Stryker flicked his sword’s tip, beckoning Wild to him, knowing the pair had unfinished business. He braced himself for the cavalryman’s charge, to twirl away at the last moment or dive low to slice through the horse’s thundering fetlocks.
To his surprise no attack came. He stared at Wild, surprised and baffled in equal measure as the colonel carefully turned his mount away. And then he saw it. The rope, knotted at the back of Wild’s saddle. His eye traced its taut length until, in a single, gut-twisting moment, he saw the wretched man tied to its far end.
‘O Jesu!’
In the north-east corner of the hill two men waited impatiently for Wild’s return.
‘We must leave,’ Osmyn Hogg, witch-finder and reluctant Roundhead, hissed angrily when the colonel, prisoner in tow, steered his horse nonchalantly back from the southern part of the summit, where battle still raged. ‘These craven fools are done. Finished!’ He thrust out a finger, tracing it along the rear of the beleaguered remnants of the Parliamentarian army. ‘Soon there will be none left, and we will be prisoners.’
Wild shot him a disparaging look. ‘We have the horses, Master Hogg. Our escape will be swift when it comes.’ His voice became low, acidic. ‘Just wait a little longer, witch-catcher, and you will witness God’s own miracle.’
‘A miracle will be our survival,’ José Ventura, Hogg’s assistant, muttered.
Wild, the only soldier in the group, tore his horse round to face the corpulent Spaniard. ‘Then get your greasy hide out of my sight.’
Ventura bridled, and Hogg had to raise a calming hand for peace. He nodded to his servant and cast his gaze back to Wild. ‘He is right, Colonel. We should go. This is not our fight.’
Wild spat on the turf by his mount’s wide hooves. ‘A pox on you both! Go! Take yourselves down to Plymouth and catch the next ship to the New fuckin’ World, for all I care. But you will miss the one thing you pray for most.’
Hogg was frightened. Petrified. He had thrown in his lot with the rebel army, only to find himself stuck on this God-forsaken hill while he watched Lord Stamford’s mighty horde dash itself against Sir Ralph Hopton’s rocks. He wanted to flee this vile place. And yet he had seen that ensign. Stryker’s ensign, flown high above the men surging across the summit.
This was his chance. His one chance. It had been so long. He wanted to leave, but he knew he would stay.
Captain Innocent Stryker had worried for his protégé. When Burton had ridden into the darkness, he had fumed at the young officer’s insubordination, but when the lieutenant had failed to return, that anger had turned to concern. In the heat and blood and commotion of battle, he had pushed such thoughts from his mind, daring to hope that his second-in-command was somewhere safe, perhaps watching the shocking Royalist victory from afar.
But now all that hope had gone. Andrew Burton was indeed watching the battle, but he was not at all safe.
‘He goads you, sir!’ Sergeant Skellen had warned as the pair stabbed and slashed and kicked and punched their way through the melee to reach the casually trotting Wild. ‘Do not follow!’
Stryker knew it was a wise enough warning, for to break through to the land beyond the immediate fight was inviting trouble. That space at the rear of the remaining Roundhead line, towards the shallow escarpment that formed the northern slope of the hill, was still teeming with enemy soldiers, those waiting to see if the battle was truly lost or thinking to loot their own supply wagons. Some, he imagined, simply waited to offer surrender and plead for quarter. To dash into that area, Skellen pointed out, was to risk overreaching themselves, becoming cut off from the rest of Hopton’s still advancing force. Yet Stryker had seen Lieutenant Burton, tethered and led by Wild like an ox to slaughter, and he waved the sergeant’s protests away.
The pair waded across the carpet of inert flesh, of discarded pikes, spent muskets, and dented metal that swathed the hill above Stratton. Men lay where they fell, dead-eyed and slack-jawed, macabre marionettes piled on the grass by some unseen puppet master. All around them, rebel soldiers ran away, taking their chances with the open land to the north or the sheer slope to the east. Some, formed in small but courageous groups, fought on. The majority were beginning to surrender.
One man stepped into Stryker’s path having evidently decided to end the day in blood, jabbing at him with a partizan, the ornate blade at its head slicing towards his belly. Stryker blocked the blow with his sword before Skellen stepped out from the darkness of his left flank and cleaved the man’s face clean in half.
