Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Read online

  The two officers met the red-coated ranks some forty paces further back from the clearing. As expected, Stryker saw that his musketeers had wrapped lengths of oiled cloth around their weapons so that the rain would not dampen their firing mechanisms or permeate the black powder within. The pikemen had no such worry, though their lethal staves had to be carried horizontally at waist height to prevent the ash poles, each more than sixteen feet long, from snagging on the boughs above.

  ‘Sergeant Heel,’ Stryker said, his voice low, urgent.

  Moses Heel, the bullock-shaped native of Tiverton, paced quickly up to his commander. ‘Sir.’

  ‘See we’re covered.’

  ‘Sir,’ Heel said, and abruptly turned to the company. ‘Jack and Harry Trowbridge.’ He paused as two musketeers, both long-nosed and blue-eyed, with tendrils of blond hair poking out from beneath their pot helmets, stepped briskly out of the line. ‘You’ve got the sharpest eyes, so get your bliddy arses on that road. One north, t’other south.’ He looked back at the company. ‘Lipscombe and Boyleson, where are you?’

  ‘Here,’ was the response as a pair of men came to stand by the Trowbridge brothers. They wore the red coats of the ranks, but instead of pike or musket they carried large drums, slung at their midriffs by thick cross-belts.

  ‘Go with the twins,’ Sergeant Heel ordered. ‘If they see somethin’ worthy o’ tellin’, hammer it out. Understand?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ one of the drummers responded, and the four paced back in the direction of the road.

  Stryker nodded acknowledgement to Heel, and turned to Burton. ‘Lieutenant, you command the men. Hold them here but spread them wide, and be ready with point, steel and shot on my mark.’ His eye winked mischievously. ‘I am to go fishing.’

  Burton’s mouth twitched in half-smile. ‘We’ll ready your net.’

  Stryker led Barkworth and Skellen, chosen for their lack of conspicuous company coats, at a rapid pace towards the clearing. They snaked through the trees, edging ever closer to the black-plumed horsemen, the rustle of their footsteps masked by the rain as it crashed through the canopy. Fat droplets pounded the branches above and the leaves at their feet, exploded against hat rims and raced across the surface of impervious buff-coats.

  Stryker halted half a dozen paces before the trees started to thin, knowing the land would soon begin to slope away. He glanced over his shoulder and scanned the trees further back towards the road. He was pleased to see no sign of Burton or the rest of the company.

  Skellen appeared at his side. ‘What now, sir?’

  Without reply, Stryker crept forwards, dropping to the lowest crouch possible as he reached the edge of the clearing. His knees burned keenly as he held the position, but he wanted a moment to study the strangers, to check the group had not been joined by more horsemen in the minutes Stryker had been organizing his approach. There they were: twelve only.

  He stood, drawing his sword, easing it slowly from the scabbard’s throat so that the rasp was inaudible above the dashing rain. Still the horsemen did not notice his presence. Stryker swallowed hard, took a steadying breath, and stepped out into the open.

  A shout went up almost immediately, a high-pitched cry of warning from the base of the shallow bowl, and Stryker wondered whether the cavalrymen would charge him down without pausing to discover his allegiance. But, just as the lobster-tailed helmets were shoved unceremoniously on to their heads and the huge horses were coaxed out of their lethargy, one of the strangers walked his mount out from the group.

  Stryker took a couple of tentative paces down the slope, not taking his gaze from the man he presumed to be the small troop’s leader. It was difficult to discern age from a face obscured by the three vertical face bars of the helmet’s visor, but from the lines at the corners of his eyes, the confident bearing and the thick, pointed beard at his chin, Stryker guessed he was in his early thirties. He, like his comrades, was equipped in the manner of a typical harquebusier, with buff-coat swathing his torso beneath gleaming back- and breast-plates, a long sword at his waist and a carbine slung at his side. Stryker suspected there would be a smaller blade and a brace of pistols about the man’s person as well, and he approached with caution.

  ‘Greetings, sir,’ he said, keeping his voice loud and steady, for the rain still roared around them.

  The leader of the horsemen kicked his mount on a touch, and glared down at the man on foot, pale blue eyes appearing like orbs of glass beneath the coke-black plume of his helmet. ‘Who the devil are you, sir?’

  ‘Captain Stryker, Mowbray’s Foot.’

  The horseman’s nose wrinkled. ‘I am Colonel Gabriel Wild. Have you no Christian name?’

