Marston Moor (44 page)

‘If Byron loses that wing, Colonel, we are undone.’

Widdrington shook his head dismissively. ‘He has a second line, Rupert’s own horse among them.’

Stryker turned to glance at that second body of horsemen, who waited in position on the Royalist side of the ditch. Widdrington was right, of course. Byron’s backup had some of the most experienced fighters in the entire army. ‘But Byron cannot lose them too. If his first line fails, he will be forced to commit his second. Sir Edward, we must support him, if only to keep the second line in place.’

Widdrington considered the idea for a second, then shrugged again. ‘Be my guest, Stryker.’

Stryker left Widdrington’s four-hundred-strong brigade where they stood and galloped to the rightmost flank of his small unit. The nearest trooper, an older man judging by the grey bristles on his upper lip, was clambering into the saddle, having voided his bowels on the grass. His face was green and his hands were shaking as they fastened his helm. ‘Our turn, Major,’
he managed to say.

Stryker nodded, guilty that he failed to recall the fellow’s name. ‘You have seen any action?’

The trooper smiled sadly. ‘Enlisted to protect my son just five weeks back. We did not wish him to fight, but he would not heed our voices. My goodwife insisted I follow him.’

‘He is with us?’ Stryker asked, looking along the line.

The trooper shook his head. ‘He caught a fever. Now he is dead and I am here.’

Stryker stared at the cacophonous melee playing out on the far side of the ditch. ‘Keep together. If we hold our form, we will stay strong.’

The trooper forced a stoic smile. ‘We have drilled daily, sir.’

‘One cannot practise fear,’
Stryker said. He edged Vos forward. ‘Godspeed!’

Then he kicked hard. Behind him, with a howl of terror and rage, Heathcliff Brownell’s Troop of Horse rushed out to battle.

Vos’s fore-hooves thudded on to the clinging mud on the south bank of the ditch. Stryker drew a pistol, emptied it in the direction of a group of rebels, then plunged it back into the holster. He drew his sword, the beloved weapon forged by a master and gifted by a queen, and then he was yards from Byron’s splintering line. A large number of Royalist horsemen had already turned tail, Byron’s personal standard bobbing amongst them, and they were flooding past Stryker’s men, making for the ditch and the safety of the main army. It was a complete rout, endangering the whole wing if the bleed was not staunched. The few remaining Royalists were grouped in pockets, clustered in threes and fours as their Roundhead persecutors slashed and hacked a way through, desperate to draw the rest of Byron’s wing into contact.

Brownell’s Troop of Horse slammed into the melee. Stryker let Vos push him between two Royalists, then ducked beneath the swiping back-sword of a Parliamentarian. He brought his own blade close to his body, stiffening his wrist, and jabbed upwards, slipping below the face bars of his opponent’s pot and crunching through the sinews of the throat. He wrenched it out, fighting the sucking flesh, and a fountain of hot blood sprayed his rain-soaked face, souring his tongue. He spat, brought the sword up, then whipped it round in a horizontal arc to batter the shoulder of another rider, and, though it failed to penetrate the quarter-inch leather, the man yelped and steered instinctively out of range.

Stryker saw clear space. The line had opened up before him as horses parted, and he slashed at Vos with the reins. The sorrel stallion whinnied, shook its head in complaint, but went anyway, and Stryker was through, the melee behind him, another party of enemy riders ten yards in front. He screamed, hoarse and unintelligible, and dipped his head. He bore down on the advancing group, drawing his second pistol and firing it into their tight formation. Then the first enemy riders came at him, and his sword was high, coming down in a crushing blow that snapped the steel of one man and dented the breastplate of another.

It was only then, as the riders wheeled out of his way, that he realized where he was. He had never before encountered Oliver Cromwell, but he knew the man as if he were kin. Cromwell was the Earl of Manchester’s second, his Lieutenant-General of Horse, and as such he was conspicuous by his plain white cornet, held by a rider on his left, and by the screen of harquebusiers riding close at hand that Stryker was smashing to pieces. Cromwell was mounted on a muscular black warhorse, a bilious tawny scarf brightening his chest above russeted plate, hemmed with tassets to shield his thighs, and a full-length buff-coat that was elegantly embroidered at elbow and cuff in golden thread.

