Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles (52 page)

Cripps grinned. ‘Sir.’

‘Fetch Northcote. I want a goodly number of his best muskets down on the low ground. Tell him to harry the enemy where they are forced to funnel into the lanes. It will be the easiest of pickings.’

Cripps offered a crisp bow. ‘If it please you, Major-General.’

‘And carry a message to the rest of the staff. Tell them I want two lines across the summit, like so.’ He swept an arm from left to right, indicating a front of approximately nine hundred yards. ‘Best troops in the first; Northcote’s boys, and Merrick’s greycoats. Trained Bands to form the second line. Wouldn’t want them facing the bloody Cornish unnecessarily.’

Lord, he thought, but he did not wish those craven bastards to face the mad Cornish at all. Northcote’s twelve-hundred-strong Devon regiment were as tough as they came, and Merrick’s greys were a useful and seasoned force. But the Trained Bands were reliable only as a reserve. He prayed they would not be needed this day.

‘Should I bring the men back from the north, sir?’

Chudleigh nodded. The gentlest slope was that to the north of the hill, and he had been concerned that the enemy would somehow work their way on to that front. ‘That horse has bolted. They’re committed now. We look west.’

‘The ordnance, sir?’ Cripps was saying. ‘Should they remain in position?’

Chudleigh peered down at the open grassland that swathed the upper half of the hill. At the lower part of the incline, immediately above the wooded lanes, his thirteen fieldpieces had already been positioned at regular intervals. He nodded. ‘Aye, we will leave the cannon in place. If the buggers are hardy enough to push beyond the lanes, we’ll make them a gift of iron.’ His cheek began to twitch.

‘No word, sir?’ Sergeant William Skellen asked of his captain as the red-coated company filed across the last of the common’s rough ground and into the first stand of trees. There were more copses along the track that took them east, becoming thicker and more frequent until, in about a hundred paces, they finally came together in a small forest. Beyond that forest, climbing towards the sliding clouds, stood Stratton Hill.

‘None,’ Stryker replied as he kept a rapid pace for his men to follow.

Skellen sniffed at his side. ‘Ballocks.’

Stryker looked up at the lanky sergeant. ‘My sentiment exactly. Mister Burton left hours ago.’

‘Think he’s been taken?’

Stryker shrugged. ‘It’s daylight now. If he’s still in Stratton, he’ll be in a deal of danger.’ He slapped the butt of his musket. ‘Foolish boy.’

‘Maybe he came back,’ Skellen said hopefully, ‘but lost us in the fight at the common.’

‘Or maybe he’s in a rebel cell,’ Stryker answered sourly. ‘Nothing we can do now, Sergeant. We’re at the muster point.’

The four Royalist infantry divisions gathered at the south and west of the hill. They could not see the summit, for the view was clogged with the leafy boughs of huge oaks and gnarled beech, but their commanders announced that they had reached the foot of the escarpment and that the rest would be akin to a morning stroll. The reality, of course, was not so simple, for rebel musketeers, repelled from the sandy common by sheer weight of numbers, had secreted themselves within the trees, moving in squads, firing from behind broad, shielding trunks. Even General Hopton’s most fresh-faced novice would know that this was to be a hard fight.

Captain Innocent Stryker marched at the head of his company of redcoats and they, in turn, were positioned a short way behind the vanguard of the large column of pikemen and musketeers led by Sir Bevil Grenville. To their right, down towards the southern tip of the hill, Hopton himself led another column, while to their left two more began their own grim march, commanded respectively by Sir Nicholas Slanning and Sir Thomas Basset.

‘Shoot that fucker!’ a sallow-faced sergeant bawled somewhere ahead of Stryker. He saw a musket-wielding teenager step out of rank, prop his long-arm on a rest that he drove into the soft earth, and pick out the enemy marksman that had drawn the sergeant’s attention. The range was about forty paces, and the shot probably missed, but the Roundhead vanished into the tree line all the same.

