Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  The next man came on, but Stryker parried his sword-strike and twisted away from the reverse swing, only to barge into another enemy. The pair fell to the ground amid crashing metal and snarled oaths. Stryker had dropped his sword, but managed to free a hand from the tangle of limbs and drew a dagger from his boot. He stabbed the Roundhead twice in the face. The first blow glanced off the bridge of the man’s nose, scouring a great gash along his cheek. The second plunged into his eye, and the man fell suddenly limp.

  Stryker scrambled to his feet just as the Parliamentarian whose blow he had initially parried came back to finish the job. Stryker, armed only with his dagger, stood his ground, even as the oncoming man grinned maliciously.

  ‘Nice try, you bat-fowling bastard!’ Barkworth’s voice roared from behind the Parliamentarian, and the man fell, bloodied steel protruding from his throat.

  Stryker nodded his thanks and stooped to retrieve his sword. Straightening, he looked left and right for more enemies to face, but, as rapidly as it had begun, the fight fizzled out and Parliament’s attackers fled back towards the town.

  The causeway was littered with the carnage of the skirmish. Iron pots of tar were kicked unceremoniously into the Minster Pool, and the wounded purplecoats were skewered where they lay. The sound of violence was replaced by weeping and, as one, the Lichfield men remembered their captive families, still huddled in terrified groups against the walls.

  Stryker pointed his sword at the white-faced civilians. ‘Get them inside! Now!’ He cast his gaze around the triumphant Royalists, still basking in the glory of the small victory. ‘No rest, lads! There is more work for us to do yet!’ He looked at Barkworth, noticing the way the little man’s eyes shone like a cat’s on a moonlit night. ‘We must to Gaia Lane at once. They will be looking to the north wall while our attention is fixed here.’

  CHAPTER 13

  Lichfield, Staffordshire, 3 March 1643

  Stryker, Forrester and Barkworth were leading more than a hundred garrison men across the expanse of the Close’s yard when they were intercepted.

  ‘Well?’ Stryker snapped.

  ‘Wagon’s ready, sir,’ Sergeant William Skellen announced casually as he fell into step beside his officer. ‘They piled all them ladders on it while you was busy brabblin’.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Praps fifty troopers at a pinch, sir,’ Skellen said, a glint in his hooded eye.

  Stryker nodded. ‘Let’s get over that damned wall before they reach us then, eh?’

  Skellen snorted. ‘Old Chessy-field’s lettin’ us take the bastards on then, sir?’

  ‘Do not be so surprised, Sergeant,’ Barkworth growled, ever ready to leap to his master’s defence, ‘he is not the pissabreech you take him for.’

  Skellen glanced down at the Scot and his mouth split into a brown-toothed grin. ‘Don’t know about that, friend, but I know you certainly ain’t.’ He slapped Barkworth hard between the shoulders. ‘Let’s have at ’em, eh?’

  Barkworth shot him a grin of his own.

  Brothers of the Blade, Stryker thought. They were to be found in the unlikeliest of places.

  The wall was manned by Major Edberg’s yellowcoats, and they parted like the Red Sea to allow the task force through. Edberg was nowhere to be seen, but Stryker knew he would be there, staring, assessing. But there was no time to think of him. Stryker picked the tallest man, Skellen, to clamber over first. He threaded his fingers together, making a step for Skellen’s boot, and gave the sergeant a leg up, heaving him on to the wall’s apex. For all his great height, a lifetime’s campaigning had made Skellen as supple as any man, and he straddled the wall with ease, swinging his trailing leg over swiftly and landing on the opposite side in near silence.

  ‘He’s like some gigantic cat,’ Barkworth said, impressed with Skellen’s agility.

  ‘Lazy as a bloody cat as well,’ Forrester responded dryly.

  ‘Next,’ a disembodied voice carried to them. ‘And I’ve an ache in me back, so no blubber-guts!’

  The men at the walls grinned, and Stryker was thankful for a sergeant who always knew how to diffuse the tension.

  Stryker cupped his hands again, helping the next man over the wall. He could hear Skellen speaking to him as the sergeant helped bring the soldier down. He stooped again, beckoning another to make the ascent, Forrester and half a dozen others following suit. Each man safely across the stone barrier turned to help their comrades across, and the Royalist force was quickly assembled on the narrow lane that ran flush against the north wall.

