Girns was a big man, but Blaze, for all the torture he had suffered these past days, was still tall, even loftier than his brother, and his frame carried a deal of weight. He bowled into Girns, head dipped like a bull in a crazed charge, catching the major in the sternum and flinging him backwards into the door. The hate-filled brothers snarled like a pair of wild beasts as they hit the ground in a tangle of thrashing limbs and bared teeth, the key tumbling through the air and into the burning hay.
The breeze had lifted some of the smoke from the nave, and Stryker and Burton were able to breathe easier. Stryker looked down at the object clutched within his right palm; the item he had finally located against his calf.
The brothers still wrestled at the foot of the door, smoke roiling around them, but Blaze was in no state to put up a real fight. He had no fingers left with which to grip, and had lost a great deal of blood. Now that the momentum of Blaze’s charge was spent, Girns was quickly getting the better of the contest. Blaze had hold of Girns’s slim midriff with his big arms, but the major locked Blaze’s head under the crook of his elbow and raked his fingernails along the ragged area of flesh where his brother’s ear had once been.
Blaze screamed, loosened his grip, and Girns wriggled free of the bear hug. He dived to his right, ending up splayed across Rontry’s lifeless body, and, for a moment, a glimmer of hope flashed across Blaze’s face as he anticipated his younger brother’s retreat. But then Girns turned, brandishing the pistol he had torn from Rontry’s stiffening fingers.
The shot rent the air, and Jonathan Blaze folded in two, as though he had taken a punch to the stomach by Samson himself.
‘No!’ Burton was bellowing now. The lieutenant leapt to his feet and careered along the nave.
Girns turned, prepared for this new onslaught, and kicked Burton high on the chest, sending the lieutenant sprawling away into the first row of pews. Burton flailed like a landed fish, struggling to stand with his wrists still in their fetters, and Girns drew his sword, advancing quickly.
Lisette Gaillard’s silver hair pin broke through the final strands of rope at Stryker’s wrists, just as Girns was raising his blade for the killing blow.
‘Major!’ Stryker bellowed as he burst forwards.
Girns stayed his sword, looking across at Stryker in disbelief as the captain rolled at his feet, smashing them out from under him and sending him clattering to the stone floor.
Burton scrambled away, ducking behind the adjacent pew as though it were a castle parapet.
‘I have put an end to my brother’s Romish sin,’ Girns spat as he hauled himself to his feet, his voice laced with passionate ferocity, ‘and now God will guide my hand as I smite those who would foil His work.’ He was not concerned with Burton now, his green gaze centred squarely upon the man who had felled him.
Stryker was on his feet again. He was near the door, and glanced around for something with which to defend himself. And then his eye rested on the inert form of Jesper Rontry. He scanned the body quickly, spotting the glint of metal at Rontry’s side, and, with a tide of relief, stooped to draw the dead man’s sword.
‘The wind will drop!’ Stryker shouted at the tall killer. ‘The smoke will come back, and we’ll all bloody suffocate!’
Girns shrugged casually. ‘Then I will be a martyr.’ He moved slowly to the right, looking to outflank his opponent. ‘But before that I will cut you to shreds.’
‘Be my guest.’ Stryker lifted the blade so that its tip hovered in line with Girns’s sallow-skinned throat.
Stryker reckoned himself a proficient swordsman. He had encountered better, those men trained by the masters of Paris and Madrid, but they were few and far between. Yet now he found himself immediately on the back foot. Girns strode forward purposefully, his face tight with controlled aggression, his poise balanced and powerful. Stryker had once seen a lion at a carnival in Vienna, and Girns’s movements put him in mind of that beast. He was strong, but languid. Smooth, but predatory. And when that first lunge came, it took all of Stryker’s wits to get his blade across to make the block before it skewered his heart.
But time was running out. Outside, the breeze was dying, and the smoke began to billow outwards with increasing pace and density. Before long they would all choke in the airless chapel.
Stryker went on the attack, lurching forward with a trio of sharp lunges, but his head still pounded uncontrollably, making him feel sluggish, and Girns swatted his ripostes away with scornful nonchalance.
