Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  Stryker leapt up into the wagon as soon as he saw Jonathan Blaze slump back. He crouched next to the fire-worker, cradling his bloody head in his hands, and saw that Blaze’s swollen eyelids were drooping.

  ‘Master Blaze?’ he said softly. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Blaze looked up at him, the simple act a hardship. ‘Thank you for rescuing me, Captain.’

  Stryker felt his cheeks burn with shame. ‘I failed, sir. I am sorry.’

  ‘But you killed Zacharie for me. For Lazarus. For that you will always have my gratitude.’ He tried to laugh, but the gesture became a racking cough that sent a deluge of blood up from his chest. ‘Not that such a thing is worth a great deal now.’

  Stryker stared down at the dying Blaze. It was as though the effort of commanding Roaring Meg’s crew had taken too heavy a toll on the fire-worker. As though the precision and skill required in delivering the perfect shot had sapped the last vestiges of energy from Blaze’s broken body.

  Blaze convulsed. He curled up like a foetus, ruined hands clutched tight to his pistol-ravaged guts, and unleashed a muffled scream into the wagon’s timber base. When the scream faded, he fell almost still, his body consumed by faint, frenetic spasms.

  Stryker looked up suddenly, because another scream washed across the great heath like a sudden deluge. It was the sound of agony, but not the private kind suffered by Blaze. It was a scream set free by dozens – perhaps scores – of men, and it came from the high ground where the rebel army had gathered.

  ‘You did it!’ the Welsh gunner, Porter, was shouting from beside the still hissing demi-cannon. ‘You did it, sir! Stone me, but you made them eat Meg’s iron like you said you would!’

  Stryker glanced from Porter to his own men, and was stunned to see both Burton and Skellen simply staring up, slack-jawed and silent, at the rebel horde.

  ‘A direct hit.’ The richly accented tones of Lisette Gaillard broke through Stryker’s reverie, and he realized she was standing beside the wagon.

  He looked at her. ‘Like the last?’

  Lisette shook her head, eyes full of their wicked brightness. ‘Better. It looks to have taken out a whole block.’ She glared up at the ridge, the old, incandescent hatred returning now that she was almost fully recovered. ‘Bastards.’

  Stryker followed her diamond-hard gaze. What he saw was the horizon. A wide space of open air, sliced into the very centre of the Roundhead battle line. Blaze, he realized, had shown his worth, and Roaring Meg had done her duty.

  ‘Jesu,’ was all he could think to say.

  ‘Charge!’ Spencer Compton, Second Earl of Northampton, swept his broadsword down sharply, revelling in its shrill zing, and his horsemen surged forwards. ‘God and King Charles!’ he screamed, as his own mount’s hooves skittered across the damp earth, but he knew none could hear the words, for the noise was deafening. Near a thousand beasts, huge warhorses bred for the hunt, thundered up the slope of Hopton Heath, and the sound and speed made it seem as though the heavenly host itself had joined them.

  The earl dug his spurs as cruelly as he could into his horse’s flanks, compelling it up the gentle gradient. He leaned forwards in the saddle, but craned his neck back so that he could see the ridge and the men waiting there. He was aiming for the hole. That great swathe of newly made cadavers opened up by the Royalist ordnance. He still could not quite believe it. He knew Stafford’s gunners were good, but Roaring Meg had managed to send her searing iron ball straight into a pike battaile twice. And the second of those strikes had taken one of the heaviest tolls he had ever witnessed. One moment the rebel line had been a grand, unruffled, formidable wall of primed muskets and bristling pikes; the next, it had been split in two, a gruesome scar of corpses separating one half from the other. And into that scar would pour the Cavaliers.

  ‘King Char—!’ he began to scream again, but the word died on his lips as the ridge was suddenly obscured by the dark shapes of horsemen. They came from somewhere to the Parliamentarian left flank, like a shadowy, storm-swollen cloud rolling down a mountainside, enveloping the land to the right of the ridge, and then, at the last moment, sweeping in to engage the Royalists.

  Northampton braced himself. There was no time to think or change tack or even retreat.

  And then the two bodies of cavalry smashed home.

  Stryker did not have spurs, so he ground his boot heels wickedly into the horse’s flesh. He had left the rapidly declining Blaze in Lisette’s capable care, and now he rode to war.

  Stryker, Burton, Skellen and Barkworth were back on the mounts they had taken from Brocton, and, though not thoroughbred destriers, they were good, swift, oat-fed beasts that careered impressively up the slope in the wake of the Earl of Northampton’s great charge.

