Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2)

by Giles Kristian

  ‘King Charles!’ Mun screamed, hefting the short pikes into the night, their blazing ends roaring as he swept them through the air as a beacon for the King’s men to see. He glimpsed a musket’s muzzle above the wall and half tensed for the shot, then the rebel was flung backwards and Mun turned to see that both O’Brien and Jonathan had fired their pistols from the other side of the ditch. More musket balls were hammering into the earth around him and Hector began to wheel and so Mun hurled the fire pikes against the palisade.

  And he heard rebels screaming fire.

  Then rose the clatter of arms and armour and the Prince was there, having jumped the ditch, his proud horse tossing its head as Rupert grinned savagely and screamed at the musketeers to come and take Bristol. The roar from a thousand throats was deafening as men clambered down into the ditch and up the other side and in the chaos Mun leant forward and kissed Hector’s neck, awed by the stallion’s bravery and because Hector had carried him safely across that trench without Mun having the reins, which was a thing he knew folk would not believe and yet it had happened. Matchlocks were thundering and men with grenades from John Stradling’s South Wales Regiment came forward and lobbed their bombs over the palisade, the explosions making Mun flinch involuntarily. His fire pikes had all but gone out yet it did not matter, for the foot’s blood was up and they were falling upon the palisade with hands, halberds and partisans, pulling it down or forcing gaps between the piles.

  ‘Bring up the horse!’ the Prince yelled at Jonathan, who turned from the ditch and spurred off back through the musketeers and the pikemen that were surging forward in case the rebels countered with their own horse. Then a great cheer went up as a section of the wall came down, and some men pulled the timbers across the ditch to make a bridge whilst others poured through the breach.

  ‘Sir Edmund! With me!’ Sword in hand, his horse neighing madly, the Prince was forcing his way through the musketeers, who did what they could to let him pass. Unable to leave the Prince to face alone whatever awaited them beyond the outer defences, Mun asked another effort of Hector, impelling him through the gap in the palisade.

  Then they were through to the dead ground between the city’s outer defences and the River Frome. Bodies littered the ground and Mun glimpsed patches of scorched earth from the Welshmen’s grenades yet he did not stop, but cantered after the Prince towards a party of musketeers who had made a stand. Perhaps as many as thirty rebels had formed a firing line across a paved street leading towards College Green, their weapons levelled, and in that moment Mun knew he must either ride them down or die with a back full of musket balls.

  ‘Yah!’ he cried, vicious with the spurs, drawing his sword as Hector drove on, galloping now, the two of them together. As the night burst into flame and those muskets coughed their hatred and a ball took Hector in his eye. Mun felt the stallion’s great strength give out, felt the muscles and sinews release as if cut, and then they were falling. Yet, somehow, and only for a heartbeat, Hector found his feet, found the strength to slow his momentum, before crashing to his knees with a great and weary exhalation, so that Mun was still in his saddle. He pulled his boots from the stirrups and fell to the grass, then scrambled on hands and knees round to the stallion’s head and the bloody, gore-filled hole that had been Hector’s right eye.

  No! ‘No, Hector!’ He pulled off his helmet and pressed his face against Hector’s muzzle, feeling the stallion’s hot blood on his lips and cheeks as musket balls whipped through the night around them and the Prince’s army ran towards them. Hector nickered softly, his sweet grassy breath and the iron tang of blood filling Mun’s nose, and then his head sagged and Mun could not hold on but had to let it slump onto the ground.

  Mun could not see for the tears in his eyes and could not hear for the cleaving of his heart. A musket ball thumped into Hector, its force mostly spent so that it only half stuck in the flesh at the point of the shoulder. Slowly, detached as if seeing himself in a dream, Mun dug his fingers in and pulled the ball out, closing his fist around it, feeling its hot slipperiness against his skin.

  ‘The Prince! The Prince is down!’ someone yelled and Mun twisted, looking for the Prince, then saw a pistol flash and Rupert standing beside what looked like a small hump in the ground but for the glint of gold in the saddle cloth.

  ‘Pikes!’ the Prince yelled over his shoulder. ‘Pikes, damn you!’ The rebel firing line had dispersed, the musketeers fleeing from the onrushing Royalists. Or from Prince Rupert perhaps. But then Mun saw horse. They were gathered by a line of gabions to the right of the bridge across the Frome, perhaps three hundred troopers, their backs to the river. The Prince had seen them too which was why he was calling for his pikemen, who, with the musketeers, were rushing past Mun now. But those pikemen were in loose order and the commander of the rebel horse saw his chance and raised his sword, roaring instructions as his men prepared to charge.