  Forrester was last across, and he scowled at the groaning of the men who helped him down. ‘It is muscle!’ he bleated indignantly. ‘Muscle, damn your impudence!’

  A ripple of laughter swept across the throng. Stryker raised his hands for quiet. ‘Take a moment to make ready your muskets,’ he said, addressing the entire group. ‘We have the advantage of numbers, but they are experienced fighting men and will be difficult to overcome at close quarters. If we come at them with shot first, there will be little need for steel.’ He looked into the faces of Lichfield’s defenders and saw a mixture of apprehension and fatigue. These were not veterans of Europe. Not the kind of men used to death and depredation. But they had proved themselves hardy during this long day of turmoil, and he felt a surprising pride in each one. ‘You must trust me in this! Look to Sergeant Skellen and Captain Forrester for your lead. Watch your own Master Barkworth, too. Do as they do, and we will overcome, you have my word.’

  When muskets were loaded and matches lit, Stryker led his makeshift troop at a rapid trot north-eastwards along Gaia Lane. They ran in the direction of Stowe church, knowing they risked meeting the Roundhead storming party at any time, but praying that they would find a suitable place for an ambush before such a clash took place.

  The lane started as a narrow track but widened as it went, all the while sinking into the fields either side, so that, eventually, the men’s progress was flanked by steep, forested banks. The afternoon light grew weaker by the moment, and it almost seemed like night had fallen, such was the dense coverage from the overhanging canopy.

  After around a hundred paces, Stryker waved left and right, signalling for the force to split. Stryker led half the group to the right, while Forrester commanded those who went left. Both parties climbed their respective bank, wading through the tangled roots and bushes near the foot of the slope, becoming entirely immersed in the dense trees higher up.

  Stryker’s fifty or so men dropped to a kneeling position as soon as they were satisfied with the cover provided by bush and trunk, and threaded the musket barrels through the foliage so that their leaden packages could be brought to bear on the rutted track below. He knew the same actions would be simultaneously carried out on the opposite bank.

  He checked his match one more time, careful that the priming pan was closed so as to avoid prematurely firing the weapon. The length was good, and, as the cold seeped from the wet mud to creep up the fabric at his knees, he blew on the glowing tip, keeping its stored venom alive.

  The Royalists did not have to wait long. Voices carried to them from further along Gaia Lane, voices joined in short order by the squelching of boots, the sound carrying to them with eerie clarity as it echoed between the steep banks. And then, after what seemed to Stryker like hours but was probably only a matter of minutes, the front ranks of the Parliamentarian force came into view. They marched with steady purpose, backs straight and muskets shouldered. As Skellen had estimated, there were just short of fifty troopers in all, and in their wake trundled a large cart, piled high with the ladders the sergeant had spotted stored on the land adjacent to Stowe church.

  ‘Jesu,’ Stryker hissed when he saw the cart’s driver. He was not armed or protected by steel and buff-hide, but clothed in a simple russet smock. This was no soldier, but a common man, the owner of the vehicle and the pair of horses that drew it. His face was pale as a summer cloud, and it was clear that the armed men sat at his rear were t
asked with ensuring he did not try to escape. It was too late to issue new orders to Chesterfield’s waiting men, and Stryker silently prayed that they would not mistake the carter – present only under extreme duress – as a legitimate target.

  The soldiers and their lumbering wagon came ever closer, wide wheels bouncing in and out of potholes and over roots, horses whickering, scabbards and bandoliers clinking, boots trudging.

  Stryker had decreed that no man was to fire before him, his shot being the signal to launch the ambush, and he waited until the very last moment. Only when the seven or eight ranks had marched past his position did he pull the trigger. And the world erupted.

  The Parliamentarians did not stand a chance. Musket-balls rained down from the banks of Gaia Lane as though part of some great biblical judgement. Stryker’s men came with fire and brimstone upon the screaming inhabitants of a bridleway that had become the focus of God’s judgement. It seemed as though every rebel was hit, some falling stone dead in that first volley, others winged in arm or leg, spun around and dumped into the mud by unseen assailants.

