‘Then why fight?’
‘Because I am a Lutheran, sir,’ Matthias said, his voice made soft by exhaustion. ‘Our reformed church will be obliterated by Rome if we do not resist.’
Stryker turned his shoulder, sweeping an arm out in the direction of the tumultuous River Oder. ‘Then let us aid your fight.’
‘Danke,’ Matthias bobbed his gleaming pate. He indicated the man seated to his right. ‘This is Herr Sammer, my driver.’ He waited while Stryker and the driver exchanged a quick nod. ‘He speaks no English.’
Stryker let his gaze drift beyond the men. ‘What’s in the cart?’
‘Palinka,’ Matthias explained, his tone full of disapproval. He looked down to brush flecks of dust from his fine blue doublet. ‘Strong drink. Like fire. Union agents in Berlin arranged it as my cover.’ He shrugged. ‘I am a merchant, bringing my fine wares to the north.’
‘I am honoured to see you through this final step of your mission, sir.’ Stryker stepped aside, indicating for the driver to continue. He ordered his musketeers to flank the vehicle as it juddered into life behind the palfreys, a trail of steaming manure dropping in their wake. ‘And I’d thank you not to mention your precious cargo to the men,’ he called up as loudly as he dared risk. ‘For I fear it would be our undoing.’
Matthias laughed, finally seeming more relaxed. ‘Quite so, Lieutenant Stryker. Quite so!’
Innocent Stryker strode out ahead. He could see a dozen men at the ford, and the rest of the company clustered on the far bank. They watched as their mission came to a successful conclusion, aided by one young lieutenant who had taken his chance and now led a highly important spy back to the safety of Pomerania. It was only when he heard the shout at his back that he noticed the thrum at his feet. It vibrated, gently at first, but gathering strength all the while, tracing a path up his tall boots. Unmistakable, unavoidable, impossible. Even as he turned he could feel his bowels turn to water and bile singe his throat.
It was the beat of hooves.
Stryker stared down the road. It was empty, but the vibration at his feet told him of an approaching storm. He peered into the green abyss at the road’s flanks. The forest was dense, an impenetrable blanket of shadowy emerald, interspersed only by the dark colonnade of ancient, soaring trunks.
He turned to the corporal at his side. ‘Fetch the captain, Braggs.’
‘What is it, sir?’
Stryker looked back at the forest. The vibrations were stronger now, reaching his hips. ‘Cavalry.’ He drew his sword, finding the weight reassuring in his grip. ‘Get back to the ford!’ he barked at the men behind, screwing up his face to squint along the length of the road. The woods were too thick for mounted men to negotiate, so whatever loomed on their horizon did so on the dried mud of the thoroughfare.
‘Report,’ Captain Ferdinand Loveless grunted when his second-in-command had reached the river.
In answer, Stryker stretched out an arm, finger extended in line with the narrow road. There, pouring along the pine-flanked funnel like a wave rolling up a valley, were the first of the horsemen. But this was no ordinary troop of cavalry. Stryker stared in wonder at the galloping tide, even as his men hurriedly began to coax the twitchy palfreys on to the first rocks of the ford. The locals said this forest was haunted; perhaps they were right.
‘Christ’s blood,’ someone whispered to his left. ‘What are they?’
At first it seemed as though they were not human at all, but fantastical creatures from some unearthly realm: half man, half beast. The horses were real enough; massive and snorting and white-eyed. But the ghouls mounted behind were something from a nightmare. They perched on saddles swathed in animal pelts, their bodies encased from head to toe in gleaming armour. But it was the wings that seemed to steal the breath from Stryker’s lungs. Thick rows of feathers sprouted from their metallic spines. Huge and pristine, white as snow, the wings were vast, stretching two or three feet above the head of each man, rising and falling in time with the movement of his horse, flapping in every rider’s wake making the air rush like so many giant bellows.
‘When Lucifer fell from heaven,’ Stryker heard Praise-God Sykes mutter amongst the crowd, ‘he took his rebellious adherents with him.’
Stryker caught the intimation and wondered if that demonic host had really come to the River Oder this day. ‘What are they, sir?’
