Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (10 page)

Stryker nodded his satisfaction and turned to face the track again. Suddenly gunfire crackled somewhere up ahead. Stryker glanced sideways at Burton. ‘Only a brace, Andrew. Just as easily poachers out for a meal.’

‘The lads out front’ll bring news, I’m sure,’ the lieutenant agreed, though the tension on his face was clear.

Lisette Gaillard. Stryker thought of her again. Of the small details. Her laugh, the way her sapphire eyes wrinkled at the corners when she teased him, the shape of her mouth, the scent of her body, the little white scar that blemished her narrow chin. He quickened his step in an effort to shake her away, hoping the men would assume it was a result of the muffled musketry.

He was pleased when one of the scouts appeared from the dense marshland, for the distraction was enough to regain focus, but immediately the man’s expression gave cause for concern.

‘Well?’

‘Trouble, sir,’ the musketeer blurted, stooping slightly as he heaved air into his strained lungs.

Stryker opened his mouth to speak,but the words never came. Because somewhere, someone was screaming.

Near Peter Tavy, Dartmoor,
29
April
1643

Pikeman Tristan Rix had not been a pleasant man. His pinched face, sharp nose, and squinty eyes had given him a stoatlike appearance, and his whining voice, acid tongue, and propensity to thieve had only enhanced the image. The men had disliked him, as had his captain, yet today it was that officer that still held his rapidly stiffening hand.

‘He’s gone,’ Lancelot Forrester said quietly as he moved his free hand to close Pikeman Rix’s eyelids.

‘Aye,’ the man standing behind Forrester replied.

‘He didn’t cry.’

‘No.’

‘Said he wouldn’t, and he didn’t.’

‘A brave lad,’ Anthony Payne spoke again.

Forrester stared at the gaping hole that a slashing sword had left in Rix’s throat, the exposed flesh glistening like a bag of rubies, and noticed that the wound had finally stopped pumping blood on to the soil. He prised his hand free, carefully uncurling the pikeman’s fingers, and stood, turning to look up at Payne. ‘He was a sour little creature, Mister Payne, God forgive me for saying so. But he stood up to that big sergeant like a damned Spartan.’

Payne nodded, glancing at the corpse. ‘Man’s a hero, sir. Way he was first ’cross the ford.’

‘Right enough,’ Forrester said, stooping to retrieve his snapsack and fishing out the pipe from within. He clamped it between his teeth and, after another quick rummage in the snapsack, produced a small plug of dark tobacco that he crumbled between thumb and forefinger, sprinkling it into the clay bowl. ‘Light here!’ he called through teeth that still held the pipe in place, and one of his redcoats immediately scampered across from where he perched on a nearby chunk of mossy rock. He was a musketeer, and his slow-burning match still carried strong embers, so it took only moments for the tobacco to ignite.

Through the billowing, fragrant pall soon engulfing him, Forrester watched his men. There were thirty-seven of them now, for he had lost three in the fight to cross the River Tavy, and they lounged at ease, drinking from the blood-tainted waterway, eating the stale bread and hard, chalky cheese they had taken from Launceston, or puffing on tooth-worn pipes. Some laughed, some diced, others napped, and he begrudged not one of them. The company, along with Payne and his six Cornishmen, had marched eastwards the day before. Forrester had been kept firmly – and infuriatingly – in the dark as to the exact nature of the mission, but he had gleaned that they were heading for some kind of rendezvous at the village of Merrivale. To avoid the rebel-held Tavistock, they had ventured as far east as Milton Abbot, before veering away from the road and tracing a bridleway to the hamlet of Peter Tavy, whereupon Payne had said they should ford the fast-flowing river and continue south-east across open country. It was only a matter of three more miles to Merrivale, and, though the terrain would be rough and wild, Payne was keen that they reach the meeting point by midnight.