Sensing movement behind him, Stryker risked a glanced over his shoulder to see Lieutenant Burton moving up the nave. ‘Keep away, Andrew!’ he ordered, seeing the look of violent determination on his subordinate’s face. The young man would not think twice about helping his captain, even if his hands were still tied. ‘I said keep away, damn you, or I’ll kill you myself!’
‘But, sir!’ Burton began to protest.
‘You’re no use to me! Find the key! Find the fuckin’ key, or we’re all dead!’
Girns came forward again as Burton scampered along the outer wall, keeping well out of sword range. The major stabbed low, then swung his blade at Stryker’s midriff in a backhanded slash, and finished the move with a crushing downward blow. Stryker was equal to each of the ripostes, but his hand was beginning to ache and his fingers were becoming numb.
Girns held his blade out straight, the tip cutting circles in the air before Stryker’s face. Threatening, taunting.
‘I can’t find it!’ Burton’s desperate voice carried to them from within the smoke plume.
‘Keep looking!’ Stryker bellowed over Girns’s shoulder.
Girns suddenly feinted, and Stryker flinched, causing the major to grin broadly. ‘The key is irrelevant, Captain. I’ll best you, and then I’ll stick your young friend like a squealing little piglet.’
Stryker jumped forwards, stabbing his sword directly at Girns’s face. The major stepped back, inviting Stryker on to him, and held out his own blade so that it slid along Stryker’s, glancing off the Royalist’s hilt and finding the web of flesh below his armpit.
Stryker grimaced and pulled away sharply. He looked down at the petals of red that blossomed on his chest. It was not a severe wound, but it hurt like hell and he forced himself to take deep, measured breaths to bring the pain under control.
‘I will take you piece by piece if necessary, Captain,’ Girns sneered.
They were at the doorway now, Rontry’s slumped remains somewhere behind, and Stryker launched himself at Girns again, hoping to force the major into tripping on Rontry’s outstretched legs. But Girns jumped nimbly backwards, clearing the obstacle with ease, and as Stryker came on, planting his foot heavily on the flagstones, he felt the ground give way beneath him. His right foot simply slid away, as if he had stepped on ice, and he glanced down to see that he had fallen foul of a patch of the dead man’s blood.
As soon as Stryker hit the ground he rolled away, hearing the metallic clang of steel on stone as Girns slashed his sword into the floor where Stryker had been. Then he was up on his feet again, but now his sword was somewhere near the doorway, having jumped free of his numb grip as the hilt broke his fall, and Stryker darted out of reach of the advancing Girns. He backed away, seeing the pews come into his peripheral vision as he retreated down the nave.
Girns bore down on him, blade outstretched, eyes wide and wild. Stryker glanced over the major’s shoulder, hoping against hope to see Burton emerge from the smoke, binds unfastened and key in hand. But a chorus of spluttering, gravelly coughs from within the blackening cloud told him the lieutenant was rapidly becoming overwhelmed.
The small of Stryker’s back collided with something hard, and he realized that he had come up against the altar rail. Frantically now, he turned left, only to see the whitewashed fastness of the chapel’s north wall. He turned right, ignoring Girns’s mocking snigger, but the south wall was just as bleak, just as devoid of escape routes. At his back was the shattered altar and a pulpit that offered o
nly to entrap him further, should he choose to ascend its short flight of steps. And in front of him was a tall man, with luminously white skin, raven-black hair and the greenest eyes he had ever seen.
Girns stepped closer, letting the blade drift lazily in to linger below Stryker’s throat. Stryker stared down at the sword’s poised tip. He traced the length of the red-splashed weapon, his eye taking in every notch and divot on the blade’s razor edge, all the way up to the hilt at its zenith. And there, behind the hilt, sighting along the straight steel, was the emerald eye of Major Zacharie Girns. Dragoon, rebel, assassin, fratricide.
‘Did you think you could stop me?’ Girns said, his smoke-ravaged voice hoarse. ‘Interfere with God’s work? I am a hunter of men, Captain Stryker. I have hunted my brothers from the moment their ship landed on English shores, tracked them across wood and field and highway. Always found them. Always cornered them.’
Stryker kept his expression impassive. ‘You are clearly a formidable opponent, Major.’
Girns lunged forward with sudden violence, a movement instilled with all the violence and strength and savagery he could muster.