Four pikemen, lethal poles still in hand, spied the pair as they strode on, and moved to intercept them. Skellen went to engage the grimacing men, and battered the first’s pike aside with his halberd. He could not sever the killing tip because the pike’s cheeks – strips of steel riveted to the staff below the head – held it intact, but he was already inside the weapon’s killing range. The Roundhead released the pike as Skellen came at him, fumbling for his tuck, but the halberd’s billhook had chopped through his ankle in the blink of an eye, and he was on the ground before he realized what had happened. His comrades, hitherto so brave with their snarls, dropped their own pikes and ran.
A fat sergeant with tawny sash at his portly midriff, blood-spattered sword in hand, made a surprise lunge from Stryker’s right. The captain spun clear, parried the next blow, and kicked the sergeant in the guts, doubling him over. The fat Roundhead vomited, and Stryker opened the back of his skull with crimson steel.
Stryker pushed on, Skellen panting at his heels, and soon faced a braying musketeer. He made to check his advance, but slipped on a patch of blood, crunched on to a knee, and rolled haphazardly to his left. The move succeeded only in putting him at the feet of another enemy fighter, and he had to roll backwards this time to avoid the downward thrust of the man’s tuck. The point drove deeply into the soil, becoming stuck for an instant, and Stryker lurched up, cannoning into the man’s skinny waist with his whole weight. The pair crashed backwards in a chest-crushing tangle of limbs. Stryker found himself on top of the Parliament man, but his hands were pinned beneath the stricken Roundhead’s shoulders, so he slammed his head down, breaking the man’s long nose in a sickening explosion that sent a fine red spray up into Stryker’s eye. He rolled away even as the man screamed, for he was entirely blinded, and frantically rubbed at his eye with a gloved palm. When his vision returned, the Roundhead was silent, Skellen standing over him, halberd buried deep in his chest.
And then they were clear, punching through the last of the Parliament’s effective troops. Stryker realized that the reserve line, which he had spied during the throes of battle, had been routed and left the field.
‘There he is!’ Stryker pointed with his blade.
Sure enough, Wild’s loping horse casually tore up the grass at the tree line at the hill’s north-eastern edge, Lieutenant Andrew Burton in tow.
‘Here!’ Colonel Gabriel Wild called. ‘Witch-finder!’
Osmyn Hogg caught the pistol cleanly and set about arming it. His fingers fumbled as they worked. ‘We must do this quickly. They have overrun the entire army. Stamford is gone. Collings is away.’
Wild swore in exasperation. ‘Do you wish to see Stryker die? Do you?’
‘Aye.’
‘Then hold your damned nerve. I will cut him down and chop off his stones. Once he has looked upon them, bleeding in my palm, I’ll stick my blade in his heart and we will ride for Devon.’
‘What if—’
‘What if nothing,’ Wild snarled. He jerked his head at the men who dashed in confused anarchic groups all about the hill, Royalists in pursuit. ’We have no insignia. No field signs that anyone here will recognize.’ He patted his sword-hilt. ‘They’ll leave us for easier pickings.’
José Ventura picked his nose with his forefinger and inspected the produce. ‘You promised we hang him.’
Wild turned on him. ‘Do we have time for that, you swine-brained dolt? No, it must be over with quickly. You may go if yo
u wish.’ He stabbed a thumb at his metal chest. ‘But I owe that bastard.’
‘We will stay,’ Osmyn Hogg intervened.
‘And if I fail?’ Wild asked warily.
Hogg patted the pistol. ‘I know what to do.’
The colonel grinned suddenly. ‘But I won’t fail.’
Stryker and Skellen reached the group at the tree line.
‘Wild!’
One of the horsemen turned at Stryker’s call. The man, dressed in fine cavalry armour, slid immediately down from the saddle and strode across the grass, a half-smile on his lips.
‘You humiliated me twice, Captain,’ Colonel Gabriel Wild said, jauntily enough, but his blade appeared in his hand as he spoke.
Stryker shrugged disinterest. ‘Perhaps you should think of becoming one of Stamford’s clerks.’
Wild’s amused demeanour slipped a touch as his face darkened. ‘The powder wagon and then your trickery at the tor. I promised to kill you.’
