‘Tell me, Mister Broom,’ Lieutenant Burton was speaking, and Stryker turned his thoughts away from the wagon to look at him, ‘was it not a treacherous route to take?’
Broom brushed a speck of something from one of the fashionable slashes in his doublet. ‘How so, sir?’
‘To come through the moor,’ Burton replied.
‘The shortest route between any two points is a straight line,’ Broom said patronisingly.
‘I understand, sir,’ Burton said with what Stryker thought was admirable patience. ‘But would it not have been a safer bet to take the coast road? Or even the northern route, via Okehampton? You are not soldiers, so Parliament men would likely have let you through peaceably enough.’
‘We did not know there would be bandits on the moor road, young man,’ Broom retorted sharply, and placed a comforting hand on Cecily’s shoulder when she began to sob quietly.
‘I am sorry,’ was all a shamefaced Burton could say.
Stryker looked on with interest. Burton was evidently mortified to have upset the girl, but it had been a reasonable enough question. The road through Dartmoor was wild and unprotected. A veritable heaven for footpads and the like. It did seem strange that Sir Alfred, apparently so keen to protect his daughter, had chosen such a course.
‘No matter,’ Broom muttered when Cecily had wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her yellow dress. A shadow suddenly fell across his handsome face. ‘The truth is, McCubbin and I were employed as Sir Alfred’s protectors. He felt safe with us. Safe enough to take the shortest route to Tavistock.’ He swallowed thickly. ‘A mistake.’
‘Well, now you travel with us,’ Burton said gently. ‘We’ll see you home.’
‘We’ll see you to Launceston,’ Stryker corrected firmly.
Broom shot him an unpleasant glance. ‘You will not provide safe passage to Tavistock, sir?’
Stryker met the challenging gaze and held it. ‘I go to Launceston, sir. I give you safe passage there, upon my honour, but others will convey you to Sir Alfred’s estates.’
Broom considered the statement for a moment. ‘Forgive me, Captain, but is Tavistock not on the way?’
‘Not on my way,’ Stryker said firmly. ‘We’ll be out of the wood tomorrow, on to the open moor.’
‘Cross country,’ Sergeant Skellen murmured. ‘Dangerous.’
Stryker looked at him and nodded. ‘Aye, dangerous enough. But the track rises through hills, so we shan’t be visible to anyone on the road.’
‘Hills?’ echoed Skellen glumly. ‘It’s hard enough draggin’ that bleedin’ wagon on the flat.’ He glanced at Cecily. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, miss.’
Cecily offered a sad smile to show she took no offence at the leather-faced sergeant’s profanity.
‘We’ll alternate the horses so that they remain fresh,’ Stryker said. In addition to Bailey’s old animals and Wild’s chargers, he now had the two beasts ridden by Sir Alfred Cade’s killers, and the pair that had pulled his coach.
‘And, if necessary, we’ll push. Whatever happens, we must stay on the track, keep away from the roads until we reach one of the tors Bailey told us about.’
The meat was ready now, and he leaned over to the makeshift spit of knotted twigs, slicing some of the sizzling flesh free with his long dirk. ‘Then we’ll join a bridleway running north.’
‘Bypassing Tavistock altogether,’ Lieutenant Burton added.
Stryker nodded as he fished a wooden bowl from his snapsack and dropped the meat on to its scarred surface. He took several more pieces and handed the bowl to Cecily. ‘Here. You must eat something, miss.’
Cecily’s smile was wan but sincere as she took the bowl. ‘Thank you, Captain.’
‘But we cannot be more than five or six miles from Tavistock now, Stryker,’ Broom cut in indignantly. ‘Surely you can allow us to press for the town from here?’
Stryker shook his head. ‘I’ll not risk our lives for it, sir.’
‘You’ll not risk your damned wagon, sir,’ Broom muttered bitterly.
That was true, Stryker thought, and he offered a small shrug. ‘It is vital to the King’s cause. It would be remiss of me to risk it by marching into a town that, like as not, is swarming with rebels.’
Simeon Barkworth scratched at the ruined skin swathing his neck. ‘So we head north tomorrow, sir. Where will we find this track?’
