‘Death to traitors!’ someone yelled.
‘Kill the scum!’
Then they hit. Mun saw the Prince hack off a man’s arm and blast a hole in another’s chest with his carbine, but Mun knew he could match any man’s horsemanship and grabbed his own carbine, controlling Hector with his knees as the stallion bit an enemy trooper’s leg and the man screamed. From his right a sword slashed down but Mun caught the blade on his own and sent it wide, bringing the carbine across and pulling the trigger. The gun snarled fire, hammering the rider from his saddle, though his left foot was caught in the stirrup and he was wrenched horribly as his horse galloped off, his steel-sheathed head turning the mud like a ploughshare.
With one savage swing of his poll-axe O’Brien scythed off a man’s head, the neck stump spouting crimson gouts into the air as the head struck the ground and was kicked by a hoof, so that it rolled ten feet through the filth.
‘Sweet Jesus Christ!’ Vincent Rowe shouted, wide-eyed and spattered in blood. He wheeled his horse round and round. ‘Sweet Jesus! Did you see that?’
The rebels were breaking, men whipping their mounts with the flats of their swords, desperate to escape from the ruin of their left wing.
‘Ride on! Ride on!’ an officer roared, hoisting his carbine and thrusting it towards the north-west. But Mun was already moving, plunging on towards the Parliamentarian rear, Hector eating up the muddied ground, black mane flying.
‘Cannon!’ someone yelled as they came over a slight ridge and Mun’s breath snagged in his chest for there, waiting for them, were three cannon, their crews making ready to unleash the big guns’ fury.
A ragged salute of booms pounded Mun’s world and he cringed, dipping his head, but the gunners’ aim was all wrong and the cannon coughed their iron balls too high and Mun did not know where they landed as he galloped on. Towards several knots of musketeers, many of whom had their matchlock butts in the mud, desperately reloading, plunging scouring sticks into barrels. Others were blowing on match-cords to make sure their tips were burning, then fumbling them into the serpents’ jaws and hoisting the heavy muskets to their shoulders. Those muskets spat fire, their lead balls fizzing past Mun’s ears, and a trooper in front of him was struck but the horse galloped on, its master slumped over, jolting horribly in the saddle, so that if the ball had not killed him the broken neck would. But most of the musketeers hit nothing and then Mun was upon them, slashing an enemy’s face open as he raced past, his fellow troopers’ yells and screams like those of wild animals. For they were full of the mad thrill of battle. A frenzied blood-lust gripped them, gripped Mun, like a hawk’s talons, because musketeers had no chance against cavalry. All the rebels could do was die on Royalist blades, and then Mun was through, past the last real resistance on Essex’s left wing and plunging onwards across the waterlogged fields with hundreds of other gore-spattered men.
Fleeing before them were the remnants of Sir James Ramsey’s rebel Horse, riding as though the Devil himself were on their heels. And perhaps he was, for Prince Rupert hungered to kill and his men craved vengeance on these treacherous curs who had thought to defy their king and plunge the world into chaos.
Onwards, across ditches and ploughed fields, hooves thundering. All around Mun groups were peeling off after their own prey, like hounds catching the scent of another fox and breaking from the main chase, but he followed the Prince through a field of gorse and through a gap in a thick hedgerow and there, sitting amongst rough grazing and ripe for picking, was the Parliamentarian baggage train. Ox-drivers, women and children and the handful of men who had been left to guard the train recognized the horsemen galloping past them, saw the devils they were fleeing from, and took to their heels, running north for their lives. But a knot of twenty or so rebel troopers, perhaps realizing that they had led the Royalists to such an important prize, pulled up, their horses whinnying, eyes rolling, and turned to make a fight of it. Yelling encouragement to each other they dragged swords from scabbards and hoisted poll-axes and bravely charged.
‘Go on, Hector!’ Mun roared, extending his right arm forward so that his rapier pointed at a trooper in a bloodied buff-coat who was wielding a curve-bladed hanger and screaming as he came. ‘Go on, boy!’ Thirty paces away. ‘Yah!’ In a matter of heartbeats the two lines would clash with steel and fire. Fifteen paces. Then his opponent veered left and Mun brought his sword back and scythed it at his head, but the man got his hanger up and it cut Mun’s blade in half, the ring of steel loud and Mun’s arm screaming with the pain of the impact.
