Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles

by Arnold, Michael

  ‘You inspect our work, Captain?’ Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon had asked.

  Stryker slid half-way back down the slope and laughed when he saw who the speaker had been. ‘It is the enemy’s work I inspect, sir.’

  ‘Even so,’ Rawdon had said, sweeping his arm out to indicate the line of the ditch, ‘will you indulge me? I would value your judgement.’

  The pair had walked the defences for the rest of the night, progress aided by the ceasing of the rebel bombardment at around four o’clock. They nodded to orb-eyed sentries as they went, passing along the newly deepened ditch that skirted the Old House and down into the road that had once run between the twin mansions and the Grange but which was now barricaded and guarded by musketeers at either end. Judging by the fires, it seemed that the lion’s share of Waller’s army was still concentrated on the northern front, encamped on the higher, drier ground on the far side of the swollen Loddon, and it was from that direction, Rawdon surmised, they would launch any major assault. That was why, as the first dreary chinks of light began to filter over the hills to the east, his yellowcoats were busily making the farmyard properly defensible.

  ‘We should get the supplies out of the Barn, sir,’ Stryker said as they moved back towards the huge brick structure that domin­ated the farm.

  ‘I have already ordered some corn and oysters taken up to the house,’ Rawdon replied. ‘But what carts and horses we have are destined for the infirmary, should there be an attack. The chirurgeon will need transportation for the wounded.’

  And the dead, Stryker thought. ‘I will bring my men down to the Grange should a fight break out.’

  Rawdon glanced at him dubiously. ‘Are they ready to be thrown into the fire again, Captain?’

  Stryker smiled. ‘I do swear my sergeant grows mildewed if left to languish for long.’

  ‘You and your men will be welcome wherever you feel they are needed, Stryker.’ A group of soldiers crouching against the wall of the Barn stood pike-straight as their colonel went by, and Rawdon touched a finger to his hat in acknowledgement. ‘My lads are good and brave,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘but they lack real experience. We have sallied hard these last weeks, and many have bloodied their swords, but that is no substitute for real battle.’ He grumbled a rueful chuckle. ‘Do you know to what I put my time before the war, Captain?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Stryker lied.

  ‘I dealt in cloth and Canary wine. My life was rich and easy, sir, rich and easy.’ He laughed again, more heartily this time. ‘At the age of sixty, when I have led a full life and should, by all natural rights, be looking towards my legacy, I find myself governor of a fortress in the midst of divers foes.’ He shook his head. ‘Providence is a strange mistress, Captain Stryker. Strange indeed.’

  ‘You may still look to your legacy, Colonel,’ Stryker said. ‘Though it will no longer speak of a great merchant, but of a great military leader.’

  ‘You mock me, sir,’ Rawdon said, suddenly looking ancient to Stryker.

  ‘I do not, sir,’ Stryker said. As he finished the words, the artillery up on the hill severed the morning’s peace like a vast earthquake. He looked up at the hill, wreathed thickly in powder smoke. A sizeable body of infantry, perhaps five hundred strong, seemed to be moving at pace down towards the river. He touched a hand to Rawdon’s elbow. ‘I fear you will soon have the chance to make certain your legacy, sir,’ he said, nodding towards the approaching force. He turned away, breaking into a run and only glancing back to shout, ‘I go to fetch my men, Colonel! We’ve to fight this morning!’

  Stryker found his men on Basing’s north wall. They were fifty paces to the west of Garrison Gate, perched high on a wooden scaffold, and from here, with only the road to divide the main estate from the Grange, they could easily see the fight raging in the Marquess of Winchester’s agrarian complex. He went to join them, the planks clattering under foot as he ran along the platform, and conducted a quick head-count. Just seven without the Trowbridge boys, assigned, as they were, to guarding the gold. It would have to do.

  ‘You have your weapons?’ he shouted.

  They held up muskets and some blew on their coals for effect. Skellen stepped forth. He had found himself a halberd, the mark of his rank and his weapon of choice. ‘Down there is it, sir?’

  Stryker followed his gaze. The sergeant was staring balefully at the walled rectangle that was the Grange, its small outbuildings almost invisible within the false mist of powder smoke. ‘It is, Will.’

