Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2)

by Giles Kristian

  ‘They’ll be digging more holes tonight,’ Dobson said gruffly, as ever unafraid to give voice to other men’s thoughts. Neither Tom, Trencher nor Penn disagreed, though in the event it still sent a shiver scuttling over Tom’s flesh when the next man died.

  For an hour the long shadows of their horses had tracked them along a thick boundary hedge which was bathed in a cheerful copper glow, so that the black shapes flowed smoothly through and over the briars, searching and caressing. Then one of Haggett’s harquebusiers fell from his horse like a sack of grain and never moved again. From the way the man fell Trencher surmised he had likely been dead for the last two miles and that his horse, knowing it, had decided enough was enough. It was the last hour of the evening sun and swarms of gnats brought out by the day’s warmth danced in their thousands, hovering above the track so that the men had to close their eyes and mouths to ride through them. Ahead, the whole valley and the sheep pastures on either side were glazed in a gold and crimson light that washed around Haggett’s dying troop on a cooling breeze.

  This time they did not bury the man. The convoy did not even stop, for the payroll was more important than putting a soldier in the ground with the simple rites and prayers a good Protestant deserved, and later Tom heard that Haggett had announced that they would return and recover the body for a proper burial once their duty was discharged. Tom would have bet the price of a good buff-coat that the crows and the worms would strip the body of its flesh long before the bones ever got beneath the sod.

  Now, as they in the rear rode past the dead man, left where he had fallen for his firelocks and helmet were still with his horse, Tom saw that his mouth was bloody and his breeches were fouled. Others up ahead were now and then dismounting to void their bowels in the long grass and Tom muttered, to the cruel God who would have men suffer so, as much as to his companions, that he would rather be hacked apart by sharp steel than die of some fever or gut rot.

  That night they made camp amongst trees at the foot of the northern scarp of the Chiltern Hills. They lit no fires for fear of drawing attention, which did nothing to help the men’s spirits which were, as Dobson remarked, lower than an old whore’s apple dumplings. Several of Haggett’s troopers were by now in the fever’s maw and gripped by a muttering delirium. They were picking agitatedly at their blankets and at imaginary objects, their faces sickly sheened, hair lank. Some, unable to get to their feet or simply oblivious, must have fouled themselves for the stench began to waft through the camp, Trencher remarking its strange similarity to pea soup.

  Rather than lie in his blankets listening to their moans and coughs, their stink in his nose, Tom decided to keep watch, moving halfway up a rugged bluff through which sharp boulders had burst in a long-forgotten time. And it was then, by the light of the rising moon, that he saw a trooper walk his horse into their camp. Tom had not yet been asleep and his senses were on edge, disquieted perhaps by the disease preying on the convoy, and even in the dim light he recognized the man as one of The Scot’s harquebusiers, one of the two whom he had sent on to Thame that morning. The trooper must have ridden past them, picked up the tracks left by the heavy carts and followed them back into the woods.

  Tom could not hear what the man was saying to the sentry who had challenged him, for they were some thirty paces away and their voices were low and muffled. But something told him that the man’s returning so soon, and alone, did not bode well and so he picked his way back down the bluff and followed the soldier.

  ‘Can’t sleep, eh, laddie?’ The Scot said to Tom, stepping into a shaft of moonlight arrowing through the trees. He greeted his trooper and sent another man to fetch Colonel Haggett. ‘I cannae say as I’m surprised. I’d sooner get ma head down in ma hoond’s basket than lie there listening to this troop o’ the damned coughing up their innards all night.’ He wore a smock over his buff-coat and gripped his scaled buff-leather gauntlets in his right hand.

  ‘I saw your man come in,’ Tom said, ‘and would know what news he brings.’

  ‘Aye, well ye might as well hear what reason Trooper Foster has for being back with us so soon when ah’d have wagered a shilling on him being up to his neck in Thame ale and notch by now.’ The Scot beckoned Tom closer with a wave of his gloves.

  ‘What is it, Sir John? What’s going on?’ Colonel Haggett forced himself straighter as he approached. Clearly he had not been asleep either, though his eyes were sunken into pools of shadow and his face glistened sickly.