Stryker let his eye drift beyond Wild to the three horses. One of those beasts, riderless now that Wild had come to challenge him, had a rope attached to its saddle. ‘Just give him to me,’ he said flatly, unwilling to look directly at Burton lest his friend’s decrepit state put him off balance, ‘and you can go free.’
Wild pursed his lips, dropped his visor into place and offered a sharp bow. ‘Come and get him.’
‘Want me to chop the fucker, sir?’
Stryker had forgotten his old comrade was there, and he glanced across at him. ‘No, Will.’
Skellen sniffed. ‘Thought not.’
The fight happened in the blink of an eye. Stryker barrelled into Wild with all the force he could muster, hammering his sword down at Wild’s head in a great, bone-shattering strike. It slipped beyond the surprised rebel’s guard, clipping his helmet, slicing down the left side and ricocheting off one of the rivets set into the cheek-guard. Wild darted out of range, sneered, brought his blade up sharply for the next action. He did not wait long, for Stryker lunged again, raining blow after blow at the Parliamentarian’s head and torso. But Wild was quick, a classically trained fighter, and parried the strikes with little more than scorn, twisting away after half a dozen sure-handed blocks.
And then Wild went on to the attack, stepping in with sword high, tip angled down at Stryker’s face, a serpent ready to bite. In a flash he made three quick downward thrusts that had Stryker skittering backwards, the great hill ringing with the song of swords. Stryker parried desperately, a ragged street fighter compared with Wild’s cultured ripostes. But he had survived, defence still intact, and the pair stepped out of the killing zone, dragging rasped gulps of air into burning lungs.
Wild came back first, feinting at Stryker’s right, then switching the blade to attack hard down his left side, eager to exploit so obvious a weakness. But Stryker was used to such a ploy, had long since learned to adjust the angle of his head when he fought so that he could perceive a deal more than his opponents imagined, and his sword, garnet winking in the pommel, was a match for the onslaught.
Wild stepped back again, and Stryker lurched at the Roundhead, suddenly aware of his enemy’s own weakness. The cavalryman wore the full armoured corselet of his profession. His head, neck, chest, and back, even one of his arms, was encased in metal, and that would have set him in good stead on horseback, but here, on terra firma, fighting a man who had been fed on hand-to-hand combat since joining a company of mercenaries at the age of seventeen, he was dreadfully encumbered.
And Stryker felt a surge of confidence because he could already see Wild’s reddening cheeks behind the visor. Stryker wore no steel, his only concession to protection being the buff-coat that would turn most blades, and it gave him far greater speed. He lunged again, one, two, three, four, five quick blows that forced Wild to retreat. Wild was alive to them, defended them with admirable skill, but Stryker could see that he was beginning to tire.
He drove again, aiming for speed above power, forcing the harquebusier to move quicker and quicker, combining lunges and cuts to keep Wild fighting for breath and for balance.
One of Wild’s increasingly desperate lunges came too close, the blade slashing beside his neck, slicing the air with a gut-wrenching zing, but he knocked it down, the steel bouncing off his upper arm, its venom absorbed by the buff-coat. Stryker went forward again, remorseless, relentless, knowing his grey eye would be shining with the quicksilver of battle.
It was a musket-ball that changed things. Fired by a fleeing greycoat who had evidently spotted one of his comrades locked in mortal duel, he had paused in his escape, fired, and tossed the musket away, never waiting to see whether the ball flew true. Fortunately for Stryker, it hadn’t. The bullet raced through the space between him and Wild, sailing beyond the assembled onlookers to tear a fresh, bright scar in the bark of one of the trees that cloaked the eastern escarpment. Stryker instinctively glanced to where it had impacted, but Wild did not, and the colonel lashed out with his broadsword in a blow that would have cleaved Stryker’s head from his neck.
Stryker got his own sword up, but the parry was late, feeble, and the blade skittered from his grasp, leaving him to grope the air.
Wild grinned, and in that moment Stryker could see his own death. He saw the cavalryman’s blade lift for the final execution, sucked in one last, chest-bursting breath, and bolted forward. Wild, gripping his blade in both hands, was powerless to resist as his intended victim took him squarely in the chest.