And then the drums began. They beat a rapid rhythm that ordered the advance, a deep thrum reverberating around the lanes of the lower part of the slope, telling the waiting rebels that the king’s men were on the march. The sound shook Stryker’s bones like a perpetual cannon blast, rolling its way up from his toes to his skull, making his chest shiver and his spine tingle and his pulse quicken. His guts churned, his eye focussed, and his hearing sharpened. He felt terrified in that moment. But, by God, he felt alive.

Sir Bevil Grenville stepped out in front. He wore a silver-laced buff-coat, tall, black boots, and a wide-brimmed hat from which sprouted a huge feather of deepest green. He drew his big sword with a gloved hand and held it aloft for all to see, tracing tight circles with the fine tip. His gigantic manservant, Anthony Payne, was there too, ever at his side, the colonel’s own personal titan. The Cornish cheered them. They bellowed jeers at Parliament, at Puritanism, at the Earl of Stamford and at the men of Devon. They blew gently on smouldering matches, tightened spare lengths of cord that were wound around wrists and waists, and shook hands with their mates for perhaps a final time.

And then the column rumbled forwards, contracting to squeeze into the ancient lane made dark by overlapping branches, the incline immediately growing steep. Pikes were deployed in narrow, deep columns in the sunken thoroughfare, blades scraping and snagging the light-stealing canopy, with teams of musketeers moving more rapidly along the flanks to provide protection. Stryker left the column at this point, taking a score of his redcoats with him to claw their way up the left-hand bank. They kept pace with their pikes down on the lane, ready to do battle with any who would threaten them. Still the drums hammered out their dread beat.

Stryker gazed through the forest of pike staves, the blades of the shortest poles now level with his eye line, and saw that the opposite bank was full of men too. More musketeers scrambled like herds of mountain goats over slippery earth, tangled tree roots, and fallen branches, ever vigilant for enemies hidden up ahead. It was a mild morning, but the wind, funnelled down this unnaturally busy lane from up on the bare crest, whipped in spiteful gusts, slashing along the sunken corridors to sting eyes and dry lips, shaking the full branches and drowning out the column’s footfalls for just a moment.

Stryker walked on, leaning into the bank to keep his footing, reassured by the sight of a giant at the column’s head and the drums’ relentless percussion. For a minute or two there was no shooting as men on both sides paused to reload, and they made reasonable progress, though still he intermittently breathed life back into the tip of his match, keeping the saltpetre-impregnated cord hot for when it would be required.

Shadows moved at the far end of the lane. They looked like men but moved like wraiths, drifting in and out of the half-light, grey and nebulous. Stryker bit down his anxiety, telling himself the shapes were the shadows of wind-whipped branches. But then a small flicker of light danced before one of the figures, a hovering pinprick of furious orange against the drab morn. Before Stryker could call the warning, the light flicked suddenly downwards in a tight arc, racing to what he knew would be a pan full of black powder, and a bright flash spat into the gloom.

A corporal, down on the lane, came to a sudden halt, throwing the step of the ranks behind. He made a strange squeaking sound and swayed for a heartbeat before his left leg crumpled from under him, seemingly no longer within his control. He staggered back, crashing into the pikemen to the rear, blood showing on the white fringe of his collar. Then the other leg went too, limp and hanging, so that he collapsed in a heap like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He squeaked again, but the sound quickly deepened into a gurgle, crimson bubbles exploding past his lips as he tried to mouth final words.

The lane erupted in noise. Eight or nine men from both banks gave fire in reply, even as the column juddered into life again, men stepping inexorably over their fallen comrade, but it was impossible to see if any of the vengeful shots had flown true. And from the top of the lane came more fire, more leaden death, as the Roundheads gave rapid reply. Bullets fell around them like rain, punching the air at their ears and splintering trees. These were not wraiths, but flesh and bone. Men who were waiting to pour their malice into the Royalist column as it climbed a lonely hill where the soil would soon be red.

There was another abrupt squall of musketry, spraying the trees in a cacophony of splintering bark. Stryker half shut his eyelid as he searched for the assailants amid the trees, eventually spying splashes of tawny where enemy scarves could be glimpsed behind fat tree trunks some fifty paces along his side of the lane. He took a knee, shouldered his musket, and looked for a man to kill.

