Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (36 page)

‘The insolent dogs are beyond that hedge!’ he yelled, ‘and as you can see they grow bold.’ Mun and his companions watched as several bodies of Parliamentarian horse and dragoons rode down a hill flecked with yellow St John’s wort, on their right beyond the hedge, to join their comrades in the enclosed pastureland. ‘There are three more troops held in reserve amongst the trees beside Warpsgrove House in yonder close,’ he went on, pointing his sword north-east. ‘It is possible that we face eleven troops, perhaps six hundred men, and what with their foot being a way off and we being above a thousand, we should make a rout of it.’

‘Do
you
think there’s more of us, because I bloody doubt it,’ O’Brien said in a low voice, scratching his bird’s-nest beard. ‘Maybe if the foot hadn’t buggered off.’

‘I think His Highness would want to charge them even if they had three times our number,’ Mun answered, walking Hector into the front line just a few places along from the Prince himself. In recognition of their tireless work throughout the morning, Rupert had honoured him and The Scot by inviting their troopers to ride with him in the centre of the Royalist line. To their north the Prince of Wales’s regiment made up the left wing and General Percy’s regiment had come up on the right. They were arrayed three deep, five foot between each man, so that given their number and the gaps between troops they presented a formidable front some eight hundred yards long.

We are the scythe, Mun thought, looking left and right and
then across the field whose already tall crop swayed gently and brushed against their horses’ chests. We are the blade that will cut the rebels down. He had heard young Trooper Godfrey ask O’Brien why they were not leading the rebels back towards Chiselhampton Bridge and the ambush that awaited them. For had that not been the Prince’s own plan? ‘The rebels are too bloody close now,’ the Irishman had replied, ‘and might yet fall on the infantry’s rear and baffle the whole bloody lot. Bastards might even bring our own horse into confusion before we could recover to our cosy hides. Better to look a nasty dog in the eye than show it your arse, eh, Sir Edmund! Besides which,’ he added, getting to the nub of it, ‘His Highness loves nothing better than a fight. You see, young Godfrey, every man, even a lanky, long-nosed German, has some redeeming part in his character. Even you, lad.’ He grinned. ‘Though not even your ma can say what the part is.’

‘The lad loves his ’orse,’ Goffe had put in, ‘almost every night he does.’ And this had raised laughter from the men of Mun’s troop, men who knew they were about to ride into battle and might meet their deaths in that cornfield.

Now the crackle of firelocks punctured the day as Parliament men sniped through the hedge at the Royalist lines. O’Brien pointed ahead and Mun could make out a cluster of rebel dragoons hacking into the briars with swords, trying to carve a gap through which Essex’s horse could pour to give battle.

‘We’ll be here the rest of the damned day,’ O’Brien said, rubbing his mare’s ears which were twitching at flies. The hedge was quite an obstacle but not so thick that Mun could not see that a large body of horse had come up to support the dragoons and now faced General Percy’s regiment.

But the Prince had grown tired of waiting. ‘Yea!’ he yelled, his stallion rearing and screeching defiance. ‘This insolence is not to be ignored!’ Then the beast’s forelegs thumped down and the Prince whipped the flat of his sword against its rump and in a heartbeat was galloping towards the hedge.

‘Go on, Hector! Go on!’ Mun yelled, and gave his spurs so that Hector exploded like a bolt of lightning, his great muscles bunching and smoothing, his hooves pounding their four-beat rhythm like a war drum. Mun did not know who was with him and nor did he care, for he would follow the King’s nephew into the flames of Hell and slay Satan himself, such was his fury.

A bullet hissed past his ear and he heard the meaty
thunk
of it hitting flesh and then, in front of him, the Prince leapt the hedge and Hector, being the finest horse that ever lived, gave no pause but surged up and Mun threw himself flat against the stallion’s neck. In that held breath Mun saw the enemy below, saw the terror in their faces, then his bones rattled as Hector landed with a gruff snort and barely broke stride, neighing madly. Mun swung his sword, missing a dragoon’s face by a hand’s span, then he wheeled the blade back round and slashed it at a man’s raised arm, lopping the limb off from the elbow, so that the rebel fell away screaming, his raw stump spurting blood ten feet into the air.

‘With me!’ the Prince roared, wheeling his stallion as terrified rebels fled from him like rings from a stone dropped in a pool. ‘With me, King’s men!’ A bullet plucked the hem of Mun’s buff-coat and another whizzed so close that he felt its breath on his cheek as he glanced back to see a handful more men leaping the hedge into the enemy’s maw. Through the hedge he could see the vast bulk of his own men thundering off north to find a way round the hedge and he hoped O’Brien and Jonathan were amongst them for he could not see them on this side of the barrier, though there were already dead men in that field.