  Nearer the rebel-held ridge, perhaps two-thirds of the way up the slope, they watched the cavalry battle unfold. It was a surreal experience for Stryker, for he knew the sounds of rearing horses and clashing steel and the screams of dying men would be coursing across Hopton Heath, but he could hear nothing above the wind rushing about his head and the beat of his own horse’s hooves.

  They closed the gap quickly, for the Royalist charge had stalled in the face of the faster Parliamentarian horsemen – speeding downhill as they were – and very soon the engagement was a matter of moments away. Stryker could already see that the apparent silence belied a terrible carnage. The rebel harquebusiers were swift and brave, and had smashed headlong into the advancing king’s men, but, though their numbers were similar, they were easily outfought and outmanoeuvred by the elite Cavaliers. Even from some distance away, Stryker could see that Northampton’s men were already beginning to overwhelm the tenacious Roundhead force.

  Stryker drew his blade. He caught sight of Skellen and Barkworth doing the same, and, though Burton rode on Stryker’s blinkered left side, he knew the lieutenant would be hurriedly looping his reins over his withered arm, transferring control to his thighs, and unsheathing his own sword.

  And then they were inside the churning mass of horsemen, pulses quickened by the sudden and irresistible battle-joy that made a man revel in the smell of blood and the demise of an enemy. But they could not wet their poised blades, or stare into the eyes of hated enemies, for there were none.

  Stryker hauled his animal to a halt. It turned skittish circles in its excitement, but obeyed him all the same, and he scanned the scene, searching for the Parliamentarian troopers in the midst of Northampton’s. But all he saw were their backs as they galloped, broken, terrified and chaotic, up the slope.

  ‘On! On! On!’ Northampton bellowed. He was exultant. He was jubilant. He had spilled Roundhead blood over the grass and the gorse, and had cut their cavalry to shreds in less than two minutes. Had Brereton expected anything else, he wondered? The king’s army was filled by the nation’s landed gentry, men who could ride and hunt as soon as they could walk. It was almost an insult to have to fight the common, ill-trained vagabonds Parliament thrust so readily into the saddle.

  Northampton was at the head of his great, triumphal column, and, though it had temporarily stalled, he screamed encouragement back at the men, whipping them into fury and speed once more, urging them to chase the routed Roundheads all the way back to the ridge.

  And there, on that ridge, he would set an example for those who would defy His Majesty, God’s anointed representative on earth. And more rebel blood – infantry this time – would gush forth to stain the heath.

  The Royalists returned to the gallop in moments, and soon they would be amongst that huge hole gouged so viciously by Roaring Meg. Northampton glared from behind the trio of iron bars that jutted across his face from the hinged peak of his pot, gauging the strength and resolve of the waiting units of foot, and prayed that he might cut through them like a needle through silk.

  He jolted forwards suddenly.

  He managed to right himself and then looked down at the browns and greens of the land as he raced across it. In amongst those colours were patches
of black, and, with a sudden, heartrending understanding, he knew why the Parliamentarian cavalrymen had launched their attack from the flank. Because the patches over which he and his men now charged were the cavernous mouths of holes. Too many to count. He had led his beloved cavalry into the very heart of a huge rabbit warren.

  To his left he heard the horrendous crescendo of horse and man and steel crashing into the ground, and he knew that the warren had taken its first victim. Shouts of warning and terror rent the sky all around him, and a flash of reticence stabbed across his mind.

  In a flash, another trooper went down, limbs of man and beast whirling in a cloud of tangled fetlocks and shattered bones.

  Northampton cursed, consumed by sickening guilt and raging anger. It was a trap. Or, rather, a maze of a thousand traps, each one capable of wiping out a horse in the blink of an eye.

  But the earl’s son, Sir James, had taken the lead now, his sword drawn and held high above his head like a great standard, and men were following. Northampton bit back his trepidation then, all doubt giving way to a swelling pride in his gallant first-born, and he held tight to his thundering steed, praying that its hooves would stay firm and its balance would remain steadfast. They would make it. They had to make it.

  And before he knew it, they were at the rebel front rank.

  CHAPTER 22

  Stryker somehow managed to thread his way through the treacherous warren and found himself just yards from the waiting grey-coated line. He did not know if Burton or Skellen or Barkworth had managed the same feat, or if they lay dying in his wake. At this moment he did not care. He could not.

