He had left the road and struck out toward the Thames. Sure enough, he had spotted a large bay stallion up ahead. It had not been difficult to close the distance between them, for the leading horse carried two men – one of them slumped awkwardly across its back – but he wanted to end the chase quickly, and had taken aim while the range was still ambitious.
Now, as Makepeace spurred on, safe, Stryker was furious at himself for risking that lone ball. He was no dragoon, and did not have the skill to discharge such a weapon from horseback. Now, for the sake of his own arrogance, his advantage was gone.
‘Head toward the river,’ Sir Randolph Moxcroft urged between yelps of anguish as he was buffeted by the galloping horse.
‘You wish to swim?’ Makepeace replied sarcastically.
‘There may be a boat.’
‘Has the loss of blood drained your wits, Sir Randolph?’ Makepeace snarled. ‘There’ll be no boats. If the rebels have any sense, they’ll have set ’em ablaze as soon as Ruthven’s army appeared. No, we stay near the road, where the ground is firmest. It will be night soon and we’ll lose him in the darkness.’
‘Nightfall? He’s gaining, Makepeace!’ Moxcroft cried. ‘We can see him out the corner of our eye!’
Makepeace thumped the spy’s back, provoking an anguished cry. ‘Then shut your fucking eyes, damn you!’
But his anger only concealed panic. Stryker was gaining. Makepeace knew he would have to act quickly. He leaned to his left, feeling the saddlebags for signs of a weapon. Nothing.
Then Makepeace leaned to the right. His fingers met hard, cold resistance. He almost shrieked with triumph as his hand felt the butt of a pistol. He yanked it from its leather holster, and, without warning, wheeled the horse around.
Moxcroft screamed, but Makepeace ignored him. As their Royalist pursuer drew ever closer, he rummaged in the saddlebag’s other pockets for ammunition. As he had hoped, it was all there, and he rapidly loaded the flintlock short-arm.
Makepeace watched Stryker come close, feeling triumph course through his veins. He would deliver Moxcroft. He would defeat this most troublesome of enemies. He thought of his brother. And he saw himself riding up to the grand house on a fine stallion, befitting his newfound wealth and status.
‘Hello Eli,’ said Captain Stryker.
Makepeace fired.
Stryker had felt a rush of confidence as the horse carrying Makepeace and Moxcroft slewed to a halt. He watched Makepeace jump down from the saddle and kicked his horse on, eager to prevent the traitor from attempting an escape on foot.
And then there was no distance at all to cover, for he was but a few paces away. But he could not see Makepeace well, as the turncoat was concealed on the far side of the saddle.
At first his horse did not seem to react to the gunshot. Stryker peered into the dusk air, clouded now with acrid smoke, and wondered how on earth he had not been hit. But then his mount began to whinny, a high-pitched noise speaking of extreme distress, and its legs wobbled beneath its muscular bulk.
Beyond the smoke, Makepeace, pistol in hand, was grinning, and then the weapon was tossed aside and he was drawing an already bloodied blade. Stryker watched but could do nothing, for his horse was staggering, pitching forward. He saw a great gush of blood at the animal’s neck and realized then that the pistol ball, aimed at him, had hit the horse instead.
Seconds later, the beast was on its knees, and, before it crashed sideways into the long grass, Stryker leapt from the saddle to roll clear of the heavy body.
When he looked up, he could see Makepeace’s grinning face emerge from the grey dusk. He looked around, praying there would be a discarded musket lying close that might miraculously be primed and ready to fire. No such miracle was forthcoming.
Makepeace loomed over him. ‘Lovely to see you again, mon Capitaine.’
The skirmish still raged in the adjacent field, Hampden’s greencoats withdrawing to their side of the enclosure, taking a breath, and then charging again. But here, not more than three hundred paces from that anarchic scene, all was calm in the gathering dusk.
‘You look well,’ Makepeace said, letting his sword hover above Stryker’s head. ‘Considering I shot you back at the bridge. A remarkable recovery.’
‘That was you?’ Stryker whispered, an image of a smoke-wreathed assassin resolving in his mind. He remembered the musket shot and the searing pain as the ball clipped his temple. He also remembered that, from such close range, the shot had been a poor one. ‘You need practice, Eli.’