‘Husaria,’ Captain Loveless hissed, rubbing his grey stubble with thick fingers. ‘Get over the river.’
Stryker turned to him. ‘Husaria?’
But Loveless was already moving away, waving at the men to fall back, gesturing to his musketeers on the far bank to move up in support. ‘Get the wagon over that fucking river, Lieutenant!’
Major Lujan Antczak gripped the long lance until he felt his knuckles burn and ran his tongue over his teeth. He crouched lower behind his roaring stallion’s stone-hard neck, watching the panic spread through the ranks of the surprised infantrymen ahead, and felt his pulse quicken. The river coursed at the musketeers’ backs, trapping them around their little cartload of barrels, and he silently prayed they would at least try to defend it, for it had been too long since his troopers had tasted real action. Peace treaties and politics had seen his men languish on garrison duty along the length of the border to the east of the Oder, and they were getting soft, fat and lazy. He thanked the Holy Mother that Sweden had finally overreached herself.
This mission, of course, was undertaken in a clandestine capacity, for the Poland-Lithuania Commonwealth was not at war with the Protestant Union or her allies, but that did not mean she would sit idly by while Gustavus Adolphus inveigled his way on to the mainland. The Commonwealth was vast – more than twice the size of France – and its people believed wholeheartedly in its natural position as ruler of the Baltic. Gustavus Adolphus, the arrogant king of Sweden, had come to the mainland to further his ambition, all the while hoping that the Poles were sleeping. They were not sleeping.
Lujan Antczak was a Rotmistrz, which meant that he commanded a Banner of Husaria: sixty killers of the very highest calibre. He was almost forty years old, which was reasonable for a man of his rank, though he knew he looked much younger. It was all in the eyes, people said. From a pale, almost gaunt face, wide at the forehead and sharp at the chin, which gave it a peculiarly triangular shape, a pair of azure eyes glinted clean and bright like precious gems. Antczak enjoyed the misconception, encouraged it, for it meant that folk underestimated him, and that, as sure as the magnificent eastern Commonwealth would persist for a millennium, was a dangerous mistake to make.
Antczak stood in his stirrups and whooped to the suffocating canopy above, revelling in the clang and jangle of his armour and weapons. His men joined the cry, crowing of their strength and courage. Their armour was made from layered metal sheets with wings fixed to their backs to create a terrible rushing sound as they charged. The wings alone would break an army well before the charge hit home.
But today they faced no army. The men at the ford were little more than a single company, all on foot, and already in retreat, their pickets silently slaughtered out in the trees. Antczak did not know who they were, nor did he care. His commander, the oleaginous Mikrut, had told him that a rag-tag detachment of mercenaries was due to meet a Swedish spy at this godforsaken place, and that he and his winged lancers were to charge headlong into that meeting and snare the traitor. A warm September morn of easy pickings and, according to Mikrut, lavish reward.
Lujan Antczak could see the whites in his enemies’ eyes now, and the sight exhilarated him. He settled into his saddle and leaned in, lowering the huge lance in his right hand so that it pointed out, past his steed’s pricked ear. It was the weapon of his trade. Made of fir wood, more than four yards in length, with a razor tip of forged steel and a large taffeta pennon dangling just behind. It would unhorse an opposing cavalryman or impale a crouching foot soldier, and its very presence, like the massive swan-feather wings, announced his presence to an enemy m
ore effectively than any banner. The men at the ford might not know him, but they would know to fear him.
‘Winged goddamned lancers!’ Captain Ferdinand Loveless bellowed as he hurriedly ushered his men to the ford. ‘Hard bastards from the east!’
Stryker and his twenty men were with him, scuttling backwards in loose order. The men had their muskets primed and ready. They blew on the dangling cords of match that were coiled about their forearms, some already positioning them within the jaws of the waiting serpentines that loomed over their firing mechanisms. One man fired, the panic of the moment tempting him to folly, and he was berated by Loveless as he hurriedly reloaded.