  ‘We’re gaunnae find out, Colonel,’ The Scot said, ‘but I dinnae think it’s good news.’ He turned back to Trooper Foster and flicked the gloves at him in a gesture that said spill it then.

  ‘We got within a mile or two of Thame and ran into the enemy. A troop of dragoons,’ Foster said, glancing from The Scot to Colonel Haggett, his begrimed face a taut knot. ‘Only we thought they’d be our lot, being so near Thame, and it wasn’t until we got close enough to smell ’em that I said to Lucas that they looked like bloody King’s men. Soon as we turned round they gave fire and chased us and Lucas must have been shot for he went down, his horse too. If I’d have gone back for him they would have got me too, so I flew like the bloody wind.’ He bit his lip. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Aye, you being full o’ holes and us being none the wiser wouldn’t be very helpful,’ The Scot said, glancing at Haggett. But the colonel had his fingers at the bridge of his nose, pressing into the eye sockets as though he feared his head was about to explode.

  ‘How far did they come after you?’ Tom asked the trooper.

  ‘Not far. Not a mile,’ Foster replied. ‘But at dusk I saw another column of the bastards. Musketeers, cuirassiers, pike, cannon, the whole bloody lot marching towards Thame.’ He looked back to his commander, all but snubbing Colonel Haggett, who anyway seemed too unwell to care. ‘If you had not stopped here,’ he said, gesturing to the trees all around, ‘you might have driven the carts right into their arms.’

  ‘But it is not possible,’ Haggett managed, cuffing sweat from his forehead and forcing his eyes to focus on The Scot. ‘We would have heard if the King was moving against Thame. The last we knew His Majesty was in Oxford and that devil Rupert was besieging Lord Brooke’s garrison at Lichfield. Who could be bringing an army to Thame?’

  The Scot shrugged. ‘Perhaps what the lad here saw was just a patrol.’ He grimaced. ‘Some of my lot can be a little theatrical with the truth.’

  Colonel Haggett shook his head. ‘Cannon is cannon,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, it is that,’ The Scot admitted, turning his hard face to Tom. Somewhere near by an owl was hooting, perhaps warning other night creatures of the presence of men amongst the beech and oak. ‘What would ye do, laddie?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would you ask him?’ Colonel Haggett blurted, turning pain-filled eyes on Tom. ‘What does he know about command?’

  ‘Keep the heid, Colonel,’ The Scot said, raising a hand. ‘I know the lad’s got balls. I heard the thunder and saw the lightning he sowed in Oxford and that gives him the right to a say by my book.’

  ‘We can’t take the carts back out into the open land,’ Tom said, feeling the colonel’s eyes boring into him. But he did not care, for what need he fear from a dying man, colonel or no. ‘We move the silver deeper into these woods. If we can,’ he added. ‘We hide the carts. And we wait until we know what is going on out there.’ He nodded north-west.

  ‘Aye, that’s the only thing to do if ye don’t want to finance a new palace for His Majesty,’ The Scot said to Colonel Haggett. The sick man closed his eyes and swayed and Trooper Foster put out a hand to steady him but Haggett dismissed the offer, composing himself. Foster looked at Tom and shrugged.

  ‘My professional advice, Colonel,’ The Scot remarked, stressing the word professional, ‘is to do as the lad here says and stash the coin. Yer men are nae fit. Any trouble oot there on the road and they willnae give a good account of themselves. So ye stay here and hope no one follows our tracks into the trees.’

  �
��My orders are to deliver this payload to my commanders at Thame.’ Haggett forced the words through a clenched jaw that Tom suspected mirrored his other end. The man was fighting to control his bowels.

  ‘And how will ye deliver the payload if ye dinnae have it?’ The Scot asked. Then Haggett threw up a hand and stumbled off, getting behind a fallen trunk and pulling his breeches down just in time.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ The Scot went on, as close by – much too close as far as Tom was concerned – Haggett’s bowels squirted their foul mess between his boot heels, ‘I will take my men intae Thame, aroond the enemy, or through them if we must, and come back with a regiment to see yer charge safely delivered.’