  Mun leant over Hector and pulled his pistols from the saddle, his arms trembling as though the marrow in them simmered, then laid one of the weapons on the ground. With a finger he traced a line from the stallion’s left ear to his ruined right eye, then did the same with the opposite ear and eye, holding his thumb on the cross point of this imaginary X.

  Because he would not get this wrong. No matter what.

  Then he put his lips to the spot, which was just above Hector’s blood-beaded white star, and held there. ‘My good boy. My brave boy,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, my friend.’

  Pulling away he brought his pistol up. Placed its muzzle on that sweet spot. Turned his face away. Squeezed the trigger.

  The pistol’s roar stunned him. He dragged an arm across his eyes, smearing blood and tears. His own breathing was gathering pace. His stomach clenched as though he had swallowed a hot coal. He thrust the spent pistol into his boot and picked up his helmet, pushing it down on his head as men of the Oxford Army, who had been flowing past him like a river around a boulder, checked. Because the rebel horse was coming.

  A musketeer turned to flee but Mun grabbed his bandolier and hauled him around, snarling at the soldier to be a man and face the enemy. Being more afraid of Mun than of the rebels, the musketeer planted his feet and began loading his matchlock as the ground itself trembled with the rebels’ charge and Mun strode towards them, consumed by fury.

  ‘Kill them!’ he yelled, drawing his Irish hilt. The Royalist pikemen clustered, trying to form a decent stand and present their weapons, yet were hampered by the musketeers who sought protection amongst them. Then the horse were on them, harquebusiers firing their pistols and slashing at men’s faces. Unable to close ranks and lock themselves with one another the pikemen were being butchered and some threw down their weapons and either drew swords or fled. Yet Prince Rupert stood firm in the heart of the fray encouraging his men, and many, seeing him thus, took heart and fought savagely.

  A man beside Mun jabbed his pike up at a rider’s face but the man saw the blade in time, jerking his head aside and at the same moment firing his carbine whose ball punched through the pikeman’s breastplate and killed him. Mun ducked beneath the horse’s swinging head and came up on the rebel’s left, hacking into his leg in a frenzy until the blade got caught in the bone and the horse turned, shrieking, and knocked him to the ground. The rider was screaming, his leg all but severed and Mun’s blade stuck fast, when a musketeer came up, his weapon reversed, and rammed the butt into the rebel’s right side, knocking him out of the saddle. The horse bolted and the musketeer fell upon its master, pummelling his head to a mush contained only by the helmet.

  Getting to his feet, his neck burning from the whiplash of being thrown backwards, Mun saw it was the same musketeer whom he had berated moments before. He looked up at Mun, eyes wide, a feral grin etched into his face, then hauled Mun’s basket-hilt sword free of the meat and bone and offered it up. Mun nodded, taking the sword, its weight of more comfort to him than armour, buff-coat or even pistol. Then the other man hefted his bloodied matchlock and stalked of
f to find another kill.

  A musket ball glanced off the left side-bar of Mun’s helmet and struck a nearby captain in the arm as Mun raised his pistol and fired at a rebel but somehow missed.

  ‘Make way!’ someone yelled, ‘stand clear!’ Mun turned and saw fire. Men wielding fire pikes lumbered into the fray and went for the horses, the flames seething in the darkness, and the horses would not endure it, their eyes rolling, nostrils flaring as they whinnied in terror.

  ‘Burn the bastards!’ a sergeant screamed, thrusting his halberd into a horse’s mouth, breaking its teeth. ‘Burn them!’ The stricken horse backed away, tossing its head in a spray of blood, and whilst its master struggled a musketeer ran up to him, rammed the muzzle of his weapon into the space between underarm and breastplate, and fired.

  ‘That’s it, lad! Give the shanker something to remember you by!’ the sergeant spat as the rebel slumped sideward, his hand still gripping a pistol, and the horse sensing the dead weight on its back began to turn in tight circles.

  The fire was tipping the balance, Mun saw, for as the rebels fought to control their frightened animals the musketeers swarmed upon them with swords, knives and the butt-ends of matchlocks.

