‘Find our people, Mister Broom. Bring them back. We cannot lift this siege of our own accord.’
Broom’s eyes darted nervously left and right as though seeking some unlikely escape. ‘Can you not send one of your men?’
Stryker nodded. ‘I could. But you’re a gentleman, Mister Broom. I’d wager you’re the superior horseman.’ He stepped closer, seizing Broom’s finely upholstered elbow. ‘We need you tonight, sir. One way or the other. Pick up the reins or pick up a musket. The choice is yours.’
Stryker was both surprised and impressed when Otilwell Broom nodded. The man he had taken for a weak-hearted dandy took his hand in a firm shake, and disappeared into the night, their hopes resting on him.
Without further discussion Stryker turned, grinding the earth beneath his heels, and, gathering men as he went, dashed further along the avenue to the cave where the wagon was kept. ‘Fetch what you need,’ he ordered, not wishing to approach the vehicle himself in case a spark from his match-cord drifted free. ‘Then meet me on the west slope.’
Leaving the group to gather arms, he ran to the westernmost fringe of the tor, took a few knee-jarring paces down the slope until he reached a stout-looking boulder, waited a moment, and edged out to scan the scene. Many of his men were already in place. The hillside was awash with granite lumps, some as big as a large dog, others the size of Sir Alfred’s coach, and all ideal for defence. The redcoats had placed themselves at regular intervals behind those stones, and resting their long musket barrels on the smooth tops they were pouring fire down on to the lower ground. In amongst them were pikemen, holding out their huge spears to present a steel-tipped barrier.
But who were they fighting? At first it was only Stryker’s own men that he saw, for the glowing matches and long pikes were conspicuous all around him. Moreover, there was no thunderous rumble of hooves, no shrill whinnying or gleaming sabres. But then a shot burst forth from fifty paces away, near the very foot of the tor, and its bright fleeting flare briefly lit up the man who had pulled the trigger. A man on foot but dressed in tall cavalry boots, buff-coat, back and breast plates, and lobster-pot helmet with hinged visor. As his eye adjusted to the scene, Stryker gradually noticed more of the metallic forms advancing up the west slope.
‘Keep them back!’ he bawled. ‘Make your shots count!’
The game had suddenly changed. Colonel Wild, clearly realizing that a mounted assault against such a treacherous position would be difficult in the extreme, had plumped for an attack on foot. His men would not be comfortable on terra firma, cavalrymen were ever thus in Stryker’s experience, but this tactic would at least negate the granite-strewn approach and, to some extent, nullify the threat of the pikes.
‘They match our numbers, sir!’ Lieutenant Burton barked. He had scuttled from a large stone somewhere to the left, and now slammed his back against Stryker’s granite shield. With his useless right arm, Burton could not wield a musket, but had his sword drawn and ready in his good hand. ‘I count at least eighty of the bastards.’
‘He means to punch a hole right the way to the top,’ Stryker responded. He had assumed Wild would surround the tor, make his ascent on all sides, but the colonel had evidently chosen not to spread his force too thin. He would throw all his men into one all-out thrust, an iron-fisted blow that would take him all the way to the summit. ‘But they’re shooting uphill, have hardly any protection, and our muskets have greater range and accuracy. Tell the lads,’ he fixed Burton with a hard glare, ‘I’ll personally tan the hide of any man who wastes his shot.’
‘But we can’t see the buggers well enough,’ Burton protested. ‘Only when they give fire or their plate catches the moonlight.’
Stryker twisted from behind the boulder to peer down the slope. He could see the enemy right enough, but as his second-in-command had bemoaned, they were cloaked by the night, moving like half-solid wraiths. Conversely, the Royalist defenders would have to stay close to their rocks, keep behind the protective screens as best they could, for their muskets made them vulnerable in a night engagement. Stryker generally favoured the matchlock over the firelock, because the latter was useless if its flint was knocked free, whereas should a matchlock’s firing mechanism become damaged, a man could simply dip the smouldering match into his pan and the weapon would still fire. Under cover of darkness, however, flint-sparking weapons came into their own, simply because they did not present a constantly glowing light to the enemy. The cavalrymen carried such weapons, and that was a problem.