‘My lord, we are too few,’ a corporal of the Prince’s Lifeguard said, wide-eyed, fighting to get his mount under control, and Mun suspected the man was right for there were but fifteen of them now on the enemy’s field. And yet the rebel dragoons had not stood. They were running like rabbits, bits of kit falling
from them as they sought the protection of their mounted comrades, some of whom were firing carbines or wheellocks from the backs of their horses. A ball clanked against the Prince’s breastplate and his head flew back with the force of it. ‘Insolence!’ he shouted at the enemy horse across the field. ‘You offend the laws of God and man!’

Lead shot shredding the air around him, Mun sat tall in the saddle and trotted over to join those clustering around their prince.

‘Like field mice before the owl, hey!’ Rupert said, flashing Mun a handsome grin, and just then came the battle-cry of ‘For God and the King!’ and Mun twisted to see those they had left behind – those who had not risked jumping the hedge – now cantering across the field towards them from the north.

‘With me!’ the Prince yelled to these men, thrusting his bloodied sword into the air, his stallion gnashing its teeth like some wild monster from a child’s nightmare. A dog’s barking cut through the thunder of hooves, the cries of men and beasts and the percussive crack of firearms, and Mun looked back to the hedge and a flash of white amongst the brambles. The Prince’s hunting poodle, Boy, scrambled through and came bounding across the field towards them.

‘Here, Boy!’ the Prince called as his men readied themselves for the inevitable charge and the enemy horse across the flower-strewn meadow bristled in their ranks, their commanders unsure whether to attack or flee. Here and there horses whose saddles had been emptied by the rebel dragoons stood cropping the grass as though they had not a care, whilst their fellow creatures, as yet slaves to their masters, shrieked and tossed their heads in fear and excitement.

Some of the newly arrived men cantered towards the Prince and Mun was relieved to see O’Brien, Jonathan and other familiar faces amongst them. The majority, though, led by Lieutenant Colonel O’Neale, broke into a full-blooded charge across the field. Yelling furiously, these hammered into the
enemy’s right flank, which buckled in confusion, its men caught in fateful indecision between fight and flight.

‘Good lads!’ Prince Rupert said through gritted teeth, every sinew in his body straining, like a mastiff at the leash, to join the fray.

‘Even the dog got here before you, Clancy,’ Mun growled at the Irishman, noting that the rebel whose arm he had cut off was lying dead. The grass around the corpse in all directions had been sprayed with dark blood.

‘If I’d have followed you, she and me would still be sitting in that hedge back there,’ O’Brien growled back, patting his big mare’s neck. Then he nodded towards Jonathan. ‘Had to all but grab a fistful of youngen’s beast’s tail to stop him coming after you,’ he said, but the young man seemed not to hear, the reins in his fists and his awe-filled eyes riveted on the enemy.

‘Like old times, eh, Sir Edmund?’ Mun turned to see Vincent Rowe wheeling his mount in tight circles, the horse’s eyes rolling, foaming spittle dripping from its mouth as it savaged the bit. ‘They said all this would be over by last Christmastide.’

‘They also said the rebel horse would never stand,’ Richard Downes replied, staring at the mêlée across the field, his lavish curls dark against a bright white lace falling band. ‘But they were bloody wrong about that and all.’

The rebel right flank was not running. Rather its men were turning to face the threat of Lieutenant Colonel O’Neale’s charge, and Mun winced to see them give O’Neale’s men a good volley with their pistols. Troopers were thrown back in their saddles or fell from their horses into the maelstrom of thrashing hooves and were pummelled. Then the rebels gave a second volley and a tremor ran through O’Neale’s thrust, though his men fired their own pistols and those who had pushed deep amongst the enemy set about them with blades, hacking like maniacal butchers. Mun watched swords hauled back amidst arcs of blood, saw them plunge again and heard
the ring of steel and feral high-pitched screams that were, horrifyingly, the same whether from man or beast.

‘Shall we give O’Neale this day’s glory?’ Prince Rupert yelled, turning fire-filled eyes on the men around him. ‘Or shall we attend to these traitorous dogs ourselves and give them a sound whipping?’

‘God save the King!’ Captain Boone cried and the Prince’s men, gathering thickly around him now, took up the call, thrusting pistols or swords towards the hated foe.

