‘Tom!’ Penn yelled and Tom twisted round, saw another King’s man aiming a wheellock at him and ducked just as the weapon exploded. Then Dobson spurred forward and brought his sword down, chopping off the Cavalier’s hand which fell onto the grass still clutching the pistol. The wrist stump squirted into Tom’s face and he tried to blink the gore away, unable to rub his eyes clear because of the bars of his pot, as the mutilated man shoved the spurting limb under his left arm and somehow brought his mount round then spurred off through the maelstrom. It seemed they were being overrun, that the fierce crashing wave of Royalist flesh and steel would obliterate them and they would die. But then came a surge the other way as the rest of Haggett’s men ploughed into the fray, having found the courage to turn and fight.
‘Told you the Lord was with us!’ Trencher yelled to Tom, his grin revealing blood-smeared teeth as he lifted his arm to look at a gouge in his buff-coat torn by a pistol ball. But it was not over yet and he got his sword up just in time to parry a blow that might have cleaved open his face.
‘God and Parliament!’ someone cried and Tom caught a glimpse of Corporal Laney before he disappeared under a slaughter of blades.
‘Go on, girl!’ Tom urged his mare forward to add his weight to the momentum and slashed his sword at a man but missed, then another Cavalier was on him, had blind-sided him and plunged his poll-axe into Tom’s mare’s skull.
‘Rebel scum!’ the man barked, spitting at Tom as his horse stumbled and her legs buckled and she fell, but Tom pulled his feet from the stirrups and threw himself clear, hitting the ground, so that his bones clattered like dice in a cup. Having dropped his sword he made a grab for it now but could not get to it for a turmoil of legs and hooves that would have broken bones. So he scrambled clear and climbed to his feet, drawing his knife as all around him men fought for their lives. And yet there was no fear, only fury, a madness raging like fire in his chest as he ploughed through a gap between horseflesh, avoided gnashing teeth and the tossing head of another beast that would have hammered him into the ground like a nail, and came around the rump of the horse whose master was doomed.
He ran and grabbed a fistful of the baldrick criss-crossing the Cavalier’s backplate and the man bellowed angrily, his horse plunging on so that Tom was hauled from his feet, yet he clung on. The rider flailed behind himself with his poll-axe, scoring a glancing blow across Tom’s helmet, but Tom did not let go and his weight pulled the man back a little and that was all Tom needed. He wrenched the man further back and reached around, plunging the knife into his underarm right up to the hilt, and now the man shrieked. Tom let go of the belts and the knife and was pitched forward, for a moment flying, then smashed his helmet’s face guard against the horse’s rump, his head snapping back horribly as the ground rushed up to meet him and the wind was hammered from his lungs.
‘Up you get, lad!’ It was Corporal Mabb, his buff-coat black with blood, his horse’s eyes rolling, spittle flying from its mouth. ‘That were nicely done, Rivers,’ the old man said, and for a heartbeat Tom was surprised to see that he was smiling but then realized why. The Royalists were withdrawing, extricating themselves from the mêlée. They had had enough.
‘Back to your king with you, dogs!’ a man shouted, as those harquebusiers not sporting green sprigs in their helmets turned their mounts and gave them the spur, hooves drumming against the earth, clods flying.
‘God and Parliament!’ James Bowyer bellowed, his dry, gruff voice buffeting its way through the animal shrieks of men yet gripped by blood-lust and the fierce joy of having survived murder.
‘Are you alive, Tom?’ Trencher called across the field, pouring black powder down his pistol’s muzzle. At least seven men were not, by Tom’s reckoning. Three more were wounded: blood-slathered and paling. He nodded to Trencher, the movement sending searing pain through his neck, and stood looking up the rise. The King’s men were cresting the hill now, the first of them having already vanished beyond it, galloping headlong north-east back towards Newbury. But the roar of cannon to the south and the sporadic crackle of musketry and the beating of drums told him this battle was only just beginning.
Many of Haggett’s men had dismounted and were even now searching the dead for plunder, spilling the contents of knapsacks onto the grass, yanking boots off dead limbs and thumbing tunic seams for coins secreted in the lining. But the only thing Tom wanted was his sword and was glad to feel it in his hand again – until he saw a fine pair of leather pistol holsters attached to the saddle on a dying horse. They would do nicely, he thought, wiping his sword through a fistful of grass before drying the blade on his breeches. But a whip-thin trooper named Crathorne had seen the holsters too.