He turned to Burton. ‘Is Barkworth ready?’
‘Sir.’
A bright tongue of flame leapt forth from lower down the slope, and Stryker instinctively flinched. The sound of splintering granite cracked somewhere behind. He peered down, eyes straining for the blue gout of smoke that must be rising in the spent pistol’s wake. There it was. He stepped clear of the rock, shouldered the musket and fired, but heard no yelp of pain, and knew the shooter must have already moved.
More shots rang out from the advancing Parliamentarians, weaving in and out of the rocks and gorse bushes like a horde of ghosts. A pikeman, waiting impotently with his steel-pointed pole for a cavalry assault that had never materialized, was thrown violently back, a carbine ball hitting his chest. Like all Stryker’s pikemen, he wore a steel breastplate, and that seemed to have saved him, for he sat upright and vomited, but when he looked up a second ball hit him, blasting away a chunk of his jaw. He bellowed like a gelded bullock, the sound sickeningly muffled through the carnage of his mouth, black blood jetting freely over his metal-clad torso. The musketeer closest to him darted out from behind a rock, dropping his weapon and hooking hands beneath the wounded man’s arms to drag him out of the open, but another spatter of shots peppered the earth all around.
‘Get back!’ Stryker shouted across at the flailing musketeer.
After one last heave on the dying pikeman’s inert body, the musketeer did as he was told and let his friend slump. As he turned, a bullet screamed close. He flinched, but the lead shot had flown wide, slamming into earth somewhere in the darkness. He looked up at Stryker, catching his captain’s eye with an expression of sheer relief. But even as the soldier offered a tight smile, his eyes seemed to glaze, his head lolled, and he slumped on to his knees. In the gloom Stryker could see the long shard of stone, kicked up by the ball, jutting from the back of the man’s skull.
Stryker turned quickly back to the slope. The swarming Parliamentarians were making slow but steady progress. This was not good. They would be in amongst the higher boulders before his men could properly pinpoint them, and then it might be too late.
Stryker put his back to the granite and shouted up to the summit. ‘Now, Mister Barkworth! Light the bastards up!’
Immediately a dozen redcoats appeared on the ridge above him. They were arranged in pairs, one man in each pair holding a large black sphere on the outermost lip of land. Stryker watched as the second man in each pair produced a glowing length of match, touched it to his partner’s sphere, and stood back. The balls, a yard in height and depth, came fizzing to life, first consumed with blinding white flame, then settling into roaring oranges and reds.
A second later, a tiny, childlike figure, dressed in grey madder wool and brandishing a short sword, emerged on the brow. Simeon Barkworth, the smallest yet most fearsome man Stryker knew, jerked his blade sharply upwards, and brought it down in a sweeping arc.
The flaming gorse faggots tumbled down the slope, brushing against rocks as they went, often coming dangerously close to the red-coated defenders. But Barkworth had chosen each one’s course well, and the tightly packed gorse, collected during the day, dried in the sun, and sprinkled liberally with black powder, plummeted rapidly down the slope, the little Scot’s obscenities screaming in their wake.
And the tide had suddenly turned. The lower part of the hillside was now bathed in warm, clear light, transforming wraiths to men, and the Royalists could see their targets.
‘Shoot the
m! Fire! Fire! Fire!’ Stryker bellowed, his order echoed all along the slope by Burton and Skellen, Chase and Heel, corporals and drummers and pikemen.
The musketeers, emboldened now, emerged from their hiding places. They rummaged in bullet bags, blew on match-cords – both ends, lest one glowing tip be snuffed out – and adjusted the bandoliers that ran across their bodies from shoulder to hip. From those bandoliers hung a dozen wooden pots, each one carrying enough black powder to prime a single shot.
