by Smith, Skye
They were covering each other while they leap frogged from hovel to hovel kicking open every door. The village seemed to be abandoned. If that was all they came to find out, then they would soon be gone. Gone to do the same in the next village, and then the next, along whatever route the devil prince was taking. Daniel could go around the village and hope he wasn't seen, or he could wait here, hidden, until they were gone. If he was going around it would be best to wait for dark and then give the village a wide berth. That thought made him wonder how big the main force of the scouting party was, and where they were? What if these men were scouting this village as a place for the main force of scouts to camp for the night?
It was better not to wait and see. He would backtrack up the gulley, climb out of it, and go around the village to the west, on a higher trail. This valley seemed to lead down to Banbury, whereas a higher trail would lead him closer to Broughton, about two miles west of Banbury. The decision made, he began to scramble up the closest slope to have a peek over the brow of the gulley to make sure there were no other scouting parties to be seen.
He had just begun to climb when the corner of his eye glimpsed a movement ... a brown animal was running out of a shed at this end of the village.
He stopped climbing and focused his looker on the animal. The brown was homespun cloth. It was not an animal but a shepherd keeping low on all fours trying to escape the search of the village. Bloody hell, he was coming this way. Bloody hell, the scouts had seen him. Bloody hell they were grabbing their horses to give chase. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell, now the four mounted scouts were being led up the gulley towards Femke.
He wished the shepherd would trip and fall, so the scouts would capture him before they got any closer. The only thing hiding he and Femke from them was the bend in the gulley. He took a quick look around. There was no where else to hide. Whatever bushes and trees had once filled this gulley, were now gone ... long ago cut, or burned, or fed to animals. As he watched, the man in homespun heard the thunder of hoofs and so stood up and began to run. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell. The homespun was a skirt. The he was a she, and she was about to be overtaken by the four scouts.
The officer was closest to her and in full chase with the point of his sabre aimed at the woman's back. At the last moment he lifted the point and instead hit the woman with the flat of the blade across the back. The woman was knocked down, or ducked down, or tripped. In any case, the officer's horse leaped over her and the officer had to work hard to slow and turn his horse. Meanwhile the woman picked herself up and began to run again.
"Up the slope lass," Daniel whispered under his breath. "Up the steepest slope so they will have to dismount. Then you can outrun them. They are weighed down by armour and weapons. Up the slope, lass. Up the slope damn you." Up the slope would also keep the scouts from coming any closer to him. "Stupid bitch," he muttered in disappointment and sought out his pistols to check the prime and then cock the flint dogs.
There was nothing to cock on his third and smallest pistol, the gentleman's wheellock that he kept in the pocket of his heavy winter cloak, but there were two flints to be cocked on the largest of his pistols. His prize pistol. His double barreled dragon with the ornate silver scrolling. The larger of its barrels carried a typical dragon load of bird shot, lye, and sulfur, while the shorter barrel carried a standard pistol ball. One barrel loaded for dragon's breath, the other for killing. His other long pistol was of dueling quality, which ment that it was rifled for accuracy. To make use of the rifling, it was loaded with a close fitting, well polished ball.
Keeping low, he slid back down to where Femke was waiting for him so he could check his carbine, and grab the red sash, the king’s sash, for his belt. Femke nudged him for more water and tried to stick her nose further out into the gulley to better smell the approaching horses. He pushed her face roughly back and was about to tell her to be still when he heard a scream. A quick glance around the bend confirmed what he expected. The scouts had her trapped, and they were not being gentle with her. The four horses had her boxed in and the men were pushing her from one saddle to another as each of them dismounted.
She was young, hardly grown. Bloody hell. If she had been a hag, they would have beaten some information out of her and within a few minutes would be riding back down to the village. Because she was young he would now have to wait around for an hour or more while they all took turns humping her. He couldn’t afford to wait, but that would be the smart thing to do, the logical thing to do, ... wait patiently until they were finished humping her and left.
Daniel put up with the wait and the screams only until the humping began. As he expected, the leader, the lord's son got the first turn on top of her. Two of the others held her down on her back, each with a grip on an elbow which left each a free hand to fondle her breasts. The fourth man had his britches down around his ankles and was fondling himself in preparation to be the next to have her. None of them were looking at anything but the girl. Daniel put a finger to his lips and shushed Femke and told her to 'stay', and then he walked calmly, but with purpose, towards the gang rape. He had a pistol in each hand but they were pointed down and well hidden by the smooth lines of his heavy winter wool cloak.
The fourth man was the first man to see him and he stopped jiggling his thing and called a warning to the two holding the woman down, and they looked up and began to rise. The lordson was oblivious to anything other than his swollen cock, so he just kept pumping away at the girl. The girl, now with both hands free, was oblivious to anything other than scratching the face of the lordson.
Long ago Daniel had learned that the best way to train a dog, was to order him to do something that he was already doing. Since then he had noticed that women do the same thing with men. The three men were looking around for where they had laid out their weapons as they straightened up. Daniel yelled, "Rise and stand to attention!" in his best parade marshal voice. Two of the men actually stiffened and began a salute.