‘Whoa, Hector!’ Mun leant back, left hand hauling the reins, and Hector obeyed, turning. All around, blades clashed and men and horses gave vent to fury and the desperate will to survive. The rebel was a fine horseman and had turned his mount and now spurred forward, grinning savagely. Mun let go the reins and drew a pistol and the other’s eyes widened as he realized his mistake and the pistol roared, its ball punching a fist-sized hole through the man’s chest, spraying fleshy bone shards out of his back.
Mun saw the Prince wheeling his horse in a death dance with an enemy trooper, the combatants slashing and parrying. But the Prince had the longer reach and managed to slash his adversary’s left arm and, unable to control his horse, the trooper screamed for mercy, blood spraying from his forearm, which was all but severed.
‘You have betrayed your king!’ Prince Rupert bellowed, then his horse lurched forward and Rupert plunged his blade into the rebel’s neck and hauled it out quick as lightning, wheeling his mount, hungry for more prey.
Nehemiah Boone came up on a foe’s blind side and hacked into his grey mare’s quarters and the animal screeched, making a wild traverse, bending her haunches away from the savage blade. The man fought to bring the mare round but Boone slashed him twice about the face and neck and he toppled from the saddle with a crunch of iron and bone.
The enemy’s brave stand crumbled and those that could broke off and spurred away, flying for their lives. The Prince wheeled his horse round, pointing his sword towards those of his men who were already sacking the Parliamentarian baggage train or else trotting over to it. ‘Captain, get those men back to the King!’ he yelled, eyes blazing in a crimson-spattered face.
Mun looked west and saw in the distance a great host of the Prince’s Horse galloping up and over a small rise after the main body of the enemy cavalry. Then the Prince dragged his spurs back and galloped after them accompanied by twenty of his closest and best.
Dragging breath into his lungs, Mun took in the scene: dead men lying all around or sitting slumped in saddles, their horses standing placidly as though awaiting their masters’ commands. Several horses were bleeding out where they stood. Two writhed on the ground, trying in vain to rise, eyes rolling, the foam-slathered bits clinking in their mouths.
‘Well, Corporal . . .’ Captain Boone said, chest heaving, scabbarding his sword and nodding to the carts and oxen and the men that were scavenging that train like hounds on a dead fox, ‘shall we?’
The lantern-faced veteran grinned and spat and together they walked their mounts across the field. Mun followed, patting Hector’s sweat-lathered neck and glancing about him, looking for his friends. He caught O’Brien’s eye and the big Irishman nodded grimly, a greeting infused with the horror of what they had just been through and relief at having survived. And there was Vincent Rowe, reloading his carbine with trembling hands, and Mun was glad to see that the young man was unharmed.
‘Good boy,’ he said, feeling the stallion’s hot sweat even through his leather glove, ‘you’re fine, boy. Nothing can hurt you.’
‘Anything worth anything?’ Captain Boone asked a grizzled trooper who was standing up on a cart pulling clothes from a chest and flinging them aside. The trooper was just about to reply, when he grinned triumphantly and produced a fat purse, weighing it in his hand appreciatively.
‘That’s a start,’ Boone said, fluttering a gloved hand, which was as good as a command, and the trooper tossed him th
e purse before bending back to his task. All along the train men were doing the same. Some were laying hands on letters and pipes, leather jacks, pottery jugs full of wine, cloaks, shirts, tunics and breeches, whilst others were crowing at the sight of silver plate that glowed dully in the grey day.
‘Good fishing,’ Richard Downes said at Mun’s shoulder, for clearly these were the personal possessions of senior Parliamentarians.
‘Aye,’ agreed O’Brien, ‘but it isn’t a trout until it’s on the bank. As my da used to say. We haven’t won the battle yet.’
In the distance, to the south-east, the big guns still thundered. Now and then Mun caught the crackle of musket fire on the breeze and he thought of his father and Emmanuel, his chest tightening. His whole body, muscle and bone, thrummed madly. ‘Captain, we must get back to the fight,’ he called. There were at least fifty men ransacking the rebels’ baggage train, men who, having routed Essex’s cavalry, should have been back on the field harrying his musketeers.