  Stryker stood, reversed his musket, and descended into the roadway, jabbing the wooden stock into the first face – that of a kneeling rebel – he encountered. The man crumpled, blood and bits of teeth spraying up Stryker’s fingers and sleeves, and Stryker stepped over him, seeking out more enemies.

  The rest of the Royalist party were with him now, having followed him down from the right-hand bank or streamed down in Forrester’s wake from the slope opposite. They overwhelmed the bewildered Roundheads, strode amongst them, stabbed with blades and battered with muskets.

  Stryker reloaded his long-arm quickly, scanning a scene of such carnage that it shocked even him. He peered some distance along the lane, and was pleased to see the carter’s back, the man sprinting away down the road in terrified flight.

  The sight of the man reminded him of the wagon, and he looked back to the ladder-piled vehicle. An enemy soldier, ragged trail of blood glistening at his temple, had jumped up into the carter’s place and was scrabbling around for the reins. Stryker nestled his musket in the strong muscles of his shoulder, took careful aim, and fired the shot. The man rose into the air with sudden violence, snatched back off the seat as the ball took him square in the chest. He crashed into the myriad of rungs behind, the cracking and splintering wood providing strange accompaniment to his final, short-lived scream.

  The sounds of battle quickly died. Those rebel soldiers left in the melee were cut down without quarter, while the handful still unhurt scrambled away from the scene, running pell-mell back in the direction of Stowe church. Clanging steel and igniting gunpowder and snarled oaths were replaced by the sickening, despairing moans of grievously wounded men. Stryker spun on his heels, surveying the destruction. To his amazement, not a single man under his command had received anything greater than a flesh wound. By contrast, the Parliamentarian troopers had been utterly annihilated.

  ‘Skellen,’ Stryker called.

  His sergeant, unflustered and indestructible as ever, emerged from the mass of tired but exultant men. ‘Sir.’

  Stryker used the still-smoking barrel of his musket to point at the wagon. ‘Unhitch the nags and burn those bloody ladders.’ He turned full circle so as to catch the eye of as many of Lichfield’s garrison as possible. ‘Well done, lads! Well done indeed! Now, let’s get this place cleared and go home!’

  Nightfall brought with it respite, for the Parliamentarian besiegers launched no more assaults in the rainy darkness.

  ‘They chirp like a nest full o’ chicks,’ William Skellen complained as he joined Stryker and Forrester in the infirmary.

  ‘Leave them to their joy, Sergeant,’ Forrester chided gently. ‘They’re surrounded, and beleaguered, but they’ve beaten the rebels back time and again. They’ve even killed the enemy general, no less! Our friends believe those small victories, and Saint Chad’s boundless blessings, have knocked the fight out of the Parliament men.’

  Skellen gave his derisive snort. ‘The bastards ain’t attacking ’cause it’s pissin’ down with rain. What good’s powder when it’s damp as a gander’s arse?’

  Stryker looked up from where he dabbed a damp cloth at Lisette’s brow. ‘And they’ll be looking outwards tonight in case Hastings pays them another visit.’

  Skellen grimaced, drew his sword, and sat down heavily on the end of a palliasse. He rummaged in his snapsack for a whet-stone and began honing the steel, but his movements did not carry their usual smooth efficiency.

  Stryker watched his old comrade carefully. ‘You’ll slice off your fingers if you keep jerking that bloody stone.’

  Skellen paused and looked up. ‘Sir?’

  ‘What is it, Sergeant?’

  ‘The earl sent out a party, ’bout an hour ago.’

  ‘Oh? Where?’

  ‘Back up on Gaia Lane.’ Skellen leaned forward, his tight-skinned face and dark eye sockets appearing all the more demonic in the infirmary’s gloom. ‘To retrieve the ironwork from all them ladders we torched. If Chessy-field’s willin’ to risk his precious men collecting up scrap like a bunch of bloody magpies, we’re runnin’ proper low on supplies.’ Stryker took a moment to consider the implication, but Skellen went on relentlessly, determined to air his grievances. ‘And I’ve just heard we’re down to the last o’ that swine-feed bread.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘This siege has been goin’, what, two days? And we’re about to starve! He’s made no provision at all. None!’