Stryker closed his eye as he barrelled in, feeling the cold breastplate against his cheek. The big Parliamentarian reeled backwards, dropping his sword, but he was a wily fighter, and he let Stryker come, gave ground willingly so that he would not lose his footing. When the pair slowed, both standing, locked together in a grotesque embrace, Wild slammed his head down, smashing the peak of his steel visor into Stryker’s brow.
Stryker’s world went red, then black, then white as he staggered back, a jet of vomit filling his mouth, harsh and acidic. He would not fall – could not allow it – but the pain flared through his head as if a mortar shell had landed on his skull. He put a hand up, felt the blood fountain from a ragged gash in his forehead, and wondered what had become of his hat.
And then Colonel Gabriel Wild was in his face, looming like a silhouette, laughing. Somehow he had retrieved his sword, and he held it out menacingly with one hand, removing his helmet with the other. He tossed the feathered pot clear, and shook out his long hair. Stryker gazed at him with blurred vision, at the silver stripe, broad and badger-like through the centre of Wild’s brown locks.
‘I’m going to slice off your ballocks, Captain Stryker,’ Wild said in a low, silken voice. ‘You have made me break too many promises of late, but this is one I intend to keep.’
And Stryker kicked him.
He kicked him once, right between the colonel’s legs, a blow instilled with memories: of the tor, of the deaths and privations Stryker’s company had been forced to endure, and of the gently swinging corpse of Otilwell Broom. It was a dirty move, he knew. One that would not have been employed by a gentleman. But Innocent Stryker was not a gentleman, and he cracked his boot home, pulping Wild’s balls in a swift, violent second.
Wild howled, bent low, gripped his testicles, and Stryker stamped his boot heel into the side of the colonel’s knee, grinding as hard as he could, feeling for the point where the joint began to buckle. It collapsed as he knew it would, bending inwards on itself with an audible crunch. The colonel brayed like a gelded bear and crumpled sideways, not knowing whether to paw at his smashed knee or his mangled groin. Stryker kicked him once more, this time in the chin, and the harquebusier commander, so proud and strong, collapsed in a heap on his back.
Stryker searched briefly for his sword, caught the twinkle of the garnet-set pommel, and went to retrieve it. When he strode back to Wild, the stricken cavalryman was just regaining some semblance of lucidity, peering up at Stryker with hate-filled eyes.
‘I’ve be
aten you again, Gabriel,’ Stryker said, bending over him.
‘Kill me,’ Wild hissed through broken teeth. ‘Kill me, you one-eyed bastard!’
Stryker shook his head. ‘I think not. You’re my prisoner.’
That seemed to enrage Wild further, and he made to stand. ‘No. No! I would rather die!’
But Stryker’s foot was on his plated chest, compelling him to lie back. ‘Indeed,’ he said quietly. He took a knee, whispering into Wild’s ear. ‘The dead don’t remember, Colonel. And I want you to remember.’
‘Captain Stryker!’ The voice rang out like a church bell, clear and crisp, from somewhere near the trees.
Stryker cast Wild a last, withering look and stood. He wobbled there for a moment, the battle-frenzy draining from his legs, making him suddenly dizzy. Men rushed past them, Roundheads taking their chances with the steeply forested slope to the east and the gentler but more exposed route to the north, pursued by crowing Cornishmen, eager to kill and loot. The air was ripe with the stench of fresh blood. Gulls glided lazily overhead, bellies already made fat by their corpse feast.
The voice jolted him again. ‘Stryker!’
This time he followed it, vision finally restored, and he saw the group of men who had been with Wild. One man was swarthy and disgustingly fat, his mount clearly struggling beneath him. The second, the one who had hailed him, had an unmistakably large nose, ridiculously prominent teeth that prevented him from completely closing his mouth, and appeared like a raven in black doublet, breeches, cloak, and boots. The sight of the third man made him feel physically sick. He was still tied to the rope behind Wild’s riderless mount, face cast down, shoulders hunched. Stryker stared at him for a long time. He saw the welts at his lips and cheeks, saw the grotesquely swollen eyes that carried swirls of yellow, blue, and black, saw the smashed, crooked nose.
‘Christ, Andrew,’ was all he could think to say. He began to walk closer.
‘Ah, ah, ah,’ Osmyn Hogg muttered suddenly. He raised his hand, producing a pistol, flicking it between Stryker and Skellen. ‘It is loaded.’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 44