This was the great man, the famous leader of the most feared cavalry Parliament possessed. Stryker went straight for him.

Oliver Cromwell was scanning the battle, hoping Byron’s second line would be tempted over the ditch so that his own reserve, Leslie’s Scots, could be blooded in short order. Then they would turn the flank, arcing inward to invade the unprotected Royalist foot brigades. He was counting men and flags, and reading the terrain. Half an eye was on the movement of infantry over to the right as the Allied centre advanced to the ditch to engage their malignant counterparts, and at first the lone assailant registered as nothing more than a distraction. Except that the man was coming ever closer.

What he saw was a demon. He had known all along, since the very moment the treacherous king had raised his standard in a Nottingham squall, that the struggle for England would be contested on a spiritual as well as a physical plane. Now he had his proof. The man – the creature – that cleaved a path through the barricade of steel and hide was fearsome in the extreme. His face was torn in half, the left side ruined and melted, while his remaining eye was a feral silvery grey. His skin and coat were spattered in blood, his lips peeled back in a rictus grin as he smashed down with his huge, double-edged sword with its heavy pommel from which a red garnet winked. He rode a flame-red stallion, its teeth bared and its eyes white. The beasts were sent from hell’s fires, Cromwell knew, and he believed they were coming for his soul.

‘To me!’ he bellowed. A pair of his best troopers immediately shielded him at left and right. Another went out in front to intercept the demon. He had a long cavalry sword with a single cutting edge, but his crushing swing was parried easily, turned deftly, and the demon lurched past, his mount mud-spattered and gnashing. The men at Cromwell’s flanks shrank away, and the lieutenant-general saw that the waters of their faith did not run as deep as they had professed. He brayed a prayer, kicked on, and surged towards the demon. They clashed, blades meeting high as the stallions crossed, thudding flanks together and crushing the riders’ thighs in an agonizing embrace. Then they were apart, each slashing backwards at the other’s head. Cromwell gritted his teeth, because he felt nothing but thin air on the end of his sword. And because the demon’s sword had struck home. Immediately he felt the warmth of new blood on his neck.

Stryker believed Cromwell would die. The tip of his Toledo steel had found the chink in the general’s helm, between riveted lobster-tail and studded ear-piece, and, though the blow was weak as it flailed, he had felt the connection sturdily enough. Cromwell was wheeling away, the black horse kicking up clods as it scrabbled for purchase on the slick turf, and his guards had closed rank around him. Stryker made to pursue.

The shrill cry of a trumpet pierced his battle-rage. It called the retreat. He ignored it at first, but then Simeon Barkworth’s piercing eyes were on him, the croaking voice working to rise above the gunfire and screams. Skellen was there too, his shovel-like hands waving from his own saddle, beckoning Stryker back to his men.

‘Sir!’ Thomas Hood’s voice broke through the blur. ‘Major Stryker, sir! Do not abandon your men!’

He found he was staring at the carnage beside the ditch. Oliver Cromwell was retreating, galloping at full speed up the ridge, a hand planted firmly to the side of his neck, but he was the only member of the Eastern Association to have turned his back.

‘Major!’ Hood was screaming again. ‘We must retire!’

Byron’s first line had been utterly defeated. The men had never recovered from their disorderly attack, and the close-knit, disciplined Roundheads had dissolved the Royalist formation like water on salt. Now the tatters of Urry’s regiment, of Vaughn’s and of Byron’s straggled back over the ditch in complete disarray, all the while pressed by the Eastern Association men, who kept faith with their battle-order, despite the obvious temptation to give chase. Stryker’s troopers performed admirably, lining the southern bank of the ditch to cover the retreat, but their stoic fifty could be no match for the inexorable advance of the Parliament men. He rode back to their line, called for courage, and ordered his men to cross over to the north side of the moor.