Makepeace held up his blade, smiling thinly. ‘Not with this.’
Colonel John Hampden was exhausted. He had sent his men into the fray for a fifth time and this, he conceded, must be the last.
The greencoats had done their duty. Two regiments of fine men had fallen by the wayside this day, obliterated by the king’s swarm, and yet his, the third to stand before this irresistible force, had held their ground and kept their form.
Hampden turned to a bearded sergeant-major. ‘It’s damn near dark, George. Our duty was to cover the retreat of Holles and Brooke, while stalling the Cavaliers long enough for night to do our job for us.’
The sergeant-major nodded. ‘Sir.’
‘You hear that?’ Hampden went on. ‘Ruthven’s orders.’ The sound came from the dozen drummers standing at the opposite end of the murky field. From Royalist command. Hampden did not comprehend the exact orders issued forth from those tight, thunderous skins, for they sang out in code, but he understood their implication right enough.
He grinned. ‘The buggers are retreating.’ He turned to the dishevelled ranks at his command. ‘They withdraw from the field, men! It’s back to Brentford for the night!’
The men of John Hampden’s Regiment of Foot gave their heartiest cheer of the day.
‘Sound the order to disengage!’ Hampden called to his nearest aide-de-camp. ‘We’ll remain at Turnham ’til dawn.’
In the grand house at the west end of New Brentford where the road curved toward the River Brent, Chirurgeon Ptolemy Banks was busy tending to the wounded.
The chirurgeon did not turn when the large door swung open, nor did he look round when a pair of burly pikemen staggered in under the weight of the man carried by shoulders and ankles between them.
‘I may be Parliamentarian by persuasion,’ Banks was saying through gritted teeth as he pulled at a grimacing man’s bare chest with a pair of pliers. ‘But the Royalists have requested I take care of you men too, and I ain’t the kind of spiteful bastard to deny a man treatment for political reasons. Besides, they’d have shot me if I’d refused.’
The man currently receiving Banks’s ministrations was seated on a high-backed wooden chair, his hands gripping the seat below his rump, while another soldier stood stoically behind, holding firm hands at the patient’s shoulders so that he could not move.
The patient screamed as Banks gave the pliers a sharp twist and jerked them free.
‘There you go, son.’ He held up the bloody pliers, which clasped the flattened remains of a musket-ball. ‘Looked like the hole was clean in your shirt too, Corporal, so, God willing, you don’t have any scraps of fabric to turn your blood bad.’
Banks turned to a small lad, his assistant for the day’s action. ‘Patch him up, Billy. Don’t let it fester.’
Chirurgeon Banks placed his pliers in a little bowl of cloudy red water and picked his way across the wide sheet of linen on which his various tools were laid. ‘Who’s next?’ he said. Just then, he noticed the newcomers. His jaw dropped.
One of the soldiers spoke, ‘Found ’im up the road, sir.’
Banks looked at the wounded man, his own face tinged with horror. ‘He lives?’
‘Aye.’
The chirurgeon waved a scarlet-stained hand at the floor. ‘Lay him down, man, lay him down.’ He went to stand over the still patient. ‘His face is badly smashed, but I’ll do my best.’
‘It ain’t the face so much,’ the burly soldier said. ‘
Poor bugger’s ’alf drowned.’
Banks knelt down, wiping fingers across the wounded man’s brow. When they came away, they were smeared, dark and sticky. He gazed up at the men. ‘Evidently not in the Thames.’
The soldier shook his head grimly. ‘Found ’im beside a big old vat o’ tar.’
Before abandoning his stricken horse, Stryker had thrust a hand into the saddlebag and grasped a small, metal object. It was a pricker, intended for clearing a musket’s touch-hole when the weapon became clogged during action. It was sharp and solid, and Stryker had jammed it straight into Makepeace’s foot.
The wound was not serious, but Makepeace had staggered back reacting to the unexpected pain, and that had given Stryker time to rise to his feet and draw his own blade.
As the skirmish in the adjacent field had ground to a standstill, Stryker and Makepeace had traded blows in a dozen bursts of snake-fast swordplay. Both heaved on their lungs, dragging air into their bodies as the strength ebbed away.