  He turned abruptly away, leading the group along the wall and down a rickety ladder that bowed alarmingly under the combined weight. When he hit ground level he paused to snatch a glimpse of the Old House, its grandiose gatehouse already looking as though it had aged a millennium under the ministrations of Waller’s heavy cannon. Even as he stared, a high-pitched scream tore the air above their heads and a ball slammed into the brickwork. The distance was too great to do any significant damage, but a shower of splinters flew out in a wide stone fountain. Stryker looked at Skellen. ‘Tell me she is not in there, Sergeant.’

  Skellen shook his head. ‘It’s been evacuated, sir. She goes to the infirmary, so Cap’n Forrester says.’

  Stryker’s blood ran chill. ‘She is hurt?’

  ‘She assists the chirurgeon,’ a new voice sounded at his back.

  Stryker turned to see Lancelot Forrester. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Gaillard is not adept at fighting at range,’ Forrester said. ‘She feels more useful tending to the wounded,’ his face twisted in distaste, ‘until such time as the scrap reaches close-quarters.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘Care to join us, Forry?’

  Forrester drew his sword. ‘A man can die but once, old man.’

  Captain-Lieutenant Jedidiah Clinson was a man with much to prove. At twenty years, he was young to be the lieutenant of General Waller’s own company, and he felt the pressure like a knife between his shoulders. The other officers undoubtedly – if grudgingly – respected him, for his skill with sword in hand would match any man, but he also sensed they were watching his every move, waiting for a mistake that might dislodge him from the general’s favour. Every task he undertook, therefore, required the utmost dedication and zeal, and that was why, as he moved through the narrow lane and over the swollen Loddon at the head of the five-hundred-strong forlorn hope, he braced himself for a storm of bullets from which he did not dare shrink.

  The fire from the defences was thick; the stink of burnt powder instantly ripe in his nostrils. Clinson had to jerk at his boots with every pace, for the ground was a saturated morass. His knees screamed in lancing pain and his hips ached as he used his sword to hack a way through the undergrowth hemming the southern riverbank, taking a moment to pray and to pat his commission, which was folded into a tight square in his breast pocket. The leaden hail pelted them as they spread out, and they half turned by instinct, like men striding into a gale, but Clinson raised his sword, ignored the sound of a ball as it whistled past his ear, and charged straight at the walls that were just twenty paces away. They screamed like madmen, their comrades hunched behind the hastily raised breastworks on either side cheering them on, offering steady covering fire. All around men fired at the defenders, whose frightened faces peered through crude loopholes in the brickwork, while the artillery raged over everything, battering the Old House at the same time Clinson battered the Grange. It was a living nightmare, the like of which he could never have envisaged, and every sinew in his lean frame seemed to beseech him to turn tail and run, but he could not. He had a force of good men, and they were ample to take the Grange from the relatively few malignants poised on the far side of the seething wall. Clinson screamed and crowed and twirled his blade high so that all could see him.

  Stryker and his men had gone as far as the fish ponds when they realized the rebel detachment had crossed the raised lane. More shots rattled out, this time from within the perimeter of the Grange, and Stryker saw that the wall was almost entire
ly hidden by smoke as the yellowcoats poured their fire through the loopholes. Some of the braver souls had fashioned fire-steps out of planks of wood, hay bales and hogsheads, and they leaned over the top of the wall, spitting their leaden venom at the oncoming rebels. But the officers on the walls were already bawling at their charges to fall back, and a steady stream of Royalist defenders flowed towards the Barn. The huge double doors were flung open by screaming sentries, and the men bolted inside. Stryker and his greencoats went too, rushing into the vast building even as shouts were heard from the walls. He looked back just as the doors were being swung closed, catching a fleeting glimpse of glowering faces and clawing hands as men scaled the wall, dropping unhindered into the Grange.