Stryker looked at Barkworth. The Scots Brigade veteran appeared almost demonic across the flames, his sharp teeth, yellow eyes and noose-burned scar all highlighted by the flickering orange light. ‘A place called Merrivale.’
‘Merrivale?’ It was Cecily who’d spoken, and all eyes descended upon her.
‘You know it?’ Stryker asked carefully.
At once she shook her head, though Stryker did not miss the flicker of a glance she stole with Broom. ‘Not really. But I have been to our Tavistock estate many times and know the name.’
The girl looked down abruptly, and Stryker wondered if the name had meant more to her than she claimed.
‘And then what, Captain?’ Otilwell Broom broke the silence, his tone more conciliatory this time. ‘Where does this bridleway take us, if not to Tavistock?’
‘Lydford, I’m told,’ Stryker replied. ‘And from there we’ll make a break for Cornwall.’
‘Easy,’ Skellen muttered.
Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Dartmoor, 29 April 1643
The line of mounted men thundered along the main road through the village, thick gobbets of mud flinging up in their wake. They were a proud troop, all jutting chins and straight backs, but they knew that such a bearing was their unalienable right. For they were harquebusiers, cavalrymen of the deadliest kind, and they owned this land. Ruled it with their terrifying horses, their glinting plate and their keen swords. Daring a challenge. Willing it.
The troop rode four abreast, so that any other traffic would be forced to retreat to the gutters for fear of being crushed. They cantered behind a small black flag affixed to a pole and held aloft by a young cornet. On their heads the cavalrymen wore steel helmets with lobster-tail neck-guards and hinged peaks, from which hung a trio of vertical bars to protect the face. And atop each of those helmets, perched there like the bird from which it had been plucked, was a feather. A curved affair as long as a man’s forearm and black as midnight. It was the sign of their commander, their leader, and a symbol of terror for those who gazed upon it.
Colonel Gabriel Wild cantered at the very head of his troop. They might have been just one hundred strong this day – and God rot Major-General Erasmus Collings for it – but he revelled in the power at his back all the same, at the force of arms his single word could bring. His regiment of horse was good, and he knew it. Equipped at great expense from his own deep pockets, the men had been trained by the best veterans money could buy. They were a fearless, ruthless fighting force. And that would not only secure victory upon victory for Parliament, but would allow Wild’s reputation to blossom, as he so prayed it would.
The simple fact was that Parliament needed decent cavalry. They already had most of the navy, the ports, the forges of the Sussex Weald and rapidly improving brigades of foot, but the Royalists were blessed with the best mounted fighters in the realm. It was those men, Wild reckoned, those flying, charging, scything, brutal men that would decide the war. Prince Rupert’s saddled peacocks, as skilful as they were reckless, and as deadly as they were dissolute, had so far not met their equal in the field, and it was in that inequality that Colonel Gabriel Wild saw his opportunity. He had heard tell of other cavalry commanders attempting to turn their ragtag formations into something serious. Something that might, at last, pose a real threat to the Rome-loving popinjays who galloped across bloody fields with utter impunity. But those men – up-and-coming young bucks like Ireton and Cromwell – were far away to the east, not embroiled in the dirty fight that had consumed this far-flung corner of England. Here, the war was bitter and merciless, the ideal proving ground for an ambitious man. Once
Wild had blooded his black-plumed killers on the obstinate Cornish, he would have the best fighting force in the land, honed in fire and blood, and ready to face the finest the king had to offer. Parliament needed a warrior, thought Wild, a modern-day Alexander who would cut a cruel swathe from Truro to York. He could be that man, was certain of it, just as soon as the current matter was resolved.
The matter in question, the one he and his hundred men now undertook, was an irritation. An issue to be resolved with an ambush, a capture, and a swift, exquisitely painful death. And yet, until it had been dealt with, Wild knew that it would consume him. The colonel’s stomach churned as he thought upon Stryker. A man, he presumed, who might have been handsome once, tall and dark as he was, though mutilated now by that repulsive mess of swirling scar tissue. Wild had a short temper, he knew that about himself, never denied it, but the hatred he felt for the malignant, one-eyed fiend astonished even him. Stryker had surprised him, tricked him, robbed, mocked, and humiliated him, and that was enough to ensure Gabriel Wild’s need for revenge. But the scorn poured forth from the dead-eyed, pasty-faced Collings had simply been too much to bear. Stryker would have to die, Wild had promised himself, because he could not live out his days knowing that the smug bastard’s heart still beat.