  ‘I need your men here! Protecting the carts!’ Haggett called, his face a rictus of misery.

  ‘Ye need me to ride on and bring back men who are not walking in breeches filled with their ain shite!’ The Scot exclaimed cruelly, to which Haggett’s agonized guts gave their own answer, which was answer enough, for the colonel knew that The Scot was right. ‘Two, three days, ye’ll stay in the trees, covering the silver with branches and such. Ye’ll be safe and so will the stash. As for your men’s affliction, we cannae do nothing aboot that.’

  Tom did not know the man’s rank but suspected he was a major, which was below a colonel, and yet it was all too clear who was in charge now.

  ‘What’s going on, lad?’ Trencher asked, appearing out of the moon-burnished gloom and making a fist over a great yawn. The Scot nodded at Tom then he and Foster strode off to make arrangements, leaving Tom and Trencher absently watching a colonel shit like a storm.

  ‘We’re staying put, Will,’ Tom said, wondering whether Haggett would survive the night, let alone until The Scot returned with men from Thame.

  ‘Then I suggest we four make our own little camp thirty feet away from this sorry lot,’ Trencher said.

  ‘Fifty feet is better,’ Tom said.

  A short while later, as the moon made its way west and night still held sway, they watched The Scot and his thirty men slip out of the camp like wraiths and ride off into the night.

  Mun knew that if it were not for Jonathan Lidford, Lord Lidford’s foolhardy son, he would be dead. The boy had hauled him along the shaft, through the freezing water and the filth and out into the daylight, like an eager hound pulling a rabbit from its hole. But before that he had finished setting the fuses, whose smouldering ends had crawled inexorably towards the powder kegs. Then any man living, rebel or King’s man, had fled from that coming terror as ignobly as the basest beast whose only instinct is survival. The last thing Mun remembered was a great, gut-kicking boom as their mine had exploded, collapsing the earth around it and bringing down the outer wall of the Cathedral Close. With that defence ruined the rebels had had no choice but to surrender.

  ‘The honour in this victory is yours, Sir Edmund,’ Prince Rupert had said, the smile on his clean-shaven face reminding Mun that the Prince was barely older than himself, twenty-three or twenty-four at the most. This was the first time Mun had opened his eyes and been able to keep them open and now they were filled with the Prince’s imposing frame. He had come directly from some or other fight by the looks, his breastplate spattered with blood and his helmet sprayed with mud. Yet his strong, handsome face seemed full of joy as though he had come hot from the hunt having been led a merry chase before at last running down the fox.

  ‘Though you don’t look like much of a hero,’ the Prince said, ‘lying there in your bed and smelling like a dungheap.’ He grinned. ‘I knew you would get the job done. I’m a good judge of men.’ Mun thought of the man’s former secretary who had been betraying the Prince for months before he was at last discovered and hanged at Oxford. ‘I knew I could rely on you to make the breach.’

  ‘It was a brilliant idea, your highness,’ Mun croaked, reaching for the cup beside his bed and pushing himself upright to take a sip. The room had no window and was dimly lit with tallow candles whose flames streaked soot up towards the whitewashed ceiling.

  ‘Yes it was, Sir Edmund, I shall not be falsely modest,’ the Prince said, cocking an eyebrow. ‘It is the way we would bring down walls in our fights with the Spanish. Much more effective than a cannon without the right shot, don’t you think?’

  Mun tried to smile but managed only a grimace.

  ‘You were lucky, Mun,’ the Prince said and Mun could not remember the man using his familiar name before. ‘My surgeon operated on you while you were dead to the world. He took the ball out of your leg. Either your flesh is hard as Lichfield rock or else the man that shot you was mean with his powder, for the ball barely scratched you.’ He slapped his own outer thigh. ‘My man cleaned the whole mess up and did a job with the needle and thread that your own mother would be proud of.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The day before yesterday.’

  It did not feel like barely a scratch. Mun’s right thigh was a searing bloom of pain, but he did his best to keep the discomfort from his eyes. He felt beads of hot sweat bursting from his scalp and running through his long hair and he hoped the fever would not last.