Colonel Gabriel Wild, armour slick with newly applied oil, whispered soothing words in his horse’s pricked ear. The beast shook its head, complaining at the unforgiving metal bit that pulled at its black lips, but let out a calm whicker all the same. Wild patted its muscular neck, feeling happier than he had for a long time. Since a time before, he noted ruefully, he had been sent to fetch an ammunition cache in the rugged Dartmoor hills. Now, at least, he was on horseback, swathed in buff leather, gleaming Milanese plate, and a helmet with long lobster-tail neck guard, three-barred visor, and a huge feather plucked from the body of a Great Cormorant. He might not have his beloved troop at his back, but he was ready for battle, nonetheless, and the feeling was good.

Wild peered down the western slope of the hill from his position on the flat crest. Before him, still in the throws of mustering, were the packed ranks of Parliamentarian infantry. Ordinarily, of course, he would only pour scorn on such men. Pike, gun, pole-arm hefting plodders, one rung further up life’s social ladder than gong farmers and jakes diggers. But today, he inwardly admitted, they looked impressive. Two sprawling lines stretching right across the slope, divided into intermittent blocks of pike and musket. They were a huge, immovable, fresh, well-fed force of killers, and he was glad to be positioned behind them.

‘Small guns,’ a grunt of a voice, heavily inflected with the accent of the Mediterranean, stabbed through Wild’s thoughts.

He glanced sideways at the huge form of José Ventura, perched like a vast toad atop his struggling bay. ‘We have thirteen cannon pointed at the mouths of the lanes, señor. They are small, aye, but effective against massed blocks. They cannot miss.’

‘I not un’erstand why these kingmen here,’ Ventura muttered. ‘They cannot win. We have too many.’

‘Well observed,’ Wild replied sardonically. He glanced across at the man mounted on a piebald gelding to the other side of the Spaniard. ‘Congratulations, Master Hogg. Your creature can count.’

Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg sneered at the barb, his long, hooked nose wrinkling as he addressed his assistant. ‘The king’s men are Cornish, señor,’ he said as though that were explanation enough.

‘But they will lose all the same,’ Wild added, relishing the hours to come. ‘And I will ride into the melee and hone my sword on their Rome-suckled skulls.’ He shivered involuntarily, the promise of blood-drenched glory making his skin tingle deliciously. After the ignominy and shame of his defeat to the one-eyed fiend, he had yearned for an opportunity like this.

‘Not yet you won’t,’ a fourth voice clamoured for Wild’s attention.

The harquebusier lifted his visor and twisted to his left. ‘Major-General Collings.’

Collings ignored Wild’s brusque tone. ‘Fetch Miss Cade.’

Wild blanched. ‘Sir?’

The major-general wore an impressively expensive set of armour. His helmet, back and breast plates, short tassets and elbow gauntlet were all blackened and studded with gilt rivets. Beneath those pieces his skeletal frame was covered by a bright yellow buff-coat, with loops of metallic lace adorning the sleeves. The falling band collar was obscured by a knotted neckcloth, giving extra protection for his throat.

Collings took off his helmet, revealing the pallid skin of his small, bald head. His eyes were as black and lifeless as his breastplate. ‘Go down to the village and bring her up here, Colonel. Major-General Chudleigh would have her see this for herself.’

Wild swallowed hard, forcing a stinging retort back into oblivion. ‘As you wish, sir,’ he said tightly.

‘It is as
he
wishes,’ Collings corrected, thrusting his chin in the direction of another group of mounted men some hundred yards further along the summit. ‘Chudleigh does not believe Master Hogg’s methods are bringing results.’

It was Hogg’s turn to bridle, and he kicked his horse beyond Ventura’s bulk to see the major-general. ‘It is not as simple as all that. People – soldiers especially – are not fond of men who torture women. Particularly young, pretty women. We have walked her, sir. Walked her all night. It is a crueller technique than it sounds, General, I can assure you. The exhaustion alone often breaks a soul.’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘But I confess she remains tight-lipped as ever.’

Collings licked narrow, purple lips. ‘Then move things on as soon as this damned battle is done with.’

‘You cut that man on the moor,’ Wild offered.

‘Pricked, Colonel, aye. But—’