Stryker involuntarily glanced back up at the biggest stacks, to where he knew the wagon waited, protected within its granite cave, and felt a wave of relief that it carried such a plentiful supply of powder and shot. Remembering his own weapon was spent, he crouched low, scuttling across to the rock where the musketeer lay dead, the splinter of stone still lodged deep in his skull. Stryker forced the disgust from his mind and jerked the shard free so that he could turn the corpse on to its back. Quickly he set about unfastening the man’s bullet bag and priming flask, dumping them on the ground at his feet before going to work on the bandolier. But his fingers fumbled unsuccessfully with the buckle and he hissed a savage curse, unsheathing his long dirk and slicing straight through the leather, allowing him to yank the belt free. Checking the first couple of powder pots, he found that they were empty, but the third was reassuringly heavy. The majority of officers in the King’s Army were unused to wielding the long-arm – at least during the panicking heat of battle – but Stryker had grown up on the killing fields of Europe where life was cruel and cheap. A place where a man became expert in as many weapons as possible, if he wanted to survive.
Moving by sheer instinct, he up-ended the musket, thumbed open the lid of the full pot, and tipped the powder into the cold barrel. As soon as the pot left his hand, his fingers were grasping a lead ball and a piece of wadding from the bag of ammunition, popping them into the muzzle. Taking the scouring stick, Stryker rammed the ingredients home, making sure they were as compacted as possible against the charge. He levelled the musket, blew on his match to keep the embers bright, and pulled the trigger gently to bring the glowing cord down on to the closed pan. Satisfied with the positioning of the match, he flicked back the pan cover, poured in a small charge of the finely grained gunpowder that the musketeer kept in his horn, and took aim.
Now, with the makeshift faggots still blazing at the foot of the slope, the horseless cavalrymen were clearly visible. Indeed, their breastplates and helmets gleamed brightly in the flame light, and it was an easy thing to pick out a man. Stryker selected one of the Roundheads who had climbed highest, sighting the black cormorant feather along the barrel, then inching the muzzle down so that it was level with the target’s midriff. He pulled the trigger smoothly, this time with the pan exposed, and the orange match-tip plunged into the powder, in turn igniting the charge in the barrel, and the musket kicked like a donkey as the ball blasted free. The harquebusier screamed as he was snatched back, tumbling down the slope from whence he came.
Stryker did not stop to see whether his victim still lived. He sucked in a sulphurous breath that stung his throat. ‘Charge!’
Like a legion of ghosts rising from the earth, the Royalist defenders left the shelter of the rocky outcrops and bolted down the slope. Some had loaded muskets, and they emptied them first, but most either carried spent firearms or swords, and they knew what their captain expected of them. Further down, the steel-encased Roundheads fired what few shots they had left, holstered their pistols and drew swords. This was to be a fight of the bitterest kind. Hand to hand, and face to face.
‘King Charles!’ Stryker roared as he pelted down the slope, boots thudding into the soft earth, heart clanging in his chest, blood rushing at his ears. He leapt a small boulder, dodged a dense gorse thicket and ducked beneath the slicing blade of the first Roundhead he met. He ran on, leaving the man to flail in his wake, and dropped his shoulder, bowling into the chest of the next enemy in line. The Parliamentarian’s broad tuck was poised for the attack, but Stryker’s sheer speed beat its arc, and the pair smashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and metal. In a flash both men were up, and, to Stryker’s alarm, the cavalryman had kept a grip on his sword during the fall. That sword now scythed the air at his face in a blow that would have cleaved his skull in two, had he not raised the empty musket to meet it. The sword hammered into the outstretched barrel, bounced clear, and Stryker brought the heavy wooden stock across to crunch into one of the trio of bars that made up the Roundhead’s visor. The thin strip of metal, hanging vertically from the helmet’s hinged peak, was no match for the bludgeoning stock, and it crumpled inwards, mangling the flesh it was supposed to protect. The cavalryman staggered back, blinded by his own blood, and dropped his sword. Stryker hit him again, this time stabbing the musket butt straight ahead in a blow that destroyed another of the bars and pulverized the recoiling man’s nose.
