay alive,’ Mun growled at Jonathan, eyes ranging along the newly arrived troop, preoccupied in searching for the object of his hatred. There he was: Captain Nehemiah Boone, his own hate-filled eyes glaring at Mun as Mun somehow knew they had been since the troops had joined. Given their previous dealings Mun would not put it past Boone to shoot him in the back if the opportunity presented itself.

‘No matter how many times I pray that bastard might catch the pox –’ O’Brien put the edge of a flat hand against his throat, ‘or a halberd in his damn neck, come to that – the good Lord turns a deaf ear.’ He shook his head. ‘The black-hearted bastard,’ he muttered, then quickly turned his face to the sky and thumbed towards the captain. ‘Him, Lord, not you,’ he clarified.

Then the Prince, having taken a report from a scout who had galloped up with the look of a man who has narrowly escaped ruin, gave the command to halt and form up, for the enemy was almost upon them.

‘Where are we?’ Mun asked.

‘Buggered if I know,’ O’Brien answered, the others around them shrugging and shaking their heads.

‘About ten miles south-east of Oxford, sir, between the hamlet of Warpsgrove and Chalgrove village,’ one of The Scot’s troopers answered, and Mun nodded his thanks as he surveyed what was to be the battlefield. Before them a field
of corn bristled in the breeze. Elsewhere was pastureland upon which rabbits sat cropping the grass, undeterred by the proximity of men and horses. To the north-east lay hedged fields full of crops and to the south-west a fallow open field of long grass that seemed to roll like gentle waves. At the end of the cornfield, separating the King’s men from Parliament’s, was a great hedge towards which the Prince was pointing his gleaming sword.