  Inside the Great Barn, the Royalists were hurriedly pushing Basing’s winter supplies to the walls. There were two sets of opposite doors, split by a brick and flint threshing floor, and they rolled barrels of beer and milk to the north-facing entrance, stacking them against the barred timbers for reinforcement. They could not afford to block the rear door, for fear of entrapping themselves, but cases of pork and dried peas, small carts loaded with hay, and even a pile of feather beds were heaved over to the walls all around in order to provide extra cover. The musketeers threw themselves against their incongruous buttresses, thrusting muskets out through the ragged holes and picking off targets as the rebel force flooded over the north wall.

  Stryker climbed a precarious tower of metal-banded chests. He reached a point almost a third of the way up the wall where the mortar was visibly crumbling, and kicked out one of the bricks with the heel of his boot. He peered through just as the Barn’s defenders began to fire in earnest, the reports of so many muskets utterly deafening as they echoed about the oaken timbers of the trussed roof. The stench was almost unbearable, the acrid pall stinging his throat. He bit back the bile that climbed up from his fragile guts and blinked the tears from his eye, forcing himself to brave the incoming flow of bullets to scan the outer wall. The Roundheads kept coming, men crouching on the far side with cupped hands were boosting their confederates over the low summit to drop beside the ponds and join the attack. It was not just to the north, however. Now that he had a good view of the assault, he could see the Parliamentarian front widening, as more units skirted east and west, evidently intending to come around the sides of the Grange.

  Stryker turned away from the spy-hole, the stacked chests creaking and teetering precariously beneath him. He saw Rawdon down beside the huge doors, barking orders with drawn sword, the bright silk of his slashed coat a beacon for men to follow. Stryker sheathed his weapon and made a funnel of his palms around his mouth. ‘Colonel Rawdon!’

  Rawdon looked up. ‘Captain Stryker?’

  ‘They advance on both flanks, sir! We shall soon have them at our rear!’

  The colonel spun, impressively for a man of his age, orders tumbling from him in a series of hoarse syllables that had men scuttling to the rear doors. They gathered in clusters against the frames, unwilling to close the thick shutters but ready to meet any threat. Stryker dropped from his perch, sliding haphazardly down the swaying stack so that his rump smarted by the time he reached the rammed chalk floor. His men were lining the walls between the barrels and cases, firing upon the exposed Parliamentarians as they edged closer to the vast building. A large number of Rawdon’s musketeers were gathered to his right, firing through holes knocked in the Barn’s eastern gable end, and he guessed the outbuildings of the Grange must now be swarming with enemy soldiers.

  Skellen was close, face screwed up against a loophole, and he thumped him gently on the shoulder. The sergeant leaped up, shouldering his pole-arm as he followed, and the pair ran to the rear doorway. Now Stryker drew his sword again, holding it up for the anxious yellowcoats to see. ‘We’re going out there.’

  ‘Out?’ one of the men said, barely able to squeeze the sound from his dry throat.

  Stryker nodded. Behind them the northern doors were juddering and shaking on their huge iron hinges. Despite the steady defensive fire, the Roundheads had reached the Barn. Without petard or ram they would not force the doors easily, but the splintering cracks told of at least half a dozen axes that would soon tear new holes in the stout timbers. Besides, their very presence was sufficient to send a shiver of alarm through the smoke-choked Royalist ranks, and curses and prayers rang out between the shots.

  Colonel Rawdon’s stentorian tones growled out above everything now, and Stryker was thankful for his presence. He could not be sure that any of the fearful yellowcoats would follow his lead, but he looked back into the smoke-filled interior, squinting for a glimpse of Rawdon, and saw Basing’s grey-haired governor pointing directly at him.

  ‘Fifty men!’ Rawdon bawled, singling out groups of defenders with an outstretched finger and a snarl. ‘Fifty! You! You! You there, Corporal!’

  The sally party began to form at the open rear door, where Stryker waited with sword held high. It comprised about half the defending force, the rest being needed to keep up the covering fire, and Stryker nodded his thanks to the colonel before stepping out into morning air. It stank of sulphur.

  The group – Stryker in the lead, followed by Skellen, twoscore of yellowcoats and a smattering of men in civilian clothes – charged with a great, ear-splitting roar. They ran round the corner of the Barn, muskets levelled or turned about to use as clubs and swords brandished. Some had pistols cocked ready to empty into the faces of their foes, and then they were at the north doors, where the most advanced rebels had reached to beat on the timbers and fire directly through the Royalist loopholes.