The cavalrymen were coming at a gallop now, the distance less than a hundred paces, and more and more muskets were primed. The guns were huge, cumbersome beasts, too big to be effectively fired on the move, and Loveless ordered that his men deploy their rests. The musketeers formed a line where they stood, stabbed their forked sticks into the crumbling earth and rested their musket barrels upon them. Loveless screamed at them to hold their fire, turning instead to Stryker. ‘I told you to get the cart over the water, lad.’
Stryker turned, sheathed his sword and ran to the vehicle that was now at the edge of the bank. He splashed into the water, feeling his ankles wobble unsteadily on the causeway of collapsed stone, and took the bridle of one of the animals which had so far managed to venture no more than three or four feet into the swirling shallows. He twisted back to stare up at the driver, Sammer, who clutched the reins with white knuckles. ‘Get them moving!’
Musket shots rang out now, punctuating the roar of the charge. A single scream told him one of the cavalrymen had been hit, but the rest of the leaden balls had evidently rattled off amongst the trees to split nothing but bark. More shots banged, this time from the west bank of the Oder where the rest of the company had been waiting, the howling lumps of lead whirring past Stryker, but their aim was obscured by the wagon and their comrades now clustering on its far side. And still the Husaria came. Still the wings beat the balmy air.
Stryker hauled at the bridle, snarling a savage oath as the palfrey jerked its powerful head from side to side in stubborn refusal. Men screamed at his back. The charge was hitting home. He stepped away, peering past the wagon and between the rearmost bodies of his comrades to see the first of the horsemen slam into the clustered English ranks. Vomit bubbled up into his mouth and he was certain he would piss his breeches at any moment. He knew the lances had enfiladed his men, puncturing bellies, chests and faces. Most of the musketeers wore buff-coats to protect against bladed weapons, but a long, heavy lance brandished at such speed would pierce their tough layers as though they were naked. He could picture all this in his mind’s eye, and yet all he could see were those wings. Ghastly and huge, white and fluttering, climbing above the melee as more and more horsemen lent their weight to the charge.
He grasped the bridle again, this time refusing to let go as the horse snorted its complaint, and dropped his shoulder as he pulled, lending his whole body to the tussle. The palfreys juddered forwards, aided by the terrified driver. The hogsheads lurched and clattered in the rear, the two seated men thrust out hands to grip the timbers below as the wagon rumbled on to the uneven ford, and water splashed Stryker’s boots and up the huge spokes of the wheels.
He could hear Loveless braying at the river’s edge, and he twisted to see that the hussars had disengaged. Still his view was limited by the milling, battered throng that was the unit he had led across the ford, but through the mesh of men’s shoulders and muskets he caught glimpses of steel-tipped lances, enclosed helmets and wings. So many damned wings.
‘They’re regrouping!’ Loveless called. ‘Reload! Form two ranks!’
Stryker left the wagon as it continued its painstaking progress across the raised ford. Behind him he heard the splash of feet and he knew more musketeers were crossing the river to join the fight. He reached the captain and drew his blade. ‘Sir!’
Loveless rounded on him, eyes wild, unbloodied blade clenched tight at his side. ‘Protect the wagon!’
‘I can fight, sir!’ Stryker protested, choking back bile.
‘Protect that damned spy, Lieutenant, or you’ll answer to me! Get him over to the far bank and send me back my pikes.’
In that moment, Stryker sensed the bile subside, and with that easing came a swell of shame. Because, as he returned his sword to its scabbard and ran back to the wagon, he could not help but feel relieved. Behind him the wounded men groaned at the sky as they were conveyed to the rear. Loveless was berating and encouraging in equal measure, desperately trying to bring some semblance of order to the musketeers as they awaited the next attack. They formed up in a line across the ford, all thirty or so now, two ranks deep, ramming charges and balls down still-smoking muzzles and frantically keeping matches glowing hot. They knew the fight was not over yet.
Rotmistrz Lujan Antczak was a happy man. He had caught these shabby infantrymen napping, hit them at speed and with force, and now the quarry were in disarray. His instinct was to press on, drop the lances and bring steel and lead to the men at the river’s edge. But he could see reinforcements splashing across the ford, and in their hands were muskets that were primed and deadly. Years of experience had told Antczak that a musket discharged at close range would pluck a cavalryman right off his horse, regardless of the quality of that man’s armour. Antczak was a hero of the Battle of Stuhm Heath, where he had led a mad charge at a block of Swedish musketeers, and though that day had covered him in glory, the bloody toll suffered by his own men had taught him much. The muskets formed a lock that denied him access to the ford, and before he could finish this morning’s work, that lock would need picking. Sacrifices would have to be made for the greater good.