‘I have to hand it to you, mon Capitaine,’ Makepeace breezed as he regained his composure. ‘You’re certainly determined. Like an old Irish wolfhound my father once owned. I was hoping Bain had culled your little pack while you were languishing in Wynn’s cellar. Decided to drink himself insensible, did he, instead?’
‘He decided to die,’ Stryker retorted.
‘How foolish of him,’ Makepeace said bluntly. He slashed forward with his blade in a nimble move that had his enemy stumbling back rapidly. Stryker parried half a dozen blows and the exertion wrenched at the barely healed wounds that were scattered about his body in a network of pain. The glancing blow from Makepeace’s musket-ball had torn the skin along his temple, while the duel was taking its toll on the old wound to his abdomen. It was beginning to pulse fresh gouts of blood, and Makepeace’s brown eyes fixed gleefully on the circle of scarlet that bloomed on Stryker’s shirt.
‘Why are you here, Stryker?’ the turncoat sneered. ‘Look at yourself. You’re bleeding like a gelded boar. You don’t care about the Royalists. Leave now, man, and you’ll hold your head up high. Turn your back and walk away. You don’t need to pursue this any more. Hampden’s done his work well. He’s held your army too long and they’ll be forced to wait out the night. Where do you think the survivors from Brentford have gone?’ Stryker remained silent and Makepeace sniggered. ‘London! They’ll have scuttled all the way back to Devereux and squealed in his ear. And I’ll wager you know what that means?’
Stryker’s temple throbbed dully and was sickeningly painful. It was all he could do not to slip to his knees and close his eyes.
Makepeace went on with mocking relish. ‘This place’ll be sick with Parliament’s soldiers by sun-up. You’ve lost, don’t you see? If the king ever gets this close to London again, it’ll be minus his head!’
Stryker met his gaze and spoke as steadily as he could. ‘You have Moxcroft. I need you to give him up.’ He glanced over Makepeace’s shoulder to catch sight of the spy, still slumped horizontally across the bay’s saddle. ‘If you won’t, it is my duty to take him from you.’
‘You really are a gullible sap, Stryker. How many men have you ordered to their deaths for this mission? How much blood must be spilled for your misguided loyalties?’
Stryker gritted his teeth. He raced forward, sweeping his blade down in a heavy blow that took all Makepeace’s strength to block. But block it he did, and in less than a heartbeat he had stepped to Stryker’s side and forced an equally desperate parry from the long-haired captain that forced him to disengage lest he be outmanoeuvred.
Makepeace was fast, faster even than Stryker remembered, and he had to concentrate hard to keep his focus amid the pains that racked his torso, the sweat that oozed like acid into his eye and the burning in his lungs.
Makepeace looked him up and down. He grinned fiercely. ‘You’re getting sluggish,’ he hissed. ‘Old and blind. Not a handy combination, Stryker.’
‘And why am I blind, Eli? She was barely more than a child.’
‘Ah, but she was more than a child, mon Capitaine. Young, I grant you, but more than a girl.’
‘You stopped to ask her age?’
‘I could see she was old enough. And then I found out I was right. She did not resist my attentions, did she?’
‘You bastard. When I found you she had no tears left. Nothing. You violated her. Broke her.’
‘She grunted with pleasure, mon Capitaine. Grunted and moaned and begged for more, I well remember.’
Stryker remembered that day too. It was a week after the horrific and costly Battle of Lutzen, and the English mercenaries who had fought for the victorious Swedes were still encamped around the German countryside. He remembered walking into the Saxony tavern on a bitter November evening, and, even now, could see that poor girl’s face. Her chin and neck glistened with her vomit, and her cheeks were bruised and swollen from the fists.
He remembered seeing Bain propped on a stool in the corner of the room. The sergeant had been calmly smoking a long pipe, guarding the door while his officer had his fun. The girl was bent over a table, while Lieutenant Eli Makepeace, his breeches bunched around his heels, thrust violently at the girl’s motionless form in front of him.
As Stryker entered, Bain had thrown his pipe down and had reached for the vicious halberd propped at his side, but Stryker’s sword was drawn before the gigantic sergeant could fully rise to his feet. The blade’s solid guard had smashed into Bain’s temple, battering him into his chair and out of consciousness. And then Stryker had turned on Makepeace.
‘I still have the scars,’ Makepeace hissed.
