Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (5 page)

‘Christ’s robes, you damnable peasant,’ Wild continued as though Stryker had not spoken. ‘I will have every man here hanged by his own entrails!’

Stryker stared down at the line of kneeling, pitiful cavalrymen. ‘We are at war, Colonel.’

‘War? What do you know of war, eh?’

Stryker heard Skellen grunt in amusement nearby. ‘I know enough, sir.’

Wild glared up at his captor, pale eyes glittering with white-hot rage. ‘Then you will know that this is not war. It is simple brigandry. You know what I do with footpads on my estates, Stryker? I exterminate them.’

‘So I will look forward to when next we meet,’ Stryker said, turning to his sergeants. ‘Skellen, Heel. The wagon is ready. See Colonel Wild’s horses are tethered behind, and his plate and weapons loaded in the rear. We leave now.’

‘By Christ, Stryker,’ Wild almost spat his words now, ‘you will never make it back to your lines! I will hunt you down and use your stones as paperweights, ’pon my honour I will.’

Stryker rounded on the colonel, patience finally at an end, and kicked him square in the chest, so that Wild was flung on to his back, filth spattering in all directions. ‘Enough of your threats, you pribbling bastard! Be thankful you lived today, for I am in a cave-dark mood, so help me God!’

Wild kept his mouth shut this time, though his eyes were a veritable blaze of hatred.

‘Another mortal enemy, sir,’ Simeon Barkworth croaked as Stryker turned away. ‘You seem to attract them like flies on . . . well, I’m sure you grasp m’ meaning.’

Stryker sighed deeply. ‘Aye.’

‘Think I’d cut ’em all down here and now, sir.’

‘I dare say you would, Simeon,’ Stryker replied. ‘Which is why I thank God you are on my side.’ He glanced back at Wild and his trussed cavalrymen. ‘He is no threat now. We have his wagon, his horses, his weapons and his clothes. They have a long walk ahead of them.’

‘At least you left them their boots.’

‘I might not have, but we do not need them.’ A thought struck him then, and he scanned the area for the man whose head he knew would rise above the rest. ‘Skellen!’

‘Captain, sir,’ Skellen said when he had jogged across the clearing to where Stryker waited.

‘They lost a man today.’

The sergeant sketched the sign of the cross. ‘May God see him rest in peace. A good lad, I reckon, sir. Brave to charge our pikes. And tall.’

‘Quite.’

The corners of Skellen’s mouth twitched. ‘Similar sized feet to mine, I’d imagine, sir.’

‘They’re yours.’

Skellen affected a deep bow. ‘You’re a grand man, sir.’

‘Spare me, Will,’ Stryker said, turning away.

‘As you wish, sir.’

Stryker looked to the company. ‘Prepare to march!’

CHAPTER 2

Launceston, Cornwall,
27
April
1643

Captain Lancelot Forrester found his colonel in a house on St Thomas Road. The dwelling, like so many others in the town, had been commandeered for army use, and its owners could do nothing but suffer in silence and pray the soldiers would march away soon.

Sir Edmund Mowbray – founder, bankroller and commander of Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot – was bareheaded and stooped over a paper-strewn desk. He looked up only when Forrester cleared his throat theatrically. ‘Well?’

Forrester ignored the colonel’s uncharacteristic irritability, for the horrors that had befallen the Royalist army less than forty-eight hours earlier were enough to strain even the most sanguine character. ‘You summoned me, sir.’

Mowbray straightened, lifting a hand to worry at the waxed tip of his small, neat beard. ‘You know what I want, Captain. The butcher’s bill. Spit it out, man.’

Forrester removed his wide-brimmed hat, running a chubby hand through thinning, sandy hair. ‘Fifteen, sir, across the regiment.’

Mowbray fixed his fourth captain with a hard stare and chewed the inside of his mouth. ‘Fifteen.’

Forrester winced. ‘Aye, Sir Edmund, regrettably.’

Just when Forrester thought Mowbray might explode, the colonel took a step back from the table and sighed heavily. ‘By God, Lancelot, but that’s a heavy toll.’