Stryker swayed to the right, letting the sword slice past his head, cutting through a clump of hair and nicking his earlobe. But he ignored the pain, and Girns clattered into him so that their bodies were pressed tightly together, the altar rail preventing Stryker from moving backwards. Stryker wrapped an arm around the major’s middle, pinning the taller man against him. He could smell the stink of the assassin’s stale breath.
Girns thrashed at him, and, just as Stryker felt his grip fail, he stood on the tips of his toes and whispered, ‘But there is one person you should never ever corner.’
And Major Zacharie Girns’s wart-riddled jaw fell open. His arm, still stuck above Stryker’s left shoulder, went suddenly still, and then its taut rigidity began to evaporate. Stryker heard the sword clatter to the stone floor behind, and slid out from between Girns and the wooden rail. The Parliamentarian did not react. He simply stared at the wall beyond the altar, his tall body swaying like a sapling in a stiff breeze.
Stryker went to stand next to him and, with a welt of fresh blood, jerked Lisette’s long, sharpened hairpin free of Girns’s slim neck.
‘Me,’ he said.
Stryker kicked Girns squarely in the back. The major fell forwards with a jolt, and tipped across the low rail to fall headlong on to the cross that had once formed the chapel’s humble altar. But that cross had been cleaved in two by a vicious sword swipe, and was now a wicked wooden stake that passed through Girns’s chest as though it were butter, bursting through into the smoky air with its new adornment of blood and tissue and bone.
Major Zacharie Girns gave one huge shudder that sent grotesque spasms throughout his entire body, and then, finally, he was still.
Stryker turned back to the chapel. Above him the roof was engulfed in flame.
Stafford Castle, 19 March 1643
Sir Thomas Byron cantered into the courtyard. The castle’s inner sanctum was a hive of activity as stewards scuttled this way and that, tacking up horses and fastening plate armour to their masters’ chests and backs. The knight reined in at the very centre of the confusion and summoned an aide with a deft flick of the wrist. A small man, hunched and fawning, scampered across the viscous mud, grimacing each time a shoe stuck. Byron did not speak, but unfastened his helmet, yanked it off in one swift movement, and tossed it to the aide. Then he stood in his stirrups to scan the chaotic scene. His chestnut horse fidgeted uncomfortably as one of his spurs clipped its flank, but Byron brought it under control with a twitch of his thigh and a soothing word in the beast’s pricked ear.
When Byron caught sight of Spencer Compton, the Earl of Northampton was standing near the door to the armoury. The bucket tops of his boots had been fully extended in order to protect his upper thighs, his coat and shirt were covered by the amber of a buff-coat, his arms were outstretched in order to allow servants access to the leather ties that would fasten back and breast plates together, and his left forearm was encased in a gleaming metal gauntlet. He, like his Cavaliers, was preparing for war.
Byron jumped down from the saddle, immediately sinking to his ankles, and strode laboriously over to where the earl stood.
‘Speak to me,’ said Northampton when he caught his cavalry commander’s hazel eye.
Byron ran his gloved right hand through the dense thatch of fair hair that fell about his shoulders. ‘Sir Henry guessed right, my lord. Gell’s on Hopton Heath.’
Northampton tilted his chin upwards, like a dog sniffing the wind. ‘Then let us wipe him from the earth, Sir Thomas.’
Byron felt his heart lurch in excitement. He had feared the town would be subjected to a long siege. A battle of attrition, and erosion and starvation. The type of warfare unsuited to a garrison of cavalrymen. But the Earl of Northampton was a man after his own heart. The kind of hard-riding, hard-fighting Cavalier the dour Roundheads so despised. He could not stifle a grin. ‘I am with you, my lord. We’ll ride straight into the rebellious scoundrels.’
‘Good. I cannot think of three better men than Sir James, Sir Henry and yourself to ride with me to this fight.’
Byron bowed low. ‘I thank you for your kind words, my lord.’
‘I’d wager you would not doubt Mademoiselle Gaillard again, eh?’ Northampton said with a sly twitch at the corner of his mouth.
‘I would not,’ Byron replied truthfully. ‘Without her warning we might have turned back to Banbury. I shudder to think on it.’