  ‘None worth mentioning, Colonel,’ Stryker said, and stole a furtive glance at the ammunition wagon that was now firmly screened by the dozen harquebusiers. ‘King or Parliament, sir?’

  Wild’s expression remained stony. ‘The latter, sir,’ he said with deliberate slowness. ‘And you?’

  Stryker could now hear his own heart above the rainfall. ‘The former.’

  In a flash Colonel Wild’s sword was free, its tip levelled at the Royalist’s throat. Stryker saw that it was not the delicate, probing rapier he had expected to see, but a brutal, wide-bladed, broadsword. The weapon of a trained killer.

  ‘Hold, sir, I urge you!’ Stryker called, forcing the tension from his voice. ‘For you are at a disadvantage.’

  Those final words gave the cavalryman pause, for he seemed to take a moment to consider the situation, glancing into the trees at Stryker’s back. ‘How so, Captain?’

  ‘I have men in these trees, Colonel.’ With that, William Skellen and Simeon Barkworth emerged from the tree line, muskets trained on the enemy officer. ‘You are sore outnumbered.’

  ‘Lies!’ Wild spat the word. ‘Why are they not here if you have them? You are three only. Nothing more than brigands, wagering at my timidity! You insult my intelligence, sir.’

  Stryker ignored him. ‘I merely want your wagon, Colonel Wild. Surrender it now, and take your leave.’

  Wild tilted his head back so that raindrops soaked his face, and brayed with laughter. ‘Such nerve, sir! Such goddamned nerve!’ The gesture he made was barely discernible, a mere flick of the wrist that made his heavy sword waver slightly in the air, but Stryker read it and recoiled instinctively, even as one of Wild’s men burst forth from the group. The horseman’s arm came up, straightened, levelled in line with Stryker’s chest, and he saw the glint of metal in the gloved hand. He scrambled back up the slope to the protection of the oaks beyond. The pistol flashed, but the sound was more muffled cough than sharp crack, and he knew the horseman’s powder had become damp. The rider looked down in horror at his impotent weapon, and Stryker threw himself on to the higher ground of the forest, screaming at his comrades to follow.

  Immediately hooves pounded at their backs, more thunderous than the rain lashing about them, and the three Royalists sprinted for their lives, weaving in and out of the thick trunks of oak, hurdling fallen branches and rotten stumps and powering through grasping thickets of bracken. Stryker’s feet and legs and chest blazed with the effort, but still he could sense the cavalrymen gaining, could hear their murder-tinted snarls and imagine the gleaming blades lofted high above their heads, poised for the killing blow.

  ‘Charge your horse and give ’em some fucking steel, boys!’ a voice bellowed from somewhere to Stryker’s left. He could not see the speaker, for a significant portion of his left side had been left black to him by the bag of gunpowder that had taken his eye, but he knew the voice well enough. He ran towards that voice, immediately rewarded by the black-bearded grimace of the Cornishman, Jimmy Tresick, musket nestled at his shoulder, a seemingly endless length of match-cord wound loosely about his wrist. But the corporal did not pull his trigger for suddenly other men were at his shoulders. Strong men in steel morion helmets hefting long shafts of ash upwards at an angle, the razor-sharp blades embedded in their tips hovering menacingl
y at eye-level. Or, more importantly, chest-level with a horse.

  Stryker threw himself on to the wet earth, rolling under the first of the pike points, and knew that his experienced redcoats would be stepping up to close the trap. He turned just in time to see the first of his Parliamentarian pursuers hit home amid a crow of triumph. But instead of glory, the cavalryman would find only death in this hunt. He was galloping too fast to slow his mount, and though he managed to tear the beast’s head back with a savage pull on the reins, the hooves continued unabated and slid in the deepening mud, scrabbling violently for purchase until its heaving chest thudded on to the tip of a waiting pike. The pikeman was driven backwards by the sheer force of the beast, but he did not let the tapered stave go, and the blade drove deeper and deeper. The animal toppled sideways, crashed into the rain-soaked blanket of leaves, and two musketeers, in position behind the pikemen, stepped forward with naked swords. They drove them into the horse’s chest, stabbing manically for the heart in order to stop the beast’s dangerous thrashing. Its rider was trapped beneath the huge bulk, and he received a blade too, so that both man and horse fell silent together.

  Stryker stared left and right, and felt a rushing pride for the men of his company. Burton had hidden them well, and had released them at precisely the right moment, so that the redcoats emerged from behind the trees in two concentric circles, pikes in the front rank, muskets behind. He looked up at the milling cavalrymen, black-plumed heads darting all around, searching for a way through. But he knew there was none. They would see a line of wicked-tipped pikes, offering death to their horses, and, should they break through, they would be cut down in short order by the primed muskets.