Forrester thought back to the battle. Just two nights ago, it already seemed like some distant nightmare. The King’s Army, triumphant in Cornwall and confident of pressing the advantage all the way to the heart of Devon, had approached the town of Okehampton, only to be cruelly ambushed at a place called Sourton Down. Despite outnumbering the enemy by three to one, General Hopton’s Royalists had been hammered by a determined assault and confused by the chaos of negotiating unfamiliar terrain in an unusually black night. And then it had rained. To Forrester’s mind it had been a storm conjured in the bowels of hell itself, such was its swirling ferocity, and Hopton’s hitherto unbeatable army had cut and run. He shuddered involuntarily. ‘Might have been a deal worse, sir.’

Mowbray nodded reluctantly. ‘Hopton might have lost his entire army in one fell swoop.’ The colonel, a fastidious little man of compact frame and inexhaustible alacrity, paced across to a sturdy wooden chest in the room’s corner. ‘Drink?’

‘Kind of you, sir.’ Forrester watched his commanding officer pluck a bottle and two glasses from the box.

Mowbray filled the glasses and handed one to the taller man. ‘Mead. Not my drink, if I’m honest, but needs must.’ His brown eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve lost weight, Lancelot.’

Forrester frowned, patting his plump midriff with his free hand. ‘Food is scarce, sir. If I am not careful, I shall have no muscle left, and then where will I be?’

Mowbray’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘Quite.’ He turned back to the table, setting his glass down on the cluttered surface, and stared at the largest sheet of paper. ‘Sourton was a crushing setback, Captain, I do not mind telling you.’

Forrester chose not to comment on the indisputable truth of the statement. Instead he took the liberty of shuffling closer to the desk, peering down at the object of Mowbray’s attention. It was a map. A huge, detailed, exquisitely produced map of the south-western counties; the large block of land that was Devon, the long expanse of Cornwall, tapering westwards into the Atlantic Ocean, and the squirming black line that represented the border between the two. ‘Is Devon lost to us?’

Mowbray did not look up. ‘Perhaps.’ He indicated a spot on the north-west fringe of Dartmoor. It was unmarked, but Forrester knew the location well enough. Sourton Down would be forever etched on his memory. ‘They surprised us on those bleak heights. Humiliated us, even. And now we are back here,’ he moved his finger several inches to the left, ‘in Launceston.’

‘Safe here though, sir.’

Now the colonel met Forrester’s gaze. ‘Safe indeed. And the bloody rebels are safe across the border. We are no better off than we were at Christmas.’

Mowbray straightened. ‘Devon is Parliament heartland, Lancelot. Bideford, Exeter, Okehampton, Dartford, Barnstaple, Plymouth. All declared for Pym’s vipers, and all sit pretty in their treason. We have not touched a single one, and now we have lost ground, by God.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Do you recall how things were when first we came here?’

‘How could I forget, sir?’ Forrester replied, memories of negotiating the Irish Sea still fresh. That torrid, vomit-washed crossing would remain as keen in his mind’s eye for as long as the defeat at Sourton. He shuddered slightly.

‘We were attached to this army because the truce was ending. Hopton wanted a great push eastwards to secure the south-west once and for all.’

‘Such expectation,’ Forrester said.

‘Such naivety,’ Mowbray added sombrely. ‘Now, Captain, we are on the back foot. Hopton left scores of good men on that bleak hill, fifteen of them mine, by Christ. And Lord knows what has become of Stryker.’

That thought had not occurred to Forrester until now. His friend had been sent across Dartmoor to watch the eastern roads while the Royalists swept into Devon. He would not yet know of the shock defeat, nor of the Parliamentarian counterattack that was almost certain to follow. He swallowed back some mead, enjoying the sweet flavour of honey and the slight burn at his throat. His nerves were more frayed than he had realized.

Mowbray lifted his own glass to thin lips, drained the contents in one gulp, and fixed Forrester with a level stare. ‘Now we must force ourselves out of this mire. Seize the initiative.’ The colonel’s eyes lit with a sudden spark. ‘And for that, we require something—extraordinary.’

‘I don’t follow, sir.’

Sir Edmund Mowbray’s face cracked in a half-smile. ‘Come with me.’