‘You deserved the beating, Eli.’
‘Beating? I was barely alive when you left me. It was near a month before I could walk! Still, that month was spent wisely. Gave me time to plan my revenge.’ The turncoat’s grimace eased into a cruel smile ‘And we repaid you a hundredfold.’
Stryker remembered the payment. How his ale had been drugged as he had celebrated the year’s turning in a dingy taphouse, and how, in his sluggish state, he had been jumped by the vast Sergeant Bain, battered by fist and cudgel. He remembered waking to find himself bound and gagged at the rear of a small, disused stable, a trail of black powder fizzing across the earthen floor, manically tracing its way toward the stout keg at his side.
‘I’ll never understand how you survived,’ Makepeace said. ‘Should have blown you to kingdom come.’
Stryker could not remember with any precision. He knew he had rolled away, desperately wrenching his trussed body across the room as the fuse had run its course. All had become bright for a single, cacophonous moment, before the shroud of black descended.
He remembered waking amid a flood of searing pain in the chirurgeon’s quarters in Leipzig, his body monstrous and damaged. And he remembered Lisette Gaillard and her tender ministrations.
‘You should have swung for that, Eli,’ said Stryker, his voice thick and distant.
‘But there was not a scrap of evidence, mon Capitaine,’ Makepeace replied. ‘Of course, you knew it was Bain and I. We wanted you to know.’
Stryker forced himself to refocus, raising his sword slightly, tempting Makepeace to walk on to its point. ‘I’ll take Moxcroft and bury your corpse here, in amongst the trees, and no one will ever find you.’
Makepeace’s face twitched. Stryker persevered. ‘You’ll be nothing. Another body rotting in the ground. No one will remember you. No one will mourn.’
Makepeace pounced forward, swinging the long sword in a vast arc that started behind his head and which he intended to finish in the top of Stryker’s skull.
Stryker stepped to the side, allowing the blade to slice nothing but air. Makepeace stumbled forward with the weight of the blow, and only just managed to right himself as Stryker attacked. He struck at Makepeace in a series of sharp, staccato blows that had the red-headed man stepping back, parrying furiously.
Makepeace danced to the side in an impressive turn of speed,
hoping to switch defence into attack, but Stryker saw what he was about and blocked the Parliamentarian’s low thrust, which might easily have severed the artery in his groin. They were close now and Stryker slammed his free fist into Makepeace’s mouth, smashing teeth as the officer’s head was snapped back. Makepeace did not fall, but his face was now a gruesome mask of blood.
He tried to speak, but pain seemed to grip him as he opened his jaw.
Makepeace spat a globule of blood, mucus and tooth that caught on the long blades of grass between them, dangling in a gelatinous tendril.
Stepping forward, Stryker swung his blade in a massive sideways blow that, though lacking finesse, rocked Makepeace to his core as the Parliamentarian’s own steel took the force. Makepeace staggered backwards, his sword arm swinging low at his waist, and Stryker advanced again. This time he reversed the swing so that Makepeace had to move his blade across to affect a back-handed parry. Makepeace was drooling blood now and grunting with every action. The fight was leaving him, and his defence was weakening with every movement.
Stryker came on again, delivering three crushing blows to Makepeace’s head in quick succession. The first forced Makepeace to sink to one knee. The second battered the sword from his numbed grip. The third cleaved deep into Makepeace’s forearm at the wrist, making him scream in pain, anger and terror. It was a shrill, pitiful noise that cut across the sounds of the nearby armies like a banshee.
Stryker buried his boot in Makepeace’s chest, sending the captain collapsing on to his back.
Makepeace whimpered, words of agony and desperation bubbling incoherently through his shattered mouth. But Stryker ignored his entreaties, tossing his sword to one side and drawing the long dirk from his belt. He moved to kneel beside the wounded man, blood and dew soaking his knee.
‘I’ll make it quick, Eli,’ he said in low, hoarse tones.
Makepeace retched. A thick mass of vomit and blood and spittle and bile boiled up from his throat, turning his mouth into a macabre cauldron, and he twisted to the side to expel the foul liquid. When he turned back his brown gaze was calm as it met Stryker’s cold, grey eye. He tried to speak, but his words were so indistinct and quiet that Stryker could barely hear them.
Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) Page 34