  Smoke had turned dawn to dusk, and it was difficult to see exactly what they faced, but men were there sure enough, with their own muskets and hangers, dirks and partisans, and Stryker slammed headlong into the first, flattening him with just his shoulder, kicking him in the face as he stepped into the next opponent. The Cavaliers howled like blood-scenting wolves, and tore into the clustered rebels, hacking and slashing like men possessed. A rebel sergeant, waist swathed in a wide blue scarf, twirled like a circus tumbler, swinging his huge halberd at chest height in an irresistible arc that would cleave a man in two. He came at Stryker, his war-cry unintelligible, and the long staff with its triple blade of axe, hook and point sliced the air as Stryker ducked low, only just out of its murderous range. Skellen appeared as his captain stumbled back in the face of the rebel’s rage, and in his huge grip he clutched his own halberd. He whipped the pole-arm up, jabbing it into the face of the screaming Roundhead. It took little toll, simply nicking the man’s chin, but the move had made the rebel catch his stride, lose his balance just a fraction, and Skellen’s boot was up in his crotch before he knew what had hit him. The enemy sergeant brayed and kept coming, but he was winded and his swing had lost its momentum, and Stryker stabbed low, cutting a deep gully just above his knee. The halberd clattered out of his grip and he collapsed over the compromised leg, and then Skellen’s halberd was racing down from on high, butchering the side of the blue-scarfed sergeant’s shoulder, a spray of dark blood speckling his own face and that of his enemy. And then he was down, face buried in the mud, and the Royalists were over him, beyond him, looking for more men to cut down.

  Stryker ploughed on, ramming one man on to his back with a dropped and driven shoulder, kicking another hard and low so that he could feel the testicles mash against the bridge of his foot. There was always the chance that he would be stabbed from below, lanced by a blade wielded by one of those he had felled but not killed, yet he cared nothing. He felt the battle-rage in his veins, the gut-twisting, heart-pounding, muscle-tightening excitement and the stink of sweat and vomit and blood and powder smoke, ripe and heady in his nostrils. A concoction loathsome and enticing all at once.

  An enemy officer, dressed elegantly and cutting in precise diagonal lines with a long, single-edged sword, seemed to be snapping orders as he fought, and Stryker made for him. The man, a young fellow with a fair, wispy beard and slender nose below a
wide hat that was tilted back away from his eyes, jabbed with snake-like speed at a Royalist throat, missing by fractions, and brought the hilt round for a punch to the face. He kicked the dazed man out of his way, dancing past in the graceful manner of a trained fencer, and caught Stryker’s eye. Stryker pulled back his cracking lips in the most hideous grimace he could manage, brandishing the teeth broken by Locke Squires and feeling the ugly scar tissue around his left eye twist and contort. He lunged ferociously, hacking at the stylish officer without pause for thought. The young man parried the first and second blows easily, gritted his teeth as he offered a half-hearted riposte, then jumped back nimbly, bringing himself out of range. He issued a flurry of orders that Stryker could not discern in the melee, and then he was gone, vanished amongst the bodies and the smoke.

  It was with shock that Stryker saw the Roundheads retreat. He had thought perhaps twoscore had reached the doors, and that they would be a challenge to clear away, but the sally, unexpected as it had evidently been, had served to stun Waller’s vanguard, and many had fallen back to the fish ponds and the smaller shacks and pens that dotted the eastern half of the Grange. He swung his sword above his head, crowing as loud as his parched throat would allow, and the others followed suit, their challenge carrying up to Waller on Cowdrey’s Down and to Paulet in the Old House. Somewhere more artillery was raging, rolling like thunder to the north and east, and Stryker guessed that the Roundhead ordnance had shifted its attention to the New House. Perhaps, he dared dream, it was a move of desperation on Waller’s part, for the general had seen his great attack fail, his best men unable even to take the Grange, let alone Basing House itself, and Stryker grinned at the men who gathered around, cheering one another and spitting curses at the cowering rebels.