Antczak had been one of the first to wheel away from the melee, and now he was back at the treeline, his exultant lancers gathering all around. His helmet encased his skull, save a heart-shaped cut in the middle of the face through which he could see well enough, and he quickly identified one of his more senior men.
‘Kumala!’ he called, smelling his own fetid breath against the plate metal, ‘Take twenty men and draw their fire.’
The lancer responded with a short bow and went about his business. Antczak looked on as the small party was assembled, and then they were away.
‘God with you!’ Antczak bellowed at their backs. And he whispered a silent prayer as they galloped towards the water. For the River Oder was the slaughterhouse, and Kumala’s men had become lambs.
Stryker had almost reached the west bank. He glanced up at the spy, then past the wagon to see his comrades on the far bank who had now organised themselves into two neat ranks. Ferdinand Loveless was there, pacing back and forth to the right of the formation, sword raised, broad face set hard in belligerence. The guilt came again as Stryker acknowledged his relief to be away from that dread place, and he resolved never to mention the feeling to another living soul. He had seen plenty of fighting since leaving his peaceful homeland, but this was different. These men – these things – that appeared like demons from amongst the trees had instilled a terror within him that he could never have imagined. Perhaps he had not the mettle for soldiering, after all.
It was then that he saw another figure pacing on the company’s opposite flank. A man whose round face was framed by thick tendrils of sandy hair that sprouted from beneath a fashionable hat. A man whose blue coat was slashed so that the yellow silk of its lining glimmered brightly against the shadow-dappled morn, and whose reedy neck was hidden by the huge lace of an exquisitely made collar.
The fear and shame left Stryker in a heartbeat, to be replaced by an envy that was so acute he could barely contain himself. He watched as Ensign Lancelot Forrester strutted in the face of the enemy, an enemy who were now surging forwards in the beginnings of a new charge, and it was all he could do to keep himself from abandoning the wagon there and then. He took hold of the bridle, wrenched it forwards, all th
e while snarling at Sammer to lash down with his reins.
As the driver steered the palfreys on to the west bank of the Oder, Stryker glanced over his shoulder to see the charging lancers closing in on Loveless’ braced ranks. He went to help Matthias down from the seat. ‘Stay here.’
The spy rubbed tremulous fingertips over his hairless pate, leaving white gullies in their wake. ‘What if they get across?’
Stryker shrugged. ‘Then run. Hide in the forest.’
Matthias’ face creased in a desperate grimace, and he fastened both pudgy fists to the coat at Stryker’s sternum. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Over there,’ Stryker said, pointing at the far bank. The musket volley erupted then. It exploded in one massive blast, both ranks at once, rippling along the tightly packed infantrymen like a North Sea wave, white, sulphurous smoke its swirling crest. Screams filled the forest as the approaching horsemen were punched clean from their saddles, flung into the air to land in crumpled heaps of blood, metal and feathers. Even from this distance Stryker could see that the volley had worked, the charge had faltered, and those wicked lances would not be fed a second time on English flesh. He heard Loveless and Forrester bellowing their praise to the men, and he wanted to be there, to share in the triumph.
Loveless had left his nineteen pikemen on the west side of the river to protect the camp and their local guide, the lawyer, Herr Buchwald, and Stryker ordered two of them to him. ‘Keep an eye on this man,’ he snapped, nodding at Matthias. ‘He is the reason we’re here.’
One of the men nodded as he leaned casually against his ash stave. ‘Will do, sir.’
He was a tattered-looking fellow with grey eyebrows growing wildly beneath the rim of his dented morion. His nose was twisted violently to the side, and his toothless gums were black with disease, but Stryker knew him to be sturdy enough. He nodded his thanks, turning to Matthias. ‘I will be back.’
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