Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  Stryker plunged further into the choking plume, and found Burton curled on his side, bound hands covering his face. He had been overwhelmed by the lethal cloud, and now, balled and silent, he awaited his end.

  ‘Burton!’ Stryker rasped, chest searing with the effort. ‘Here!’

  The lieutenant lifted his hands from his eyes and, for a moment, a spark of recognition flashed there, but he curled up again, evidently accepting his fate. Stryker lent across him and went to work on Burton’s rope shackles with the hairpin. He stabbed frantically at the twisted strands, but he was too weak to break through.

  ‘Leave it, sir,’ Burton hissed weakly. ‘I could not find the key.’

  And Stryker fell still. He knew Burton was right. There was no point in fighting fate. The door was locked and it was too stout for him to break through now that he had been so enfeebled by the smoke, and, even if he had enough strength to get to the east end of the nave, the only window big enough to climb through was far too high to reach.

  Still slumped across Burton, Stryker’s mind swirled with confusion. He felt suddenly light-headed, as though his consciousness was drifting somewhere above his body. And then his eyelid became agonizingly heavy, like weights had been pinned to the lashes, and slowly, achingly, sorrowfully, he closed his eye.

  Stryker heard the explosion but, in his hazy mind, it seemed like a distant clap of thunder. Suddenly a new pain cut though the stupor like the sun’s rays burning away a morning mist. It was not focussed in one place, but in hundreds of smaller hurts across his legs and arms and back, as if someone had sprinkled needles across his body. And with it came movement, as he found himself flipped into the air, crashing down on to the flagstones the other side of Burton’s prone form.

  Dazed, he looked up, peering through the smoke, realizing that the cloud was suddenly paler, illuminated by some unseen light. And it was not swirling in the chapel’s confines, but rushing madly in a single direction. The doorway.

  Stryker raised himself on to hands and knees, staring in lightheaded bewilderment at the stone archway that was now a great hole, the door’s wooden timbers miraculously gone. And then he saw a figure. A man. Taller, even, than Blaze or Girns, but reed thin, with a small head of close-cropped hair. He stepped through the gaping doorway and into the chapel, and, though Stryker could not see his face silhouetted against the daylight at his back, he felt a jolt of euphoria surge through him.

  ‘What the fuckin’ hell ’ave you two been up to?’ said Sergeant William Skellen.

  ‘Grenade,’ Skellen said as he dumped Stryker unceremoniously on to the ground outside the burning chapel.

  Stryker tried to laugh at his sergeant’s matter-of-fact tone, so incongruous amongst the utter carnage all around him, but the motion immediately degenerated into a spluttering cough. He hawked up as much mucus as he could from his scorched lungs, spitting the black-flecked globule on to the wet blades of grass at his feet.

  Burton was coughing too, and gasping deeply between each wracking spasm, entirely unable to speak, but, mercifully, it seemed as though the fresh air was reviving him with each passing second.

  ‘How did you get—’ Stryker said, having to pause for a cavernous breath, ‘a grenade?’

  ‘Door was locked. Thick little bugger as well. I couldn’t kick it in. So I looked around and found three horses in a little outbuilding yonder.’ He pointed towards the brick structure Stryker had spotted the night before. ‘Had a little rummage, and found a bag o’ grenades. All packed and ready to go. Weren’t hard to get the tow lit, there’s sparks flyin’ all over the shop.’

  Skellen went to crouch beside Blaze, the man Stryker had ordered saved after Lieutenant Burton. ‘He’s in a bad way, sir.’

  Stryker stood gingerly and staggered over to where Blaze lay. ‘Girns shot him in the stomach.’

  ‘Girns?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Stryker moved Blaze’s broad arm to expose the wound at his gut. His ragged shirt was saturated in blood, and, at its centre, a neat hole glistened, dark and deep. Blaze groaned then. It was a low, guttural sound of pain and despair, like a bullock after gelding, and his eyes flickered open.

  ‘Am I to die?’ the fire-worker murmured.

  Stryker nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘My brother won then.’

  Skellen stared at Stryker. ‘Brother?’

  ‘I’ll explain later.’ Stryker frowned. ‘What happened to you and Forrester?’

  ‘Them dragooners chased us for bloody miles, sir. When we finally got shot of ’em, we were way off course. The captain went on to Stafford, and I came back to fetch you.’