‘They’re mine,’ Tom said, thrusting his broadsword back into its scabbard. ‘You can have all but the holsters.’
Crathorne nodded, clearly disappointed though not enough to argue. But then he stopped and thumbed his nose, blowing snot into the grass. ‘Looks as though your pistols will have to live in your boots a while longer,’ he said, turning to make his way back to his horse which was cropping the grass near by. For Colonel Haggett was bellowing at his men to mount and form up, in order to ride up to the summit over which the last of the Cavaliers had vanished.
‘They might be preparing to come again,’ Haggett called. ‘I want three ranks. Knee to knee. We’ll come back for the dead and wounded once we’ve secured this hill.’
Tom ignored him and knelt by the dying horse to begin undoing the holsters’ buckles and straps.
‘That means you, too, Rivers!’ the colonel yelled and Tom swore under his breath and stood, wincing at the hot pain in his neck, the bruises from his fall and where his back-and-breast had dug in, and the cut in his left shoulder. He noticed a dead Cavalier near by whose wheellock appeared to be unfired and so he went over, took the pistol from the cold hand and lowered the cock to the priming pan.
‘Rivers!’ the colonel shouted. ‘Find yourself a horse, man!’
‘Doubt you’ll get far on that’n,’ Crathorne said, mounting near by.
Tom put the wheellock’s muzzle to the suffering horse’s head and pulled the trigger, the sudden roar conspicuous now that the fight was over.
‘Here, Tom, she’s cut but she’ll live,’ Penn said, mounted and leading a stocky dun mare by the reins. Tom saw that his friend had also collected his blankets, knapsack and carbine from his dead horse, for which he was relieved because it meant he did not have to see the poor beast with its brains leaking from its skull.
He thrust the wheellock into his sword belt and took the mare’s reins, putting his hand near her muzzle so that she might smell him and whispering soft greetings though his body still trembled with the battle fury. She had taken a cut on the forehead between the poll and the eyes, so that her fair forelock was stained red. Gently and with a shaking hand Tom parted the animal’s mane to reveal an open bloody gouge that looked horribly painful though she was steady and uncomplaining.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘we’ll see to this soon, brave girl.’ He looked up to Penn. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, then adjusted the stirrups, loosened the saddle girth a touch and mounted. And that’s when Trooper Dike, alone at the crest of the rise, began to shout.
‘Pikes and muskets! Too many, sir, and coming with purpose!’ Dike pulled his horse round and came down the slope, his single-bar pot doing nothing to hide the horror in his face.
Penn cursed. He was not alone, as men grabbed powder flasks, took spanners to wheellocks, put helmets back on or pulled face guards back down. Tom looked across at Colonel Haggett, expecting him to order the retreat.
‘Form up!’ Haggett yelled. ‘For the love of God form up now!’ And so they did, making three ranks of seventeen with the colonel out in front, and, leaving their dead and wounded behind, rode in good order up the furze-strewn slope. And when they got to the highest point, which Tom could now appreciate was the tip of the northern spur of the escarpment, there was a
collective murmur from the men, cut with no few prayers. For an army was coming to take the hill.
Someone let out a soft whistle.
‘God’s fucking teeth,’ another man growled.
‘There’s not less than five hundred men down there,’ Bowyer said. Now the colonel did not look so sure and nor was Tom surprised given the sight before them. Three troops of foot were doggedly marching up the escarpment to the beat of their drums. A company of pikemen made the centre with a company of musketeers either side. On the enemy’s right flank rode the remnants of their horse, those troopers with which Haggett’s men had already mingled that morning.
‘We cannot hope to hold this hill,’ Colonel Haggett announced, scratching the new bristles on his sallow cheek, his eyes fixed on the advancing enemy. ‘Not against that.’
Tom turned from the immediate threat and glanced westwards, down to where Parliament’s regiments moved in cumbersome masses, some of their ensigns unfurled to greet the new day and whatever fate lay in store.