  ‘Let us make our escape tonight …’ A new voice broke the ensuing silence, its tone soft and exotic.

  Stryker looked down at Lisette Gaillard. He smiled, but shook his head. ‘We cannot.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lisette said indignantly. ‘We would have been away from this godforsaken hole last night were it not for Edberg waylaying us.’

  ‘It was not Edberg waylaid us, Lisette. You swooned after being on your feet for only moments.’

  She scowled petulantly. ‘I went for a long walk. Of course I was tired.’

  ‘It was a short walk,’ Stryker retorted, finality edging his voice. ‘You are simply not well enough to travel. And besides, we had but one opportunity to get over the wall while Sir Henry Hastings drew all eyes to him.’

  ‘You said he might attack again tonight,’ Lisette said hopefully.

  Stryker nodded. ‘Aye, but now Edberg watches the north wall. We could never cross through with his yellowcoats swarming at its foot.’

  ‘What of the earl?’ Lisette asked, unwilling to let the argument go. ‘He trusts you now. Tell him you have an urgent message for the King. You must take your leave tonight!’

  Forrester chortled ruefully. ‘A message to be delivered by all four of us?’

  Lisette glared at Forrester, and he suddenly found the need to study his boots.

  ‘Chesterfield grants us liberty within Cathedral Close,’ Stryker said, diffusing the tension, ‘because it suits him to have use of our swords. But he does not trust us.’

  ‘Fortunately,’ Forrester added, ‘he does not trust Edberg either.’

  ‘Aye, but he’ll nevertheless hand us straight back to the Prince if we survive this siege.’

  ‘So the fact remains,’ Lisette said. ‘We must escape.’

  Near Prescote, Oxfordshire, 4 March 1643

  Lieutenant Andrew Burton forced his weary body onwards. Not wishing to trust his fortunes to the open highway, he had traced the west bank of the River Cherwell southwards through the blackest depths of the night and all of the next day, never stopping, ever watchful for more men tracking his footsteps.

  The previous night he had reached a point where the deep waterway swept away to the west in a great arc. After several hours searching for a way across, he had chanced upon a little ford of piled pebbles, and spent the rest of the time before dawn trudging through the high grass of untilled fields awaiting, as his reasonable knowledge of geography told him, the time when the river would rejoin him on the north–so
uth trajectory.

  Sure enough, around mid morning he had seen a glistening silver snake on the horizon. A surge of relief flowed through his veins, and he quickened his pace as best his tired limbs would allow, for the Cherwell was his key to survival. It would show him the way south, to the next Royalist safe haven, Banbury. Of course, having made his crossing, he was now on the eastern bank – the wrong bank – but he and the regiment had spent a brief spell in Banbury following Kineton Fight and he remembered that a stone bridge joined east and west at the nearby village of Cropredy. There, Burton told himself, was where he would get back over to the Banbury side. After resting at Banbury, he would push on to Oxford, and the closer he came to the king’s new capital, the nearer he knew he was to safety.

  Now, as the winter sun set at its wan afternoon zenith, a grumble of hooves reached him. It was low and pulsating, like distant rolling thunder, and he dismissed it at first as the rushing sound of the thaw-swollen waterway. But the thunder grew, slowly but steadily, and it was punctuated by voices, lightning bolts striking fear into Burton’s heart.

  He had been tracing the path of an ancient animal track through some dense woodland, rather than strolling out in the open, and he was able to duck behind a mesh of branches before any horseman came into sight. He prayed that these newcomers would not be Parliament men, all the while inwardly scolding himself for staying quite so close to the river. The great natural guide would suddenly become a great natural barrier at his back, should he be discovered.

  The lieutenant stayed frozen in place, ignoring the cold and the perpetual ache at his shoulder. He allowed himself only sparrow-like breaths, sharp and shallow, his mouth parched to the point of pain.

  Could these be the soldiers who had sent the man to track him?

  Burton’s heart hammered loud and clear so that the pulse in his skull almost matched the noise of the horses.

  He had not possessed the strength to bury the man’s body. What if they had discovered it, face still pressed into the mud?