Another trumpet called, just as they were traversing the ditch, but it was not the retreat. Stryker looked back. The Roundheads were slowing. The trumpet shrieked again, and he realized that it came from the Royalist side. Byron’s second line, led by Lord Molyneux, was shuffling forwards. It was in good order and, significantly, it possessed the harquebusiers of Rupert’s own regiment of horse, and he immediately understood why the enemy riders were caught in two minds. But the Parliamentarian second and third lines were coming up, even as their leaderless prow listed, and in moments they were surging on.

Stryker retreated. His meagre group would be scattered like dust, so he led them through the gaps between the bodies of horse, there to reform, recover wits and tally the butcher’s bill. Just as his riders formed up, Lord Molyneux, astride a brilliant white palfrey on the Royalist extreme right, whipped his hat in a blurred halo, and his division went to the gallop. The Parliament men – Scots banners of blue and white swirling now as the third line joined its English comrades – jumped the ditch and crashed into Molyneux’s force, but not before the latter had fired pistols and carbines in a flaming current that coursed all the way along the line. The Allied horse were well equipped, and most wore plate that was impervious to anything smaller than musket shot, but oiled hide could not stop a ball, and limbs were clipped and mounts felled. It was their turn to fray, theirs to stretch and tatter and lose momentum.

The lines met in a heart-rending thud and clang. Horses pressed, arms locked and swords tangled. They stood, shoving and jabbing and slashing, like a pair of vast, steel-scaled leviathans, contesting the wing at point of sword, able to smell the stench of their enemies’ rasping breaths. It was a hard fight wreathed in the foul haze of mud, blood, sweat and smoke, and for a time Stryker did not know if his paltry force would be called to support a faltering Molyneux, but then there were more shrill notes of brass, more bellowed orders, and the lines broke apart. This time, to his palpable relief, it was the Parliamentarians and their Scots allies who were in retreat.

The exhausted remnant of Lord Byron’s wing removed itself from the ditch line to ensure the infantry, away to their left, was amply protected. Byron himself was nowhere to be seen, but Molyneux cantered over to greet Stryker.

‘Saw you challenge Cromwell,’ Sir Richard, Lord Molyneux, shouted above the din.

Stryker looked over to where those huge brigades were becoming locked in bitter exchanges, but the place was so heavily obscured in smoke it was almost impossible to discern the beginning of one army and the end of another. He nodded to the young commander. ‘He was in front, my lord. I could not ignore him.’

‘Quite,’ Molyneux beamed. ‘Killed him, d’you think?’

Stryker shrugged. ‘Nicked his neck. Such a thing can heal swiftly or kill just as well. It is a matter of time.’

‘And of God. Let us pray He snuffs the bugger out, eh? Cromwell’s troopers are the best we’ve seen.’ Molyneux wound the red strand of an ear-string about his little finger as he eyed the Eastern Association horsemen who milled at the foot of the ridge, reorganizing themselves into their original two lines, with the body of Covenanters behind. A unit of lancers appeared to join them. ‘We must be prepared for their next move. Still, we have maintained the right flank, praise God.’ He twisted, looking back at the tree line. ‘But where in Christ’s holy name is the Prince?’

Prince Rupert of the Rhine was seated on a felled oak eating manchet when the huge volley had burst from the ridge top.

Having decided that no battle would be joined this day, and still smarting from the spat with Lord Eythin, he had rejected Newcastle’s invitation to dine in York, preferring to take refreshment with the unswervingly loyal men of his Lifeguard of Horse. Rupert and Sir Richard Crane had taken their one hundred and fifty elite troopers along a narrow track bisecting Wilstrop Wood, travelling far to the north to find some peace. The volley and the subsequent flurry of musket fire took them by complete surprise. The prince had ordered they make themselves ready to move as sounds of fighting floated through the lush canopy, but still they had remained, unwilling to panic over what must surely have been a false alarm. But then the messenger had thrashed through the forest to find them.