‘We could give ’em a volley at least, sir,’ Trencher suggested.
The colonel shook his head. ‘On that ground we won’t be moving fast enough,’ he said, ‘and any such volley would receive too vehement a reply. They would shred us.’ Nervously, he rubbed his mare’s poll. The animal snorted and nickered. ‘No, we’ve done our best here but we cannot hold.’
‘With respect, sir, we’ve got to damn well hold.’ It was Corporal Mabb and he did not look any more eager for a fight than Haggett, and yet there he was pressing for one, a well-worn resignation engraved in lines on his old face. ‘The bastards’ll haul cannon up this hill in half a sparrow’s fart once that lot are standing here where we are now. And if they get guns up here,’ he said, thumbing to the west, ‘our lads down there will take a rare drubbing.’ He leant over, hawked and spat, then looked at his companions. ‘I don’t know why our betters never thought to take this hump before now, and God knows I wish it weren’t us sitting atop of it this morning, but seeing as we are, it’s up to us to keep it.’ He sniffed, turning back to Colonel Haggett. ‘Sir.’
Haggett grimaced and looked back towards the King’s men coming up the slope. There was a man whose conscience was on the rack, Tom thought.
‘I’ve seen that face before,’ Will Trencher murmured beside Tom, ‘in a painting of Abraham taking his only son for a walk up the mountain.’
‘This hill’s as good as an altar,’ Penn said with a shrug. ‘Besides, God saved Isaac at the last. The Lord will provide.’
‘The Lord will watch us kill them,’ Tom said, willing Haggett to stay and fight, for Corporal Mabb was right. If the enemy took that hill they would put their big guns on it and those guns would sing and the day might be lost. No battle, no fray. And Tom needed the fray. He fed upon it. Only in the fray might he wreak his vengeance against man and God. Only in the slaughter might his enemy, William, Lord Denton, be put before him and thus might Tom kill the father as he had killed the son.
‘We must hold them off for as long as we can, sir,’ Tom said.
‘Don’t presume to tell me my job, trooper,’ Haggett snarled, ‘and that goes for you, too, Corporal.’
‘With respect, sir, it ain’t just your job,’ Corporal Mabb dared. ‘We’re here to fight. For God and Parliament. Ain’t we, lads?’
One or two ‘ayes’ but nothing convincing, even given Mabb’s popularity within the troop. Tom supposed most of them would rather ride away before the advancing infantry took ten more steps. Let the hill be someone else’s problem.
Mabb lifted his face guard and put a leather flask to his lips. ‘We can kill some of the buggers,’ he said, taking a swig.
‘Another word and I’ll have you on a charge, Corporal,’ Haggett blurted, his close-set eyes boring into the older man.
‘Corporal Mabb is right. We can bleed them, sir,’ Tom said. ‘If we thin them they’ll most likely retreat. Regroup to consider their options. That will buy us time to send to Lord Essex for reinforcements.’
‘You’d have us ride against pike, Rivers? Are you mad?’ Haggett glanced at his men but only for a heartbeat, his desire for their approval outweighed by the need to make the decision alone, to lead well men who needed leading.
Tom shook his head. ‘I’d have us ride away from them, sir. Just over this brow. Let them think we’ve seen sense, that they’ve scared us off.’
‘But?’
‘But we’ll be waiting. Just out of sight on the reverse slope. We’ll lie flat until they’re almost at the crest and then we’ll tear them apart with a volley.’
‘You’d let ’em practically stand on us?’ Crathorne said.
‘Like an adder in the grass,’ Trencher put in with a savage grin.
‘But we ain’t bloody infantry,’ Ellis Lay said, beardless chin jutting. His horse was savaging the bit in its mouth, eager to run. ‘It ain’t our job.’
Tom shrugged. ‘They’ve got muskets. We can’t match them at range.’ He pulled the two pistols from his boots to make his point. ‘But up close we’ll give them reason to think again.’
‘And if they keep coming?’ Colonel Haggett asked.
‘Then we mount and leave them the hill.’
‘What if they send their horse before we have time to mount?’
‘They won’t,’ Tom said.