But the ford had been guarded by a small unit of grey-coated musketeers. Like a gang of folk-tale trolls protecting a bridge, the Parliamentarians had emerged on the Tavy’s east bank with a chorus of oaths and challenges. As soon as allegiances were established, the shooting had begun. The defenders had been outnumbered and outclassed, but they knew their duty and stuck to it for as long as reserves of ammunition and bravery had allowed. Forrester’s force was larger, however, and his musketeers had lined the western bank and flayed the rebel positions until the return fire almost petered out. They had swarmed across the ford’s shallows then, screaming curses and spitting threats, and the fighting – swords, daggers and musket butts – had been swift and dirty. A melee. A gutter brawl. In amongst that Royalist force had been a giant. A man of almost impossible size and strength, hefting a halberd as though it were a twig, and the Roundheads had quailed before him, turning tail at the mere sight of his storm-cloud shadow.

Now the king’s men were resting on that coveted east bank, its grass trampled, its defenders routed and scattered, three redcoats and seven rebels dead. Forrester found himself wondering whether the ford had been worth the cost. After all, he did not even know why they were here.

Near the tree line, some thirty paces away, a group of men stabbed and scraped at the cloying soil with swords, heels and jagged bits of rock. A mass grave that would lie unmarked and untended. Nine of the bodies, stripped and pasty, already mottled purple at their extremities, waited by the fresh tomb, and Forrester instinctively turned back to the Tavy’s blood-blackened edge where Pikeman Tristan Rix, the last man to die, still lay. To his surprise, he saw Anthony Payne looming over the body like one of the vast standing stones that stood guard over the moor. He watched, transfixed, as the biggest, most fearsome man he had ever seen, crouched suddenly, gently slid his culverin forearms beneath Rix’s skinny torso, and hoisted it into the air as though it were no heavier than a willow wand.

Payne caught Forrester’s eye. ‘Like I said, sir. The man fought bravely.’

Forrester nodded mutely, sucked at his pipe, and watched Payne pace carefully across the slick grass to where the grave was being hastily carved out. The giant knelt slowly, easing Rix’s inert body into its place in the line of dead. When he straightened, he noticed the captain’s interested gaze, and raised his own dark brow in response.

Forrester felt himself blush. ‘My apologies, Mister Payne, I did not mean to stare.’

Payne strode across to stand in Forrester’s tobacco smoke. ‘Then?’

Forrester offered an embarrassed shrug. ‘It is simply not often a man of such—’ he waved the pipe in a tight circle as he searched for the word, ‘—
robust
frame is seen to care for God’s creations. Forgive me, sir, but I was impressed by your compassion.’

Payne met Forrester’s blue gaze with his large brown eyes. ‘O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,’ he said slowly, the depth of his tone vibrating inside Forrester’s chest, ‘but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.’

Captain Lancelot Forrester almost dropped his pipe, such was the surprise he felt. ‘
Measure for Measure
!’ he exclaimed, beaming widely. ‘Act
2
, Scene
2
!’ He shook his head in astonishment. ‘Well I am impressed to the very core of my being, sir, and that is God’s own truth. You are a student of the great Bard, Mister Payne!’

Payne offered a wry smile. ‘Is it so great a thing for you to fathom, Captain? I am a large fellow, sir, but not a dullard.’

Forrester coloured again, feeling the heat fill his cheeks. He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘It seems I cannot keep my boot from my mouth, Mister Payne.’

Payne’s smile grew to a grin. ‘No matter, sir. In truth, I am pleased to make the acquaintance of a fellow Shakespeare devotee.’ He stooped forward conspiratorially. ‘But do not be fooled to thinking my scholarly nature precludes the occasional warlike moment, sir.’

From what he had witnessed during the fight for the ford, Forrester thought, that was fairly unlikely.

Near Bellever Tor, Dartmoor,
29
April
1643

The road between Postbridge and Two Bridges was, in reality, no more than a wide bridleway cutting diagonally across the north-west fringe of the ancient marsh. The clawing terrain eventually regained its sticky grasp of the land to the north of the road, but, for twenty paces either side, the territory was flat and drained clear.

Stryker, running at the head of his half-dozen scouts, bounded over a knee-high clump of bowing reeds, slipping as his boot squelched when it hit the soft scrub but managing to right himself just in time to round the body of black water. He emerged into the clearing with mind sharp and senses keen. It was times like these when he felt more wild beast than man. The possibility of danger seemed to hone his sight, amplify his hearing, and make his body prickle with nervous excitement. He drew his sword, comforted to catch the gleam of the red garnet set into its pommel, an ornament that spoke of the blade’s reliable craftsmanship.