  Burton was sitting up now, rubbing the lump at his head. ‘Stafford? Why did he go there?’

  ‘On account o’ Gell’s army, sir,’ Skellen said. ‘We spied the bastards marching towards Stafford. Roun’eads are makin’ a play for it. That’s what it looked like to us, anyway.’

  ‘And Captain Forrester went to warn the garrison,’ Stryker said in understanding.

  Skellen nodded, before glancing down at Blaze in surprise. The fire-worker’s face was etched in an excruciated grimace as he tried to sit. ‘Christ, sir, that ain’t wise.’

  Stryker hooked a bracing arm around Blaze’s broad shoulders. ‘Rest easy, sir, please.’

  ‘God’s blood, Captain!’ Blaze snarled, trying to shrug him off. ‘I have spent the past week having pieces of me cut off, and now I will die a slow death as my guts fester! Do not think to mollycoddle me now!’

  Stryker let go, and Blaze slumped backwards with a yelp of pain, but, determination bright in his swollen eyes, he began to heave himself upwards again. ‘They have guns at Stafford. Big ones.’

  Stryker began to shake his head. ‘Sir, you cannot possibly—’

  ‘Christ, Stryker, have you not heard anything I’ve said?’ Blaze snapped again. ‘Stafford Castle has a fair array of artillery. One particular piece, so I am told, is a demi-cannon. A twenty-nine pounder.’ He lifted the bloody stump that was once his left hand and jabbed it at Stryker’s chest. ‘You will take me to Stafford, Captain. I will die, but not yet. Give me one last chance to fire a real cannon before I depart.’

  ‘Cannon,’ Skellen muttered. ‘Waste o’ good iron if you ask me. Cannon never won a battle that I saw. The winners are the ones who can aim a musket and charge pikes for horse.’

  Blaze looked up at the laconic sergeant, and Stryker saw a real glint in his blue eyes, the like of which he had not witnessed since their first meeting in Cirencester. ‘You have never seen one fired properly,’ Blaze whispered. ‘Take me to Stafford. Place me in charge of that demi-cannon. I promise, you will not be disappointed.’

  CHAPTER 20

  Hopton Heath, Staffordshire, 19 March 1643

  The ridge ran north-west to south-east. A diagonal crease in the terrain, its length the equivalent of twice a musket’s range. To the north the land fell steeply away, a deep scar cut by the River Trent, while a long slope of heath land rolled more gently to the south. The heath and its high crest had been shorn to stubble by livestock and, just below the barren apex, at the top of the slope, a vast rabbit warren spanned its entire breadth.

  ‘And it is here, Sir William, I propose to face them,’ Sir John Gell said calmly, gently stroking his horse’s mane.

  Sir William Brereton, newly arrived on the expanse of heath between the Trent and the village of Hopton, shook his head animatedly. ‘We agreed to storm the town, Gell.’

  Gell clicked his tongue impatiently, enjoying the sour look it engendered in his co-commander. ‘You are too late, Sir William. The plan was to muster on this heath and launch an attack. Storm the town while they slept.’ He fixed Brereton with an equally acidic expression. ‘But it is now two hours past noon. You are late. And my scouts tell me a sizeable force is assembling outside the town. Almost all cavalry.’

  Brereton’s brown eyes narrowed. ‘Who commands them?’

  ‘Compton,’ Gell spat the word as though it were a chunk of ranc
id meat.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The earl and his son are both here, I am told. They must have ridden up from Banbury.’

  Brereton examined his gauntlet in an attempt to appear relaxed. ‘Which means Byron will be with them. He is Northampton’s lapdog.’

  Gell nodded. ‘And they are supported by Blind Hastings. That bastardly gullion has been a thorn in my side since Lichfield.’

  Brereton looked along the ridge at the troops he had brought; five hundred harquebusiers and dragoons. ‘I would not relish facing Northampton’s cavalry on open ground, Sir John. My troops are green by comparison.’

  The corner of Gell’s moustachioed lip curled upwards. ‘Then you should have been more punctual. And where are your infantry?’ Brereton’s mouth opened and closed silently, putting Gell in mind of a fish, and the conqueror of Lichfield shook his head scornfully. ‘Left ’em behind, did you?’

  ‘The roads are bad,’ Brereton began to explain. ‘It was either wait upon them and fail to make our rendezvous, or leave them behind and succeed.’