  Stryker studied each anger-etched face within the circle until he found the one he wanted. ‘Do you yield, Colonel Wild?’

  Wild turned his mount to face him, and Stryker thought for a moment that the proud officer, incandescent with rage, would launch a suicidal charge, but instead he merely spat a yellow gobbet of phlegm on to the soggy mulch.

  ‘I said, do you yield?’ Stryker shouted again.

  ‘Your powder will fail!’ Wild shrieked. He lifted his blade, whipping it in a tight circle above the now limp plume of his helmet. ‘God and Parliament! God and Parliament!’

  But none of Wild’s horsemen moved, for their mounts would not charge the hedge of pikes, let alone the muskets beyond.

  Stryker shook his head. ‘Their charges are dry, sir, unlike your own. For one shot at least. And I think one shot for each of my men will comfortably win this fight, don’t you?’

  Wild’s desperate gaze flicked from one musket to the next and gradually the belligerence began to drain from his face as he noted the oiled cloth wound around each weapon. ‘My regiment are nearby, Captain. Four hundred elite horsemen. Four hundred swords that will enfilade your meagre force in a heartbeat. They will be here in minutes.’

  Stryker shook his head slowly. ‘I think not. You were wrong to give chase, Colonel. Do not make another such mistake, for I would not wish further bloodshed.’ He glanced down at the dead rider and his still-twitching horse. ‘But be certain I will have the rest of you slaughtered here and now if needs be. I merely want your wagon. Or rather its contents.’ He turned to Tresick. ‘Fetch it, Corporal.’

  With a snarl of pure rage, Colonel Wild flung his sword to the earth, the tip driving into the mud so that the ornate hilt was left to tremble in the rain.

  ‘God and King, sir,’ Stryker said as he pulled the weapon free.

  The languorous frame of Sergeant Skellen came up beside him, a grin splitting the tall man’s face from ear to ear. ‘And a pox on Parliament.’

  A short while later Captain Stryker’s Company of Foot were arranged in the formal line of march and ready to take their leave. Stryker was thankful that the rain had finally stopped, for the storm would have made their march into Dartmoor much less bearable.

  ‘You did well,’ Stryker said when he found Lieutenant Burton inspecting the heavily laden ammunition wagon. The company had ensured the subterranean cache was truly empty, and now they would take their loot back to the army in Cornwall.

  Burton gave a short snort in a futile attempt to hide his pride. ‘Men did well, sir.’

  ‘Either way, it was the perfect trap. Exactly as I had imagined.’

  Burton went to ensure the bolts at the wagon’s rear were locked tight. ‘And without a shot fired,’ he said when he stepped back.

  ‘That was crucial, Andrew. The wagon is a rare prize, but not one worth losing the company for. Our musketry would have alerted the Roundheads down in the town.’

  Burton nodded, perhaps considering the thought of what horrors might have come from Bovey Tracey had their guns burst into life. ‘I still cannot fathom how you knew Wild’s powder would be damp.’

  Stryker looked at him, acutely aware of the guilt that must etch his face. ‘A guess, Andrew.’

  Burton’s mouth lolled open, but Stryker turned away, unwilling to discuss his folly further. And folly it was, he knew, for he had taken a great risk in gambling on the pistol’s misfire. But he had wanted that wagon. He chuckled silently, mirthlessly, chiding himself for a fool. She had made him angry, and he had wanted a fight.

  ‘You are nothing but common thieves, sir!’ a bellowed voice carried to him, and in a strange way Stryker was almost relieved to have his dark thoughts brought back to the here and now.

  He paced across the clearing and to the edge of the tree line. ‘You are alive, sir.’

  Colonel Gabriel Wild, stripped of weapons and armour, wrists bound tight at his back and kneeling at the base of a tree, was older than Stryker had thought. Perhaps, he guessed, near forty. His hair was light brown, left long so that it just reached his shoulders, and bisected by a bright streak of silver that ran through the very middle of his head, putting Stryker in mind of a badger. His brown beard had lost its waxed precision amid the chase and the rainfall, but Stryker remembered how well kempt it had been when first he had seen the cavalryman. His grooming, his expensive weaponry, and the well-equipped nature of his troop told Stryker that Wild was a man of status, and of wealth.

  ‘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 threa
t 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.’