He moved on quickly, parrying the next man’s sword thrust with the improvised club. The blade snapped under the jarring hit, and its owner tossed the useless hilt away. But he was a tall man with a remarkably long reach, and he surprised Stryker by lurching forward while the Royalist was off balance and grasping him in a bone-cracking bear hug. Stryker felt the wind explode out of his chest as though he were a giant set of bellows, the pain of the crush amplified by the big man’s plate armour, and the strength left his arms, forcing the musket to drop to the ground. Feeling himself getting weaker with every heartbeat, he desperately searched for an escape. The only weapons he could bring to bear were his teeth, and he yearned to clamp them on to the huge enemy’s nose, but the visor was fully down. So Stryker spat. He drew up as much phlegm as his powder-dry mouth could muster and sprayed it into the Roundhead’s eyes. Just for a moment, the man’s grip faltered, and Stryker worked an arm free to reach for his belt. He jammed the dirk upwards at an angle, trying to slide it between the Roundhead’s ribs, but, even though the area was not protected by plate, he could not penetrate the thick coat of buff-leather. He reversed the blade, plunging it low, slashing down at the cavalryman’s thigh. That worked, for the grip was suddenly released, and Stryker staggered backwards, heaving air into his throttled lungs as though he were half-drowned. He realized he had found flesh when the huge Parliamentarian came at him again, for he was disabled by an exaggerated limp, one hand clamped tight over a spurting knife wound on his upper leg. Stryker lunged, ducked a wild punch, and kicked the big man on the place where the blade had entered. The cavalryman roared in pain, and Stryker kicked him again, this time in the balls. When the injured man doubled over, both hands now clutched at his lower regions, Stryker released his own ornate broadsword and plunged it deep into the Roundhead’s neck, showering them both in a fine crimson spray.
Save for the few men on both sides who had hung back to keep firing from a distance, the shooting had all but died away. Muskets and pistols had been emptied in those first exchanges, but, since the Royalists’ charge, there had been precious little time to reload the awkward pieces. And yet all around him the fight raged. Stryker’s pikemen had led the charge, finally able to ply their trade, and Stryker could see at least three skewered Parliamentarians on the slope. Most, of course, had dropped their cumbersome ash shafts after first coming together with the black-plumed assailants, instead drawing swords for the close-quarters melee. Alongside them many of the musketeers still brandished the butt ends of their muskets, preferring the heavy clubs to thin steel. It was hot, dirty, cruel fighting, where technique and training gave way to tenacity and the will to stay alive. It was the kind of fight Stryker’s men relished, and as he watched the individual duels play out all along the tor’s north-west face, he knew that they would win. Cavalrymen were not, after all, cavalrymen because they enjoyed fighting on foot. They had had the advantage of surprise and the cover of darkness, but both of those had vanished now, and they had found themselves in a pitched gutter-brawl still too far from their target.
‘King Charles!’ Stryker bellowed at the top
of his hoarse lungs.
‘Stryker’s!’ another man shouted, and his call was repeated all across the tor.
They were winning, edging the Parliamentarians on to the back foot with each bloody second. Stryker saw one of the enemy plunge his sword into a pikeman’s eye, gore and fluid shooting in a stream all the way along the blade’s fuller. He ran to engage his comrade’s killer, hurdling a stone and sweeping his ornate sword sideways at the man’s head. The cavalryman turned at the last moment, his lobster-pot helmet taking the brunt of the blow, causing Stryker’s weapon to glance away. Stryker was forced to duck below the Roundhead’s own thrust now, and only just managed to bring his blade up to meet the second stab. The pair separated, circled, both blades red and glistening, hovering before one another like fighting snakes.
The Roundhead moved first, lunging forth, making a powerful play for the artery at Stryker’s groin, but the Royalist was equal to it, blocking the blade in a snapping parry and shunting it to the side. As he forced the sword away, he let his own steel slide all the way along his opponent’s until the guards met in a wrist-numbing clang. He flicked his wrist in a savage jerk that twisted the hilt from his opponent’s grasp, the weapon clattering noisily against one of the big stones, and he immediately stumbled rearward, desperate to be out of range of the scarlet blade.
And Stryker let him go, because a new order was echoing throughout the lower part of the slope, and down on to the flat. It was the order for the Parliamentarians to withdraw. Retreat.
He stood and watched the silver-backed troopers dash pell-mell down the hillside and away from the tor, exultant redcoats crowing in their wake. They disappeared as quickly as they had come, swallowed whole by the blackness of the night, gone, no doubt, to rejoin their mounts left somewhere out in the wilderness. They would be back, that much was certain. But for now it did not matter.
The Royalists had won.
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 18