  ‘You would be well advised to watch me today, Sir William. Perhaps you will learn something.’

  Leaving Brereton spluttering, Gell wheeled his horse round to view the troops he had already deployed. ‘See there, Sir William,’ he said, pointing first to the ridge’s western periphery, where the flat plain of gorse and grass was interrupted by dense hedgerows, and then to the east, where low walls of stone rose as high as a man’s waist. ‘If we remain here, compel the Royalists to charge up the slope, we are well positioned. Our flanks provide ideal breastworks. I have placed drakes, dragoons and musketeers behind the hedges and walls. And here,’ he pointed to the first yards of slope immediately before them, ‘the terrain is pitted by coney burrows. I’ve never seen more hazardous terrain for cavalry. We shall place the rest of the foot here, on the crest. My brave greys in the front ranks, and those sallow bloody Moorlanders in reserve. If you’d be so kind as to deploy your horse at the flank of the main body, I’d be most grateful.’

  Brereton looked at him. ‘And your cavalry?’

  ‘You will have mine too. I’ll command the foot, you the horse. A thousand men each.’

  Brereton studied the slope, its surface pockmarked by a vast colony of rabbits. ‘It would be mad to charge a horse across this.’ He looked Gell in the eye. ‘So what makes you think the Cavaliers will oblige?’

  Gell twisted the corner of his waxed moustache. ‘Because Spencer Compton is mad, and so are his senior officers. Northampton will see a charge across this deadly heath as a great game. A sport akin to the hunt. His son was knighted at Kineton Fight for his own frantic charge, and Byron and Hastings—’

  ‘Byron and Hastings,’ Brereton interrupted, ‘are the worst kind of swash-and-buckler men.’

  Gell nodded. ‘You have it, Sir William. They are a formidable force, I freely admit. If we faced them on the march we would be cut to ribbons. So we shall sit atop this ridge, in careful formation, and they won’t be able to resist an assault.’

  Brereton smiled for the first time since reaching the heath. ‘And the warren will bring down their mounts.’

  ‘While we shower them in a lethal crossfire from three sides.’ Gell touched a spur to his horse, and it began to move along the grey-coated ranks. He twisted in the saddle and shouted over a shoulder, ‘Hopton Heath affords us all the advantages, Sir William! We stay here, and wait for Northampton to blunder into our trap!’

  ‘Sir! Colonel Gell, sir!’

  Gell and Brereton peered down the slope to where a rider was cantering carefully through the treacherous warren. ‘You see the difficulty they’ll face?’ Gell muttered smugly, before raising a hand to the approaching horseman. ‘What news, Lieutenant Wheeler?’

  Wheeler reined in beside the two most senior Parliamentary officers, though he addressed Gell. ‘They’re coming, sir!’

  Gell’s round eyes became slits. ‘You are certain, Lieutenant?’

  Wheeler nodded rapidly, like a woodpecker chipping at bark. ‘Scores, sir. They rode out from the town some minutes ago. I came here directly to warn you.’

  ‘You did well, Wheeler,’ Gell said curtly, his voice suddenly tight, before turning to the first ranks of infantry formed up along the ridge. ‘Sergeant Crane!’

  A stocky man in Gell’s grey uniform, with a sword at his hip and a fearsome halberd in hand, stepped forward. ‘Sir!’

  ‘The malignant horde is on its way! Time to give them our little gift!’

  Gell and Brereton watched as Sergeant Crane paced from the massed ranks of pike and began bellowing orders at the men under his command. In seconds a gap opened in the lines to reveal three large iron tubes mounted on vast wheels, their mouths gaping, black and formidable.

  Brereton stared at Gell. ‘You have artillery.’

  Gell grinned, baring sharp, yellow teeth. ‘The coney warren will stop their charge, Sir William, but I do not plan to need it.’

  The Earl of Northampton stood high in the saddle and stared back at the mighty throng that cantered in his wake. Scores of men and horses had gathered, a remarkable number, given the limited time with which he had given his senior officers to work, and he was proud of each and every one. The air stank of horse flesh and dung, the familiar, earthy odour filling his nostrils invigoratingly. He glanced at the nearest rider, raising his voice above the thunder of so many hooves. ‘Are we ready as we hope to be?’