The alehouse came quickly into view at the end of the street, and Wild led his steel-clad column towards it, turning left into its large courtyard without regard for the four or five drink-addled sots stumbling across the filthy cobblestones. The clatter of hooves was deafening, like a prolonged thunderclap or the cannon fire from a mighty seaward fort, and wide-eyed faces immediately appeared at the windows of the complex of taphouse and stables.
‘Dismount!’ Wild commanded when the last of the troopers had drawn up in the rectangular yard. He swung a leg across his horse’s back to plummet on to the squelching ground. It hadn’t rained all day, but the sheer amount of mud, straw, and horse dung that had collected over the time since the area had last been cleaned meant the uneven cobbles were swathed in an ankle-deep carpet of muck.
He glanced at one of his officers. ‘Give the men liberty, Captain.’
The captain, a squinty-eyed fellow with grey stubble and a flat nose, lifted his hinged visor. ‘Will do, sir.’
‘But no more than small beer,’ Wild added as his men began to chatter and laugh. ‘I want ’em sober and fit to ride.’
At the captain’s sharp nod, Wild handed another trooper his reins, spun on his heels and marched towards the tavern’s studded door.
Inside, the taproom was a dingy affair, the night’s darkness barely repelled by a handful of candles, and positively exacerbated by the fuggy clouds of tobacco smoke billowing around almost every patron. Wild released the hook at the bottom of his visor, unbuckled his chin strap and lifted his helmet free. He shook his head briefly, like a dog in a rain shower, letting his badger-striped auburn hair flow freely about his shoulders.
Wild stepped slowly up to the water-ringed counter, deliberately allowing every gaze to fall on him, intending the locals to get a good look at the armoured killer in their midst. He needed them to fear him, and for that fear to loosen tongues and slacken jaws, so that the unwelcome foray into this grimy peasants’ lair would be worth the trouble. Placing his pot carefully on the counter, he peered into the gloom. It was a simple enough place; a single large room with a rush-scattered floor, half a dozen low tables, and a score of rickety-looking stools. The walls and ceiling, stained by the smoke of wood, tallow, and tobacco were nearly as black as the night sky. In one wall a substantial hearth blazed. A small cauldron hung above the flames, some kind of pottage bubbling within. The solid mantelpiece held a row of pewter plates and jugs, a wooden cup full of old pipe stems, a handful of desiccated onions, and a rusty old dagger that he supposed must have held some kind of sentimental attachment for the tapster, for it had long since ceased to be lethal.
The men at the tables still gawped at him like cattle, as he knew they would, and he found their dull stares irritating in the extreme. These were low folk. The kind Wild would employ to clean his jakes or muck out his horses. Drove-boys, probably, and farmhands, ostlers, or even simple vagrants. And yet he needed them, their information and their gossip, if he was to achieve his goal.
‘Stryker.’
The dull expressions did not twitch at the name.
‘I am looking for a man named Captain Stryker,’ Wild tried again. ‘A king’s man, he leads a company of redcoats.’ Still nothing. ‘He has scars where his eye should be.’ Wild placed a gauntleted hand across the left side of his face. ‘Like so. His second, a slim youth, has no use of his right arm.’
‘What’ll it be, General?’
Wild spun round to face the man standing on the opposite side of the sticky counter. ‘Be?’
The tapster, a silver-haired fellow well drawn in his years, rested stubby paws on his potbelly. ‘To drink, sir.’
A handful of Wild’s troopers had filtered through the low doorway now, chattering and laughing as they crossed the rushes in their colonel’s wake. Wild raised his voice to reiterate his earlier order. ‘Small beer.’
The tapster went to work, filling a battered pewter cup from one of his casks. He slid the drink across the counter, peering at Wild through rheumy eyes. ‘They won’t talk.’
Wild had already put the cup to his lips, but held his arm at the man’s words. ‘Oh?’
The tapster’s face cracked in half-smile, brandishing a set of chipped and crooked teeth, all black at the gums. ‘The folk hereabouts.’
‘Royalists?’