Daniel did not return the salute. Instead he raised his dragon from under his cloak, pointed it in the general direction of the heads of the three standing men and pulled the trigger. Click, spark, puff, sizzle, kapow ... and then the three heads were hidden within a cloud of yellow grey smoke ... hurtful smoke, stinging smoke, choking smoke. It had the same immediate effect on each of the standing men. Each of them dropped to their knees and screamed in agony.
Two of them were definitely blinded by the pain of the birdshot, sulfur and lye, hitting their faces. The third not so much. He dropped to the ground and rolled over and over towards his own pistol which was laying safe on a boulder about a yard from the woman. Daniel kept tracking him with his dragon. The bugger was good. He not only kept low and rolling until he had a hand on his pistol, but then he kept rolling until he was behind the partial cover of the boulder. Only then did the man take a good look at Daniel and size up the situation.
"Drop the dragon," the man ordered as he cocked his own pistol and stood up out of the cover of the boulder so he could move closer to the stranger. "Drop it else I'll shoot." His stare was one of complete confidence. The confidence of a man holding a loaded pistol while bringing it up to aim at a man with a spent one. His confidence turned to disbelief when he heard, rather than saw, the click of another flint, and then a fresh cloud of smoke coming towards him from the spent gun. After that all he could think of was the pain of the pistol ball ripping through his guts as it doubled him up with the force of it.
Daniel ran forward and kicked the pistol out of the man's hand. It hit the ground hard and went off in another belch of smoke and noise. He stepped back from the new smoke and circled around the old smoke to on the same side of it as the women. The sound of a complaining horse caused him to turn. The lordson was butt naked from the waist down and trying to get a bare foot into the stirrup of the closest horse. At about the same time that the rapist managed to swing a bare leg over the saddle, Daniel lifted his left hand out from under his cloak.
/> The killing pistol in Daniel's left hand did what it was designed to do. It put a pistol ball deep into the heart of the horse. The costly stallion slumped to his front knees and then kicked out with his hind legs before toppling over. The lordson went flying sideways ... as if catapulted out of the saddle. He hit the ground hard and then screamed in pain and fear as he squirmed to get his leg out from under the horse. The horse was strangely still except for a rasp of breath.
The two blinded men had somehow found their pistols and were now turning their heads back and forth trying to find a target by sound alone. The girl was getting to her feet and was about to say something. Daniel tripped her legs out from under her and fell to the ground on top of her.
"Oh, so that is how it be," she grunted in a forced breath. "Now you want your turn." It was a good thing that the two of them were lying flat because two pistol balls whizzed overhead, missing them by but a foot. Again there was a lot of noise and gunsmoke, during which time the woman tried to nut him with her knee.
"Behave yourself," Daniel hissed in her ear while pressing down harder on her to keep himself from being nutted. "I was sent to rescue you," he lied. The lie calmed her. She stopped struggling and tried to see his face.
Daniel looked over towards the lordson. He was testing one of his legs and trying to stand. Daniel lunged towards him on all fours, and then on twos, and then on ones as his other foot kicked the lordson in the leg he was favouring. The lad crumpled back to the ground, screaming. And he was a lad, not more than middle teens, perhaps seventeen. Daniel’s voice was a breathless groan when he told the lad, "Stay down else I'll break your other leg too."
The lad stopped moving and stared back at him with hatred. "How dare you lay hands on me. I am the son of the Earl of Northampton. I demand to know your name!"
"Colonel Lunsford," Daniel lied. The false name caused him to smile. He quite liked the thought of making future trouble for that vicious bastard Lunsford. "At your service. And you are?"
"William Compton, third son of Spencer Compton, the king's earl," the lad said, righteous proud of his unearned privileges.
Daniel looked at the lass. Lass because she was even younger than William. You could tell that by how little thatch she had between her legs. You could also tell that she was a brunette, despite the golden streaks that the summer sun had made in the long tresses tangled around her shoulders. "And who are you girl?"
"Angelique, shepherdess of Hornton," she replied mimicking William’s pride.
"Well Angie," Daniel told her, "stand up and pick up that sabre and if this lad even moves then hack at him with it, and keep hacking at him until he stops moving. I have to go and see to the wounded."
He looked towards the three men that his double barreled dragon had just crippled. "You two," he called to the men who were still covering their stinging eyes with their filthy hands. "The blind ones. Walk towards my voice. Keep walking. Now stop. At your feet is your friend. He has a bad gut wound. All of you need clean water to wash out the sting and the corruption. There is a clean pool up this gulley about two hundred yards. If you follow the stream bed, then you can't miss it. The man with the bleeding gut can be your eyes until you have washed your own out. Now help him up and be quick about it."
"But there is no... owe,” the lass began, but was hushed by Daniel's kick.
Once the three men were on their way, stumbling up the dry stream bed, Daniel turned back to the lass and asked her, "Did the lad enter you? Did he spurt his seed into you?"
"NO," she replied quickly, too quickly, but after a moment of thought she said softly, "He was deep inside me, and he is young, so yes, he likely seeded me even though you interrupted him before he could spurt."