Off the Devon Coast,
27
April
1643

The ship thudded into the pitch-dark sea, sending up clouds of salty water to soak the decks. It was a vicious squall – a nasty, vengeful bitch of a thing, the skipper had muttered as he commanded all fare-paying passengers below – so that the
Curlew
’s decks were almost bare. But one person remained at the prow. One stubborn man who was neither sailor nor officer. Like the carved figurehead at the foremost point of a warship, he stood still and silent, wrapped tight in a hooded cloak drenched black by the sea.

Braced against the
Curlew
’s wooden rail, Osmyn Hogg ignored the gale-hewn seamen as they scuttled about behind him like so many crabs. He narrowed his eyes against the stinging spray and ignored the timbers as they groaned beneath his boots. He cared little for the inclement weather, thinking only upon his duty and trusting in God to see the ship safely to port. She was a nimble vessel, or so the captain had proclaimed. A cutter, not ten years out of Buckler’s Hard, all sleek lines and snapping sail, yet this morning’s squall had given her quite the fight. The fickle wind, pulsing east or west without warning or mercy, tortured the vessel in the choppy swell it conjured, lashing at the rigging and causing even the oldest sailor to stagger across the slick boards.

‘Tempest’s up, sir!’ a voice cried suddenly above the roaring wind. ‘She dares us to make our run for Plymouth Sound!’

Hogg glanced to his right to see the craggy features of the
Curlew
’s skipper. ‘The Devil does not wish me to reach land, Captain Tubb.’

Tubb, a powerfully built old sea dog with leathery skin and one milky eye, drew his own hood over thinning brown hair, whipped ragged by the storm, and furnished his passenger with a near toothless grimace. ‘He may succeed if you remain here, sir!’

‘Do not speak such things into the world, Captain,’ Hogg replied acidly, causing the skipper to break eye contact.

‘I merely meant it is unsafe, sir,’ Tubb muttered, studying the ever-filling horizon.

Hogg followed the stocky sailor’s gaze. Land had appeared just after dawn, a black smudge on the grey distance, and he had watched it grow in size and detail ever since. And, though the wind whipped stronger with each passing moment, Hogg had rejected his fear. Even as powerful gusts buffeted the barnacled hull and raced like an army of screaming banshees through the shrouds, he had remained steadfast, keeping his eyes on land and his thoughts in prayer. For the Lord had brought him here, and He would see the
Curlew
came to no harm. But it was not, Hogg reflected, merely the weather that Satan might employ. ‘What of the king’s ships, Captain Tubb?’

Tubb looked up at the taller man. ‘The bastards show ’emselves ever more, sir, ’tis true.’

Hogg nodded thoughtfully, for he had heard as much. Parliament held most of the navy, the squadrons having declared for the rebellion at the war’s outset, but a few captains had favoured the king’s cause and, bolstered by vessels from Ireland and the Continent, the small Royalist fleet was beginning to grow in strength and self-belief.

‘But we’re safe enough here,’ Tubb continued. ‘So close now to Plymouth. The Parliament holds these waters in the main.’

The conversation ended abruptly as the
Curlew
lurched on a big swell, toppling over its white crest and slamming into the next rising wave. They bowed their heads against the blinding spray, only daring to look up when the swell seemed to subside.

‘The malignants do not sail here?’ Hogg eventually asked.

‘Oh, the Cavaliers sail here, right enough, but nothin’ of concern. Men o’ war, or the like. Small vessels only, prized for speed and seekin’ no brabble.’

‘Smugglers?’

‘Aye. Runnin’ powder, shot and men to their Cornish army, or those Pope’s turd Welshies.’

Hogg stared back at the dark smear of land and felt his heart surge, for a mass of white sail had emerged from the gloom like a low-lying cloud.

Captain Tubb grinned when he saw his passenger’s expression. ‘Plymouth Bay, Master Hogg. We shall survive this after all.’

‘The Lord provides,’ Hogg said, feeling the capricious squall change direction again. He flinched as one of the huge sails cracked like thunder above their heads, and mouthed a short prayer.

‘What trade you in, sir, if you don’t mind my askin’?’ said Captain Tubb.

‘I do mind,’ Hogg replied bluntly.

‘Doctor?’ Tubb went on undeterred. ‘Some kind o’ cleric, perhaps?’