  A rebel officer was bellowing at his men to fall back and maybe some of them would have were they not being pulled screaming from their saddles and butchered.

  ‘Now we’ve got the traitorous scabs!’ a man beside Mun yelled, pulling the stopper of a powder flask with his teeth and pouring a measure into the priming pan. ‘Here come the bloody gentlemen in their own good time!’ The Prince’s Horse were coming, funnelling through breaches in the wall, and this was too much for the brave rebel harquebusiers. ‘That’s right, you bloody run!’ the musketeer bellowed, taking a flask from his bandolier and pouring the main charge down the muzzle. ‘You run back under the stones you crawled out from!’

  Mun’s blood yet boiled in his veins. His fury yet grew like a fire feeding on itself and he ran after the retreating rebels, his breathing harsh in his ears, his world shrunk to the vista afforded by his helmet and the craving for revenge.

  ‘Lost your horse, Sir Edmund?’ Mun looked round to see Captain Nehemiah Boone leering down at him as he trotted his huge chestnut mare alongside. His sword was in his right hand, glowing dully in the murk. His left arm and the hand gripping the reins were sheathed in a long elbow gauntlet of the type rarely seen any more. Bard, Rowe, Downes and the others were there too but Boone waved them past, gnarring at them to go and kill the King’s enemies. ‘Pity. A fine horse,’ the captain went on. ‘I’m only surprised you hadn’t got him killed before now.’

  Mun ignored him, his eyes fixed on the bridge up ahead where a valorous knot of rebel horse were making a stand so that the rest might withdraw across the bridge into the town. It was a maelstrom of flame-spitting pistols and muskets and the rasping clash of swords.

  ‘You’ll get that troop of yours killed too before long. I’ve made a wager with Corporal Bard to the same.’ Mun locked eyes with him then, saw the malice shining there like polished metal rivets. ‘A half crown says you’ll get those farmers and rogues slaughtered before the month’s out,’ Boone said. The man’s neatly groomed moustaches and beard might have seemed at variance with the predacious-looking teeth revealed now amongst them, but Mun knew Boone, knew he was a killer.

  More killer than fighter, he considered through the searing rage that bid him stick his sword through the bars of Boone’s helmet. ‘Don’t tarry here, Captain, you risk missing your share of the plunder,’ he said, hungering for Boone to raise his sword or pull one of those pistols from its holster. ‘Ah, but of course. You’ll wait until the fighting is over. Then when it’s nice and safe you’ll rob one of your men of his plunder because you’re a recreant, merry-begotten bastard.’

  Boone’s hand went to his pistol.

  ‘Good seeing you in one piece, Captain,’ O’Brien called, coming up on his big mare, his poll-axe gripped by its neck in one massive hand. The Irishman’s eyes had none of the cordiality of his greeting and he bristled with the threat of violence. Jonathan was close behind with the rest of Mun’s troop.

  ‘I could have you on a charge for desertion, O’Brien,’ Boone said, his lip curled as his left hand took hold of the reins again. ‘But I’d rather not have an Irish devil in my troop in any case.’

  O’Brien gave the kind of grin that was almost bloodshed in itself. ‘May you live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent, Captain Boone,’ he said, tilting his head but never taking his eyes off the man.

  ‘A half crown says you’ll get them killed, Rivers,’ Boone snarled, then flicked his reins, kicked with his heels and cantered off towards the fray.

  ‘Godfrey!’ O’Brien called over his shoulder and the young man came forward, grim-faced in readiness for the fight. The rest of Mun’s troopers sat their horses patiently as the Royalist army advanced around them, officers roaring orders and all of them still under fire from the rebels who yet held Brandon Hill and Water forts behind them. ‘Kindly lend Sir Edmund your horse, Godfrey, then go back and find Hector and keep an eye on Sir Edmund’s gear before some bung nipper gets his thieving hands on it. The saddle and holsters alone are worth more than you, lad.’ O’Brien locked eyes with Mun, in that heartbeat acknowledging his loss and brave Hector’s death, as Godfrey dismounted and walked his dappled grey mare towards Mun, patting the beast’s flank as he handed her over.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Mun asked Godfrey.

  ‘Lady,’ the lad replied proudly. ‘She won’t let you down, sir.’