"Were you a virgin?"
"Yes, of course." A pause. "No, but I have never been with child."
"You're in luck, William," Daniel told the lad, "the girl's honesty just saved your life. Under the law it is the death penalty for raping a virgin. Raping this honest lass will only cost you a heavy purse and a beating, ... and you've already had your beating."
William kept looking between three things ... the sabre the girl was holding above him, her high young nipples which jiggled with every pant of her breath, and Colonel Lunsford's cold grey eyes. "Before this war began," William told them in a shaky voice, "I was reading law at Oxford. There is no death penalty for rape. There is no such law. In court I will say that she provoked me beyond reason. Look at her even now, how she flaunts her body. Besides which, I am the son of an earl, so it is her duty to pleasure me, and my right to be pleasured."
"Ah yes, I watched her provoke you," Daniel hissed. "Running away from you while screaming in terror, then kicking and biting and scratching at you to make you stop. She wanted you so badly that she had to be held down by two men while you mounted her. Aye, there is nothing more provoking than an unwilling beauty, is there?"
"Exactly," he replied in a more cheerful voice.
For a moment Daniel was speechless. The lad was serious. "Where is your purse? It now belongs to the girl, as does anything else you have of value." The lad didn't answer so Daniel kicked him in his weak leg.
"Owww, you shit. It’s in my saddle bag, on the dead stallion. You owe me a horse, a good horse."
Daniel whistled to bring Femke up to them but did not watch to make sure she came. He knew she would. Instead he turned to the girl and took the sabre gently out of her hand as he told her, "Angie dear, gather the other horses, and the weapons, and strip everything from the saddle of the dead horse. The horses, saddles, and weapons are mine by right of victor. By right of rape, you can have any purse that you find."
"No, you can't do that," William complained. "Like I said, there is no such law."
"Oh but there is. The traditional law of every kingdom and county around the North Sea. Knut the Great's in-common law. Don't they teach you anything at Oxford. During times when the rule of law breaks down and becomes the rule of violence, then the traditional laws still apply. Times like now."
"I'll get even for this Colonel Lunsford. You know I will."
"Yes, I'm sure you will ... try," Daniel replied and then kicked the bad leg again. "In the mean time you can tell me what you were doing in Hornton, a deserted village. You certainly didn't come expecting a good fuck. You didn't even know the lass was there until she broke her cover and made a run for it. Why are you here, William Compton?"
"None of your business. I will not betray my lord's confidences."
Daniel pointed the sabre very close to William's throat. With one eye he winked a slow wink that only Angie could see, then he told her, "Angie, love. Come over here, bend down, and bite the end off Willie's winkie as a keepsake." And it was a winkie. It had shriveled up inside itself.
"What did you say," Angie said as she stumbled closer with an arm load of pistols and knives. "You mean put his thing in my mouth. That's disgusting."
"Are you sure you aren't a virgin?" Daniel asked her. "Never mind. If you won't bite it off, then cut it off. Use that dagger you're holding. Go on. How else will you prove the rape to explain your sudden wealth."
"Nooo... you can't!" the lad yelled out. He crossed his still bare legs and covered his winkie with both hands.
"I can't," Daniel admitted, "but she can. Any injury sustained by a rapist during a rape is judged self defense and just deserts. Now, perhaps if you tell me something interesting, then I will be kind enough to make a fire to heat the dagger enough to cauterize the wound so that you won't bleed to death. If you tell me something really interesting, then perhaps I will talk the girl out of taking your winkie as evidence."
"My prince sent me to scout the middle trail that bypasses Banbury and goes straight south to Broughton. He wanted to know if there were any watch posts or scouts or inhabited villages in his way. Men that may forewarn Broughton Castle of his coming."
"By prince you mean Rupert?"
"Yes, of course Rupert," William said irritably.
"Why Br
oughton when it is Banbury that has the garrison and the arsenal?"
"To take revenge on the circle, the Broughton Circle. You know, the group of lords who created the Reform Party that is behind this rebellion against the king."
"Name the lords," Daniel ordered. From the answer he would be able to gauge whether the lad was knowledgeable or just a gossip.
William thought for a moment. "Well I can name William Fiennes, the Baron Saye and Sele. Broughton Castle is his fortified manor and family home. He is the only religious independent in the House of Lords, so the king wants him captured or killed. Two of his sons are members of parliament in opposition to the king, so the same goes for them."
"But they will be with Essex's army at Warwick castle," Daniel pointed out.
"Then looting their home will be punishment for their slander," the lad said matter-of-factly as if such lawlessness against an Englishman's home was justified.
Daniel stepped back a little. The hearth law that protected a man's home was one of England's best loved laws. "You interest me. Keep talking."
"With Broughton in Rupert's hands, then the king can lay siege to Banbury."
"Don't be daft," Daniel said and kicked him in the leg, but gently, more as a threat. "That would just slow the king down. He has an open road between here and London, and Essex's army is out of position at Warwick, a day's march north of him. The main army would be foolish to slow down and lay a siege, rather than march double time onwards to London."