The pounding of more feet carried to him, and he glanced over a shoulder to see Skellen at his back with a score of redcoats. The tall sergeant hefted his vicious halberd as though it weighed nothing. His arms, Stryker knew, might have been long and thin, but they were knotted with sinew, like the tree roots of the primordial forest they traversed, and were covered by a network of raised veins, telling of the brute power contained within. William Skellen was the best fighter Stryker had ever known, and he never failed to be glad to have him at his side.

He saw the coach first. A big-wheeled vehicle of dark timbers and covered roof, it squatted like a gigantic black toad in the centre of the bridleway. It pointed to his left, westward, and he found himself wondering what business it had travelling in the direction of Royalist territory.

Quickly he scanned the scene. The driver, sprawled over the traces, was clearly dead, the side of his skull an oozing mess of gore. Another man was hanging out of the open door, legs inside the coach, torso out, face turned up at the sky. No one else was clearly visible, but he could see at least three sets of hooves through the gap between the coach and the road, and, as he closed the distance, began to glimpse the heads of riders as they bobbed above the roof.

‘Three!’ Stryker called to Skellen.

Without reply, the sergeant drifted right, taking half the musketeers with him, and circled round the rear of the coach. Stryker took the rest of the men to the left, passing the moon-eyed stares of the two greys harnessed to the vehicle, and emerged on the far side.

Sure enough, there were three assailants. A trio of horsemen; two bearing swords, one with drawn pistol. At first Stryker wondered whether this was the vanguard of a larger force, perhaps the advancing Parliamentarian army Bailey had warned them about, but their true nature was soon apparent. The men wore scruffy cassocks and battered hats, which alone meant little, but it was unusual for cavalrymen – even dragoons – to wear calf-length boots on their feet. Start-ups, as they were commonly known, were the footwear of agriculture, rarely issued to soldiers, and never, as far as Stryker was aware, given to horsemen. Furthermore, the mounts they rode were small, ill-nourished ponies, not the swift, regal beasts one would expect of a scouting party or vanguard. These were no more than common bandits.

‘Ground arms, or you’re dead men!’ Stryker called.

To his surprise, the man with the pistol, a gaunt-faced fellow of middle age, swung his arm round and fired. Stryker instinctively ducked, shrank backwards, all the while aware that the gesture was futile if the ball flew true. But no pain came, no fire in his flesh, no darkness descending over his mind.

It all happened quickly after that. Before Stryker even had time to straighten up, the world exploded in a maelstrom of noise and smoke. Almost every redcoat had loosed their musket-balls at the man who would dare shoot their captain, and the singing lead minced him. The man’s torso shook violently in a series of juddering punches, the balls flattening on impact to form wide discs that left great canals of shredded flesh in their wake. The brigand toppled back from his saddle, his already lifeless body landing in a grotesque heap at his pony’s hind legs.

The dead man’s companions had seen enough. They were clearly on the road for rich pickings, and had neither the weapons nor the stomach for a fight with trained soldiers. They wrenched at their reins, forcing the ponies to wheel about, hoping to smash through the closing ring of scarlet-coated demons and flee with what loot they had taken. But the fight had come to them, whether they wished it or not, and two of the men with Skellen took aim. The first ball hit its mark, cracking through the back of the footpad’s head in a fountain of red spray. The man died instantly, slumping forward in the saddle to loll across the horse’s chestnut neck. The beast, enraged by the musket fire and terrified by the stench of his master’s blood, bolted into the trees, the corpse on its back thrown wildly about like a child’s doll.

The third rider, a man with heavy stubble and thick black hair cut into the shape of a bowl, had been hit too, but he had taken the bullet in the abdomen and, though such a shot would eventually prove fatal, it was not a wound that would kill outright. He screamed, snarled his fear and hatred and agony to the afternoon skies, and raked his start-ups across the pony’s flanks. The animal reared, shrieked in panic and burst forth, clods of earth and stone flinging up in its wake. It powered past the pair of shooters, still obscured by their own powder clouds, and made a break for freedom, but a tall, reed-thin man stepped casually into its path.