  ‘Lord Lidford’s son, your highness,’ Mun said, ‘I thought he was one of your Cannock men.’

  ‘Ah yes, Jonathan. A headstrong young gentleman. When Lord Lidford discovered that the boy was down in that hole he became apoplectic. I wasn’t certain whether he was simply angry that the lad was down there or furious because he was down there with you.’ The Prince’s slender finger and thumb stroked his prominent chin, the finger tracing the dimple over and over. ‘You did steal the man’s cannon, Sir Edmund.’

  Mun raised his own eyebrows now and was about to mention the spy who had ordered him to steal the cannon, then thought better of it. It was difficult to accuse a man if you did not even know his name. Besides which, Mun suspected that Hook Nose’s purpose in life was to provide the Prince with plausible deniability, though he likely had his own ambitions too.

  ‘Is the idiot all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, the boy is fine,’ the Prince said, wafting a hand and walking over to the fireplace on whose mantel he had left his cup of wine. The fire was lit and as Mun’s mind began to clear he realized with relief that he was merely hot and not feverish at all.

  ‘For some reason my surgeon wanted you to sweat,’ Prince Rupert said as though reading his thoughts. Then he waved the matter away. ‘I heard you knocked the boy from his horse and him at the gallop too. He came to no harm from that either it seems.’ He grinned. ‘Must get his hardiness from his mother’s side.’

  ‘Hardy he may be, but any sense the boy was born with has long been knocked out of his skull,’ Mun said, ‘or else why would he crawl into that damn hole with us if he did not have to?’

  ‘I dare say even being buried alive is preferable to riding about the place with that uppish old goat of a father.’

  Mun could not disagree with that. ‘So the town is ours?’ he asked.

  The Prince nodded, sipping his wine. ‘The rebels surrendered the day after you brought the wall down.’ He raised the cup. ‘Oh, they fought in the breach a little, made a good show of it for a brief while, but their fate was sealed by your brave subterranean action, five barrels of black powder and the digging done by my Cannock men.’

  ‘And now?’ Mun asked.

  ‘I have received word from my uncle. I am to march from here without delay to the relief of Reading, which I can assure you is the singular reason these dogs are getting such generous terms from me. Then straight to Oxford.’ The cup was held out wide indicating the Lichfield rebels, who had no doubt paid for their insurrection despite the Prince’s talk of generous terms.

  ‘Am I to rejoin the troop now?’ Mun asked. ‘I suspect Captain Boone misses me terribly.’

  ‘I’m certain he does,’ Prince Rupert said, ‘but Captain Boone will have to be patient a little while longer.’ Those brown eyes fixed Mun now and any trace of the smile that had curled those full lips was gone. ‘Oh, don’t mista
ke me, Sir Edmund, your honour is intact and what’s more you are to be rewarded for your recent brave action …’ He made a steeple of his long hands and pointed its pinnacle at Mun. ‘… but I have another task for you. One more befitting your talents than burrowing through the mud like a worm.’ His strange accent made ‘worm’ begin with a ‘v’. Then the Prince turned and went to the small room’s door, opening it so that the candles’ dirty flames drew towards the man who suddenly filled the threshold.

  ‘You’re still alive then?’ O’Brien said, a grin nestled in his great red beard.

  ‘Alive and well, O’Brien, but you won’t get me underground again unless I’m in a coffin. And properly dead too,’ Mun added, the pain in his thigh receding at the sight of his friend.

  ‘O’Brien, bring in our visitor,’ Prince Rupert said, ‘for I have concluded that Sir Edmund is hale and hearty and longs to be out of that bed.’

  ‘Your highness,’ O’Brien said with a nod and turned to beckon another man, so that in no time at all the room seemed even smaller for having the four of them in it.

  ‘Sir Edmund,’ the newcomer greeted him, blazing eyes fixed on Mun’s own. Every instinct told Mun to get out of that damned bed, for being in it in the presence of a prince had been bad enough but with this granite-faced man it was even worse. But he did not know if he could stand, besides which he knew he was filthy and stank.