  Sir James Lord Compton, dashing in full battle regalia and tall atop his expensive warhorse, offered a curt nod. ‘We have— enough, Father.’

  ‘Enough?’ Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, threw his son a stern glance. ‘Speak plain.’

  Sir James wiped a speck of mud off his clean-shaven chin and gazed back at the deep ranks. ‘Eleven hundred horse, sir, with a hundred foot in reserve.’

  Northampton’s bushy brow rose sharply. ‘Ample to crush that base upstart!’ he cried, loudly enough for the nearest cavalrymen to hear, and was rewarded with a hearty chorus of cheers.

  Sir James ignored the huzzas, and kept his voice as low as he could. ‘The scouts have returned, Father. It is not only Gell we face.’

  Northampton’s handsome face visibly drooped. ‘We are too late?’

  Sir James nodded slowly. ‘Brereton has joined him.’

  The earl thumped a gauntleted fist against his buff-skirted thigh. ‘Christ on His Cross!’

  ‘It will be a hard fight,’ Sir James went on sombrely, ‘but there is hope.’

  Northampton glared at his son. ‘Hope?’

  ‘In his haste to make muster, Brereton appears to have left his infantry miles behind.’

  Northampton gnawed his bottom lip. ‘How many does he bring?’

  ‘The scouts count some five hundred. All horse, though some are dragoons rather than seasoned cavalry.’

  Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton and commander of the king’s forces in the Midlands, took a deep, steadying breath through his nose. ‘God help us,’ he murmured on the outbreath, and offered his eldest son a smile full of fondness. ‘Let us show these rebels what it means to be real warriors.’

  ‘Here, sir!’ Colonel-General Sir Henry Hastings bellowed from a few yards up ahead. He tugged his horse’s reins and the beast turned up a wide, tree-flanked bridleway, Northampton, Sir James, and the rest of their earth-rumbling force in his wake.

  The bridleway ended abruptly where the trees gave way to a broad expanse of gorse and grassland that sloped upwards, climbing gradually north until it ended abruptly at a ridge, before falling away to the low-lying valley along which the River Trent meandered. ‘There!’ Hastings called, pointing up at the ridge.

  Northampton and those men at the head of his great column followed Hastings’s outstretched finger, their eyes falling as one upon the ridge. And there, darkening the horizon, silent and menacing, stood an army.

  But Northampton did not slow his horse, for he would not sacrifice momentum. With a deft flick
of his heel, he clipped sharp spurs against his mount’s flanks, and the animal increased its speed. The dense ranks of cavalrymen, the cream of the Midlands gentry, surged on to the foot of the slope in his wake. To battle.

  And the cannons fired.

  To the south-east of Hopton Heath, on the road from Brocton, the gunfire sounded like lightning strikes, sometimes far-off, and at other times carried on a vagary of wind, earth-shakingly close.

  ‘Demi-culverins,’ said Skellen, assessing the percussive reports. ‘Gell’s pieces.’

  The bombardment faded as the crews hurried to reload their pieces, and Burton looked across at the sergeant. ‘You can tell their owner?’

  Skellen remained expressionless. ‘Aye, sir. Many years of experience.’

  ‘He saw them crossing the Trent,’ Stryker interjected when he saw the expression of awe on Burton’s face.

  Burton shot the sergeant a sour look. ‘Very amusing.’

  ‘The battle has started?’ Blaze murmured through gritted teeth. He was hunched on the back of Stryker’s horse, one arm hooked round the captain’s midriff, the other pressed tight to the wound at his abdomen. ‘It has,’ confirmed Stryker. ‘Forget Stafford, we follow the gunfire.’

  ‘Or follow them,’ Skellen grunted, nodding at the woodland that hugged the side of the road.

  They all saw the shadows. Slithering black shapes, silhouettes of men, women and children, weaving slowly in and out of the trees on both flanks. The group watched them move, like a silent army, so many shapes appearing in the blink of an eye, then melting away just as quickly.

  ‘Those fucking ghouls,’ Skellen muttered darkly. ‘Like flies on shit.’

  ‘Destitution forces a man’s hand, Sergeant,’ Stryker said.

  ‘Who are they?’ Lieutenant Burton asked as he squinted into the gloom.

  ‘They come after battle,’ Skellen replied bitterly, staring into the middle distance, ‘haunting the dusk, plundering the dead.’