They might, he thought. But the horse flanking the infantry coming up the hill towards them had already bled that morning, had already lost a score or more dead or wounded. And Tom thought that their commanding officer would rather see the foot do a share of the work before sending his men into another fight.
‘Damn it but I have already lost too many. Including a fine young corporal.’ Colonel Haggett was talking to himself, looking at the oncoming enemy, torn between duty to his cause and duty to his men, and for a moment Tom pitied him. He knew that deaths of the likes of Corporal Laney weighed heavy on Haggett and Tom was glad he was not an officer with an officer’s responsibilities. Nevertheless …
‘We must hold this hill,’ Tom said, ‘whatever the cost.’
Haggett made no sign of having heard, his eyes fixed upon the musketeers and pikemen below, his teeth worrying his thin bottom lip. But then he nodded.
Tom saw Trencher close his eyes and offer up a prayer, the spiritual communion no doubt petitioning the Lord’s assistance in the coming butchery. Matthew Penn looked at Tom, one eyebrow lifting as he dipped his head, a gesture that said good luck and kill well all at once. Dobson mumbled a filthy curse into his unkempt beard.
‘If I get killed up here I’ll blame you, Rivers, you goddamned carbuncle.’
‘No fear of that, Dobson. There’s a length of rope waiting somewhere for you,’ Tom said, at which the big man grinned savagely and cursed again.
‘Fall back!’ Colonel Haggett called, circling his arm above his head. ‘Fall back!’ For a moment Tom feared he had judged the colonel wrong, that Haggett really was going to leave the spur to the King’s men. But then their eyes locked, just for an instant, and Tom saw, for the first time since he’d known the colonel, hard resolve. A purposefulness charged with the acceptance of grim violence and possible death. ‘We will hold this hill for as long as we can,’ he said loudly enough for those around to hear and those further away to get the idea of what he intended, as his troopers turned their mounts, showing the enemy – who were just about in musket range now – their backs as they moved off the crest.
‘Keep coming, you swaggering bastards,’ Tom growled down the slope, then hauled his mare round and joined the others, some of whom had already dismounted and were pulling pistols from saddle holsters.
Then the colonel told a man named Meshman, who had a slashed right arm from the earlier tangle with the King’s Horse, to ride back to Lord Essex or Sergeant-Major-General Skippon, or else the first senior commander he came across.
‘Tell them that Colonel Haggett would deny the enemy the advantage of this hill, which could prove of crucial importanc
e in the coming battle, for as long as is humanly possible. Press upon them that we must place cannon on these heights before the King does.’
The man nodded, turned his horse and galloped off westward, back across the furze-covered escarpment towards Parliament’s army.
‘Lucky bastard,’ someone murmured after him.
‘No man shall say we did not do our duty this day,’ Haggett said, as much to himself as to his men it seemed.
‘Bloody duty? Not very inspiring, is he?’ Dobson muttered, wincing as he pushed his hands into the small of his back, stiff from riding, and riding poorly at that, he’d be the first to admit. ‘A drop of brandywine would put more fire in their bellies.’
‘They’ll stand,’ Tom said, handing the reins of his horse to a young, pox-scarred trooper named Jeffes, one of eight men whom the colonel had tasked with holding six animals each steady until the order was given to retreat in the face of the enemy. This left just forty-three men crouching or lying on the dew-wet grass out of enemy sight over the crest of the round hill. Forty-three against not less than five hundred, Tom reflected. But those forty-three had borne hardships. Through battle or disease they had been halfway to Hell’s gates and they had endured. Furthermore, whatever Tom thought of their commanding officer they were loyal to Haggett and respected the man. They would have followed his lead instead of Tom’s that day in the woods with Parliament’s silver had the colonel not been struck down with fever.
‘If they don’t it’ll be a shambles,’ Trencher said, grimacing as he lay awkwardly on his belly, the ridge of his breastplate digging into the ground.
They’ll stand, Tom thought. And if they were lucky they would survive.
‘We’ll give them one good volley. Two if we can,’ Colonel Haggett said, gripping his pistols in claw-like hands. ‘The slope is steepest just below the ridge and that will slow them, giving us more time than it would seem.’
The enemy’s drums were louder now, their monotonous beat seeming to swell and lift up and over the crest.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 35