‘God save the King!’

Mun spurred Hector forward and the whole seething mass around him seemed to explode like a powder keg shown the flame.

‘Kill them!’ John Cole screamed. ‘Kill the maggot-ridden scabs!’ And in the time it takes to hurl a terse prayer up to the heavens they were in full flight, the ground beneath them trembling, and Mun was filled with a sudden rush of joy because the enemy, being engaged with O’Neale’s men, were not ready to receive them.

This time, as though to show the Prince’s stallion that he was the finer beast, Hector outstripped Rupert and Mun found himself the sharp end of the wedge, had only the enemy before him and knew he would be the first to plunge into Parliament’s left flank. Twenty paces before impact he swung his carbine round, for he must empty as many saddles as he could to enable the wedge to drive deep and split the foe like an oak trunk.

God, give me courage
…

Then he smashed into the press of bodies, the impact almost throwing him from the saddle, and a desperate man fired his wheellock at him but the ball screamed above Mun’s head because the rebel was young and inexperienced and that was his death. For Mun thrust his carbine against the man’s breastplate and pulled the trigger and there was a deafening
crack
and
thunk
as the ball punched deep into the young man’s
chest, only stopped by his backplate. For a moment he glared at Mun, in that heartbeat his lips curling as though he might cry, then he slumped dead, his hands dropping reins and pistol as he tipped from the saddle.

‘Godless devil bastards!’ a Parliamentarian officer yelled at Mun, spurring his mount forward into the oncoming tide of flesh and bone, leather and steel. ‘Fight me, you whoreson! Fight me!’ he screamed, spraying white spittle across the bars of his pot and brandishing his sword as a challenge.

In one fluid movement Mun threw his carbine across his back, drew his left-side pistol and fired and the rebel officer’s face collapsed in on itself in a welter of blood and brain. A glancing blow scraped against Mun’s helmet and he drew his last pistol, thrust it between his left arm and his side and pulled the trigger, looking over his shoulder as his attacker screeched in agony, Mun’s ball having exploded his jaw so that white shards flopped around on sloppy, blood-flinging scraps of flesh. The same instinct had Mun’s pistol holstered and his Irish hilt in his hand before the rebel even knew he was dead, and he caught a sword blow on his own blade’s forte and pushed it wide, then scythed the broadsword back against the bars of a man’s pot. But the bars took the blow and the man, though stunned, brought a pistol up in his other hand.

‘Not today, laddie!’ O’Brien bellowed, planting his poll-axe into the rebel’s horse’s head between the eyes. The horse’s legs buckled and it dropped like a rock just as its master fired and Mun felt the lead ball rip the air beside him. Mun glanced to his right, eyes filtering the seething, deafening chaos for friend and foe, then saw Jonathan parrying a flurry of blows from a huge bare-headed man wielding the biggest broadsword Mun had ever seen on a battlefield.

‘The boy!’ he shouted at O’Brien who grimaced and nodded, and together they spurred through the press and Mun took a sword blow on his right shoulder that sent a wave of agony through the whole bone, numbing his fingers, but he pushed
on, ignoring his assailant because Jonathan would be dead in moments.

‘Withdraw! Back!’ Mun recognized the Prince’s voice, felt men around him begin to extricate themselves from the fight. The rebels, too, backed off, for both sides had expended their firearms and few men relished the desperate butchery of blades.

‘Hold on, lad,’ Mun murmured, willing Jonathan to defy the giant a little while longer, for those two were clearly in it to the death no matter what went on around them. ‘Go on, Hector!’ The stallion ploughed on, unstoppable, buffeting other horses aside, his great muscled neck plunging through the fray. Mun’s world shrank, its entirety framed by the steel bars before his face, all sound gone but for the metallic rasp of his own breath that was distilled, made more intense by the helmet.

The blond-haired giant was roaring, battering Jonathan’s blade with his own enormous sword, so that the lad was almost out of his saddle yet he somehow clung on, then Mun was there and Hector’s great chest smashed into the giant’s mare’s shoulder, causing the beast to turn, shrieking, so that now Mun and the giant were side by side and the rebel flung his sword arm back, the weapon’s hilt smashing into the bars of Mun’s pot and sending him flying back over Hector’s rump to land in a crash of iron and kit. Mun could not breathe, could get no air into his tortured lungs as his mind tried to make sense of what had happened. Blinking the world into focus he looked up, so far up, to see O’Brien and the giant grappling each other, neither able to free his weapon from the other’s grasp, the Irishman’s face a knot of rage.