‘All in good time, Rivers,’ Boone said. The captain had dismounted and was striding along the train, his magpie’s eyes searching for shiny things amongst men’s everyday belongings. Some of the other men were looking back towards the sounds of battle, but most were preoccupied with plundering.
‘The King needs us, Captain!’ Mun called.
‘We’ve played our part, Rivers,’ said Humphrey Walton, a trooper with a sharp blade of a beard, as he flourished two cups of ale towards another man, who raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips admiringly. ‘Let them dance without us, lad. Just for a while. By Christ we’ve earned it.’
Mun felt the anger rise in his chest, hot bile brimming up his throat. He looked at Downes but the man shrugged.
‘He has a point, Mun,’ he said, dismounting stiffly to join the looting. ‘Come on, O’Brien, you’re an Irishman aren’t you? The only thing you do better than stealing is drinking.’
O’Brien nodded and made to dismount.
‘Stay where you are!’ Mun barked and the red-haired giant frowned, shrugged and remained mounted. ‘Captain, I insist we rejoin the fight,’ Mun said. ‘As the Prince commanded.’
Boone turned and glared. In his hand he held a gilt dress spur with a silver rowel. ‘The Prince meant for us to await his return,’ he said, pointing the spur at Mun. ‘We are too few and must wait for His Highness to round up the rest.’
‘That is not what he said,’ Mun said, as Hector made a side pass, sensing his master’s anger.
‘Are you calling me a liar, Rivers?’ Captain Boone asked.
‘Careful, lad,’ Corporal Bard growled from a waggon bed.
‘I’m saying you would rather fill your own purse than do your duty to the King,’ Mun said, sensing eyes on him as men stopped ferreting to watch the exchange. Boone’s sword rasped from its scabbard as he strode towards Mun, hatred flaring in his face like black powder in the priming pan.
‘Dismount, Rivers,’ Boone snarled, fury trembling his pointed beard.
Mun hauled his foot from the stirrup and swung down to meet the challenge, but had barely got both boots onto the ground when Boone struck him across the face with the dress spur and Mun staggered backwards, blood dripping through the fingers pressed to his cheek.
‘You bastard coward!’ he rasped, drawing what was left of his sword.
‘No, Mun!’ O’Brien cautioned.
Boone was grinning, beckoning him on.
‘Put that blade away, Rivers,’ Corporal Bard said, and Mun looked up to see Bard’s carbine pointed at him, the grey-haired soldier shaking his head slowly. ‘Don’t be a fool, lad. You didn’t get through that tussle back there to end up shot by your own bloody corporal.’
If you only knew what I did to my last corporal, Mun thought. ‘Your carbine isn’t loaded, Corporal,’ he said, his fist bone-white on his ruined rapier’s hilt. In truth he did not know whether or not Bard’s carbine had a ball snug in its barrel, but had guessed that the man had not yet reloaded.
‘Even if that were true, lad, what are you going to do with that?’ Bard asked, nodding at Mun’s broken blade.
‘My father is fighting for the King,’ Mun said, loud enough for others to hear. ‘I am not the only one with kin back on that field. You expect me to play the guttersnipe, pilfering men’s Sunday clothes whilst the rebels still hold the ground?’
‘I expect you to follow orders, you damned cur!’ Boone yelled.
Mun glared at his captain, wanting more than anything – almost anything – to thrust that broken length of cold steel into Boone’s rancid heart. But what he wanted even more than that was to rejoin the battle whose distant murmur sounded like the ocean, and if he acted on his hatred he would be killed in his turn by Bard or someone else.
He tossed the broken sword aside and turned, mounting Hector with fluid ease.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Boone rasped. But Mun gave no reply as he cuffed blood from his face, wheeled the stallion round and rode towards the roar of the cannon.
‘Wait for me, you damned hot-headed fool!’ Mun twisted and saw O’Brien riding after him. There were others too, including Rowe and Downes, the latter stuffing some shiny loot into his knapsack even as he spurred forward. Mun waited, then nodded to the big Irishman when he had caught up.