  Mun nodded. He wanted to tell Godfrey that he would bring Lady back safely, but he could make no such promises and so he turned his back on the young man, putting his hands and face to the mare’s muzzle, letting her smell him. Then he hauled himself up into the unfamiliar saddle knowing that the stirrups would be about the right length because Godfrey was tall. Lady seemed compliant and trusting, though Mun knew the real test would come soon enough when they rode together into the storm of steel and lead.

  ‘Are we winning?’ O’Brien asked, nodding towards Bristol. A shot from a light field piece thumped into a nearby hummock, fired by the rebels still holding out amongst the houses around College Green.

  ‘They should have launched a proper counter-attack when we came through the wall,’ Mun said. ‘They won’t stop us now.’

  A corporal cantered up, reining in before Mun, his horse stamping the ground impatiently. ‘Sir Edmund,’ the man said, nodding respectfully. His face was sheened with blood from a cut above his eye. ‘His Highness the Prince requests you join him at the Frome Gate.’ He pointed north to a bridge around which another mêlée raged. ‘The rebels’ resolve is weakening and one good thrust will see us breach the inner defences.’

  Mun nodded and told the corporal he would join the Prince presently, then turned back to his troop as the officer cantered off. ‘Shear House men to me!’ he called into the pre-dawn gloom, raising his sword for them to see through the fog of musket smoke drifting southwards across the field. ‘To me!’ He had lost men but could not think of that now as the remaining twenty-five troopers gathered around him, the weight of their expectations threatening to drag him under. He could see it in their faces, that need, that hunger to stay alive. Their eyes pleaded with him to lead them well and wisely and, no matter what the outcome of the storming of Bristol, to take them home to their families, for all that they would not shirk their duty here.

  And yet his soul burnt, still. His fury raged, still.

  ‘This will be pistol work,’ he called, raising his voice above the ceaseless beat of a drum as it drew nearer, ‘at least until we get amongst them and they take to their heels.’ He pulled out one of his own twenty-six-inch-long man-killers and proceeded to load it. ‘Keep to open ground where you can. Stay together. Give them no quarter,’ he said, looking up now and then, spending a moment on eyes here, a face there, ‘for they will show you none and had every opportunity to yie
ld the town before the killing began.’ Those with naked blades had sheathed them and now checked their wheellocks, firelocks or carbines. A blood-soaked musketeer, limping back from the river using his matchlock as a crutch, bawled at them, calling them lace-loving lobcocks and telling them to get into the fight. They ignored him. ‘You will take orders from me, from Corporal O’Brien, or from the Prince. No one else,’ Mun went on. He wouldn’t put it past Nehemiah Boone to order his Shear House men to charge a battery and see them butchered just to spite Mun and win his wager.

  ‘Death to traitors!’ Mun roared, turning Lady northward as his men repeated the war-cry, then he rode and they followed him.

  And at the Frome Gate they found a slaughter.

  Dawn had long broken, the pale light of the new day spilling across Bristol and throwing into shadow those who fought on at the Frome Gate amongst the dead and soon to be dead. Flies were beginning to swarm, drawn by the stench of open bowels and blood and by the heat which the day promised. They gathered hungrily on men’s bloodied tunics, befouled the faces of those who had so recently brimmed with life and fear, and massed in exposed wounds, so that the flesh seemed reanimated by some putrid spirit. And as the flies feasted, the storm of steel and lead raged.

  The rebels still held Bristol. They had lost the eastern end of the stone bridge and its defences of gabions and earthworks, but somehow yet held the gate into the city which even now they laboured to bolster with an improvised barricade of wool-sacks.

  ‘They cannot hold us!’ Prince Rupert had bellowed in the thick of the fighting, walking his new mount back and forth as he encouraged his men and drove them on.

  But the rebels were holding them.

  Mun had led his men up to the gate time and again and each time they had fired their pistols and carbines at the defenders as other men hacked at what remained of the gate with axes or threw up scaling ladders only to be shot or pushed off with pikes, bills and musket butts. Several Royalist officers had been shot and carried off, including Colonel Lunsford who had been shot in the heart and Colonel Bellasis whom Mun had seen take a bad cut to the head. From Mun’s own troop a tanner from Parbold called Geoffrey Asplin had been shot in the face and killed, and Thomas Cope, a brewer from Ormskirk, had taken a musket ball in the shoulder. He had been alive and screaming the last Mun saw, but the sheer quantity of blood did not, by Mun’s reckoning, bode well for Cope’s chances.