‘As do I,’ the earl agreed. ‘Once I secure Staffordshire for the King, I will have her to thank. Thank you, lads,’ he said as his three servants stepped away, their work finished. ‘Efficient as always. Bring my horse.’
Sir Thomas Byron watched in silence as the Earl of Northampton’s big gelding was led out into the courtyard. Northampton pulled on his steel pot, attaching it under his chin, and pulled down the three-barred visor, before his servants moved in again to help him into the saddle.
‘Join your troops, sir,’ the earl said finally, when he had hold of the looped reins. ‘It will not be long before we have assembled enough men for this task.’
Byron dipped his head. ‘I look forward to it, my lord.’
Northampton urged his mount forwards. ‘For God and King Charles!’
Within the castle keep, in one of the myriad rooms of roaring hearth and tapestry-draped walls, a slim woman, dressed entirely in black, stood by a narrow window, gazing out over the town. ‘It is good to see you, Forry,’ she said softly.
At the other end of the room a portly man with ruddy cheeks and thinning, sandy-coloured hair sat back in a stout chair carved of seasoned oak. ‘But you would rather have seen a certain one-eyed captain.’
Lisette Gaillard turned to face him. ‘Am I that transparent?’
Lancelot Forrester, dressed in the red uniform of the Earl of Northampton, interlocked his fingers across his ample stomach. ‘Like a pane of glass, my dear.’
‘What happened?’ she said, a look of concern ghosting across her narrow face.
Forrester met her gaze. ‘We went to Oxford, as you know. Asked a few questions. Discovered Blaze’s group had been ambushed.’
‘Merde,’ Lisette whispered, studying the creaking floorboards with sorrowful eyes. ‘Then I truly failed.’
‘Not entirely,’ the captain replied. He reached across to grasp a hunk of flour-dusted bread from a trencher that had once contained Lisette’s meal. ‘May I?’
She nodded.
‘So we rode towards Brocton,’ Forrester mumbled through a bulging mouth, ‘a hamlet not too far from here, as it happens. But we were harried by a troop of bloody dragoons, and forced to split up. Burton and Stryker went one way, Skellen and I the other. We agreed to meet at Brocton.’
‘But then you spotted Gell’s men?’
Forrester swallowed. ‘On the march and headed this way. You understand I could not simply turn away and co
ntinue to Brocton.’
‘Of course.’
‘So Skellen went to meet Stryker, and I came here.’
She nodded. ‘I suppose you stood the better chance of convincing Northampton you spoke true. You did not know I was here to corroborate, and William is not the most eloquent speaker.’
Forrester leant back in the chair and brayed. ‘I’ll tell him you said that! But you’re right, of course. Though I think I’d have had a mutiny on my hands if I tried to stop him going to his master.’
Lisette smiled. ‘You make him sound like a dog.’
‘I’ll tell him you said that as well.’
‘I hope he is safe,’ Lisette murmured.
Forrester wondered if she spoke of Blaze or Stryker, though the sudden glassiness of her eyes told him all he needed to know.
Brocton, Staffordshire, 19 March 1643
The smoke was so dense that Stryker could not see beyond the extent of his own arm as he staggered back along the nave towards the chapel door. The gunmetal-grey cloud enveloped him, swirled around his body, gnawed at his eye, scorched at his airways. He dropped to all fours and took off his blood-spattered shirt, holding it tight to his face, keeping breaths shallow, inching blindly towards the spot where he had last seen Burton.
His hands stumbled into something hard and fleshy, and he snaked his fingers across it desperately, groping for something that would identify the body. He found a limb, an arm, and quickly felt for the hands. Stumps only. Fingerless and scabby.
It was Jonathan Blaze, and, not wishing to waste his time on someone already dead, he began to move on, crawling over the now warm stone, his head becoming woozier with every moment.
‘Help—me—’ Blaze’s voice croaked in his wake, and he realized the gut-shot fire-worker had not succumbed to his wounds yet.
The sound of coughing came from up ahead, and Stryker hesitated, a decision to make. He decided to press on, choosing his comrade above Blaze, though any elation at discovering the lieutenant alive was tempered by the knowledge that, in minutes, they would all be dead.
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