‘They can’t shoot me for doing my duty now, can they?’ O’Brien said, a grin splitting his red beard.
‘I wouldn’t put money on it, O’Brien,’ Mun said, smiling back. Then they gave their mounts their heels and rode.
They cantered south-east, following the line of the Kineton to Banbury road with hedges on their right beyond which was the rebel left flank, then on past knots of their own dragoons and musketeers in the ditches and boundaries, and when they came back to the open plain and its deafening, smoke-shrouded chaos, Mun’s guts turned to ice. The rebel foot regiments were pushing forward, pikes bristling, their musketeers firing and loading, firing and loading, enveloping their own ranks in reeking fog.
‘What do we do now?’ Rowe asked, standing in his stirrups, peering through the smoke-charged air, trying to discern what was happening.
‘We ride to the centre, to Sir Nicholas Byron’s brigade. We form a troop with the men we have and we hope the Prince or Captain Boone brings back the rest.’
‘Isn’t that Byron’s lot?’ O’Brien said, lips pulled back from his teeth. A musket-shot away, two components of Essex’s foot had passed his stationary van and were assaulting a large Royalist battalia in the flank, their massed firepower over-whelming the Royalist line.
‘They’ve still got bloody horse!’ Downes remarked, pointing to a force of rebel harquebusiers and armoured cuirassiers who were cleaving their way into Byron’s disrupted ranks.
‘Whilst ours are halfway to St Albans by now,’ O’Brien said, ‘because the highborn bastards think they’re out for a day’s hunt.’
Mun twisted in the saddle and counted his companions, now fishing in pouches for balls, jabbing scouring sticks into pistol and carbine barrels and winding wheellocks with spanners. Eleven men. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
One of his own pistols was still loaded but he set about loading the other and then his carbine, as around him horses tossed their heads and snorted, tack, arms and armour jangling.
The small group tried to make sense of the battle. In the near distance men were dying, their screams drowned by the savage salvos of muskets, cannon and the great murmur of battle. The air was thick with the stench of it. ‘God give me strength,’ Mun growled. He knew the others were looking to him, waiting for him, though he did not know why, and felt the trembling grow more fierce in his hands as he holstered his pistol against the saddle and whispered soothing words to Hector, all the while hoping that more of the King’s Horse would appear and some or other officer could tell them what to do.
‘Are you all ready?’ Mun heard himself ask, which was strange, he thought, for he did not feel ready in the slightest to plunge back into that seething ca
uldron, still less so with only a handful of companions. ‘Don’t waste your shot,’ he warned.
‘And keep away from those damned pikes unless you’re wanting a second arsehole,’ O’Brien added, clutching his poleaxe whose blade’s heart-shaped holes, Mun saw, were blocked with dark congealed gore.
Then they were trotting across the foot-churned field and past a mass of musketeers, some of whom called out asking whose men they were; but not knowing who the musketeers were, neither Mun nor any of his companions gave them an answer. Then on past the Royalist right wing which had fragmented from the centre to make a stand in a good defensive position behind a ditch supported by some cannon and a troop of dragoons.
‘Christ’s wounds, where’s the rest of you? Where is the Prince?’ a buff-coated captain yelled. Assuming only King’s Horse would come so close in such a small number, the ashen-faced man had come forward from his company and raised a hand to halt Mun’s troop. ‘Essex still has cavalry on the field. Where’s ours?’
‘His Highness is regrouping,’ Mun said, hoping it was true. ‘What of our left wing? Wilmot’s Horse?’
The captain waved an arm to the west. ‘I heard he swept their cavalry from the field but no one has seen him since.’
‘We have no Horse left in the fight?’ Mun felt sick at the thought, for without cavalry the King’s Foot was horribly vulnerable to Essex’s superior numbers, not least to the mixed cavalry they had seen ploughing into Sir Nicholas Byron’s brigade.
‘There are some of the King’s Lifeguard hereabouts,’ the captain said. ‘We passed them on our way across here. But only twice your number.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe a few more.’ Seeing he could expect no help from the remnants before him the captain cursed and turned his back on them and marched back to his position, his men eager to hear what news he had.
The Bleeding Land Page 29