‘No, sir, not a bit of it!’ the tapster responded as though Wild had made a raucous jest. ‘But they’re ’fraid, sir. There’s been so many o’ yon soldiers marchin’ and ridin’ through Widdy these past months not a single man can call ’imself safe. The answer?’ He leant across the counter conspiratorially. ‘Keep your bliddy pie-hole clamped and pray the likes o’ yourself don’t come a knockin’. Beggin’ your pardon, sir.’
Wild took a swig of ale, wiped his mouth with his gloved wrist, and examined the room. Yes, he thought, the tapster was right. He had relied on fear and intimidation to cow the locals into speaking, but the strategy had had the opposite effect. He set the cup down hard, chiding himself inwardly and considering his next move, when the tapster folded his arms and winked.
‘But I’d be right willin’ to whisper a few words if you and your men saw fit to buy a few more throat wetters.’ He grinned again, a note of triumph in the expression. ‘What say you, General?’
‘Get him up,’ Colonel Gabriel Wild snapped, stepping back to allow a couple of his troopers to haul the hapless man to his feet. ‘He’s had long enough to sleep.’
The tapster, it transpired, went by the name of John Bray, and when Wild had dragged him over the ale-stained counter, the confidence had flowed out of him almost as quickly as the stream of piss down his leg.
That had irked Wild, the piss, for it had somehow found its way on to the upturned thigh protectors of his long boots, and though it would probably scrub clean, the mere sight of the liquid infuriated him. And he had hit Bray.
He had always intended to, naturally, for the man had had the temerity to attempt to extort money for what morsels of information he possessed. But the sight of the dark urine mark, and Bray’s sweaty jowls and the way his filthy fat hands grabbed at the colonel’s gorgeous clothing, had made something snap in Gabriel Wild’s mind. So Wild used his left fist for the punch. Instead of the stinging reprimand a gloved backhand might have been, Wild had employed his armour-clad hand, the one encased within the articulated steel gauntlet, rendering it more like a medieval mace than bone and flesh. John Bray did not even cry out. The blow had almost certainly broken his jaw, snapped his head back, and sent him sprawling in a heap amongst the mouldering threshings.
Now, as his men bolstered the lolling Bray, slapping him sharply back into consciousness, Wild inspected the blood spatters on his gauntlet, wrinkled his n
ose in disgust, and stared about the room. It had already emptied, save his own men. ‘Welch.’
One of the cavalrymen near the door met his eye. He was a tall young man with a curved nose and strawberry-blond hair. ‘Sir?’
‘Let’s wake this swine up.’ He jerked his chin in the direction of the counter. ‘Get back there and find a bucket.’
In a matter of moments, Trooper Welch reappeared carrying a wooden pail, water slopping over the rim in time with his loping step. He skirted round the side of the counter and strode directly up to Bray, though he addressed Wild. ‘Shall I, sir?’
Wild nodded silently.
John Bray woke with a start, his mouth flapping quietly at first, like a landed carp, before he let fly a great scream of pain and terror. He tried to raise a hand to his already hideously swollen jaw, but the pinioning grasp of the men at his flanks prevented any movement. He began to weep.
Wild stalked up to the frightened tapster. He knew the weeping was really a plea. A last ditch appeal for mercy, the high-pitched keening of a broken man. But instead the sound grated on him. Made his teeth itch and his spine tingle. For this was a man akin to Stryker. A gutter-born, grubby peasant of few scruples and even less grace. The mere sight of the pathetic toad, hanging limp from the troopers’ vice-like grip, seemed to make the colonel furious, and the stench of him made Wild positively enraged.
‘Now, sir,’ Wild said, and the mere sound of his voice seemed to make Bray wince. When he drew his broad-bladed sword, an acrid, eye-burning stink seemed to rise into his nostrils.
‘He’s pissed ’is fuckin’ britches again, Colonel!’ one of the troopers exclaimed in disgust.
Wild ignored the man, choosing simply to lift his sword, turning the glinting point in the air between his face and Bray’s. The wretched captive began to wail, and, interspersed with wracking sobs, a stream of panicked words tumbled from his ruined face.
Wild let the sword drop to the space just beneath Bray’s engorged chin. The tapster fell instantly silent.
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 10