  On he raced, realizing now that this was to be an out and out confrontation between cavalry and infantry, for the rebel horse-men had been utterly routed and, he guessed, were already streaming away from Stafford like frightened mice from the jaws of a cat. For a moment he felt a pang of sympathy for the Roundhead Foot. As an infantryman himself, he knew how difficult it was to counter such a vast cavalry charge. But the brief professional empathy was gone as soon as it had come, and he set his mind to the business at hand.

  Before him was the ridge’s zenith, just yards away now, and across that great expanse waited unit upon unit of enemy soldiers. He recognized them as Derbyshire men, for he remembered their grey uniforms from Lichfield, and he knew that they would not fold as easily as their mounted counterparts.

  He dipped his head and kicked on, desperate to get on with the killing. The line came up quickly, a deep array of glinting pike companies and musketeers, alternately deployed along the ridge, each block ready to go to work.

  The infantry line exploded in a bright flash, orange tongues of flame lapping the ridge in one blinding instant, replaced by a cloud of smoke the next. The second rank fired immediately. Muskets crashed, more smoke belched around their heads.

  Stryker felt the leaden balls whip past. One clipped his elbow, tearing the fabric of his sleeve, but only grazing the flesh beneath. He hunkered down, wishing he had taken the time to put on a helmet, wincing and gritting teeth and bracing for sudden death. Somewhere to the right, a rider was thrown clear of his horse, a musket shot having passed through his thigh to sting his mount’s flank and set it rearing wildly. Another man’s face exploded in a spray of red mist as a bullet took his jaw clean away.

  ‘The breach! The breach!’ the Royalist officers were bellowing, and Stryker saw that the majority of harquebusiers were funnelling towards the gap that still remained in Gell’s formation, his men evidently too afraid of the cannon to step in and fill the hole.

  Stryker steered his mount towards that target, and, like the parting of the Red Sea, he saw that the infantrymen nearest the ragged chasm were stumbling away, breaking ranks before the cavalry reached them.

  A cry went up from the greycoats. ‘Charge for horse!’

  It was shrill and it was panicked, and it was much too late. Northampton’s cavalry, his Cavaliers who had ridden and fenced and hunted all their lives, had rolled across the pitted warren like a shore-dashing wave, eating up the ground at a far greater pace than the rebels had anticipated, and they smashed against the grey line along the entire breadth of the ridge.

  Those sections populated by Gell’s musketeers had already loosed their shots, and they reversed their weapons, presenting the wooden stocks as clubs, and shrank back a pace so that the pikemen either side could thrust their ash poles – sixteen-feet long and tipped with a razor-sharp point – into the chests of the enemy horses and the faces of their riders.

  But Stryker, along with most of the Royalist cavalry, surged into the gaping fissure in Gell’s cannon-shredded formation, and he knew that it was here the battle would be won or lost. All around him the Cavaliers’ faces were taut with grim determination, their eyes wide, almost glowing, in the late afternoon light. They brought only death at their heels.

  The rebels instinctively backed away, their formation bowing and splintering with every second. They had had all the advantages this day. The high ground, the terrain, the element of surprise, and yet now, thanks to one monstrous iron gun and its frighteningly competent crew, a certain victory had been torn from their grasp in a welter of pain and blood.

  The Royalist horsemen stood in their stirrups, hacking down at the heads and arms of the greycoats. They wheeled their animals round, pulling savagely on reins to bring their muscular mounts’ bodies to bear as battering rams, forcing musketeers and pikemen back, allowing no choice but retreat.

  Here and there, units of pike, appearing to Stryker like miniature battailes, offered more stout resistance. They jabbed up at the horses’ chests and faces, forcing the animals to rear or twist away, but this demonstration of the effectiveness of well-ordered pikemen was too scant an offering to make any great impact. Still the Cavaliers hacked and whooped and cursed and crowed.

  Sir John Gell was on the Parliamentarian left flank. He had galloped south and east along the crest of the ridge, from the centre of his dense human barrier of pike and shot, to the walls of the deer park, in order to organize that flank, making certain that the men deployed there would hold firm against the encroaching Royalist dragoons. He had lost both his flanks, and that was a devastating blow, but he would be damned if the Cavaliers would be allowed to circle behind his main body of infantry without first being made to fight.

  In the event, he had successfully arranged the grey-coated defences, and had heard that the more competent officers sent to the hedges of the right flank had done an equally effective job. As a result, they were now engaged in bitter skirmishes on both of the ridge’s peripheries, but at least, he reflected, the central infantry line had been able to face Northampton’s cavalry charge without the added concern of dragoons at the rear. The rebels still had a chance at snatching victory.

  But then Brereton’s cavalry had been routed, and Sir William had led their ignominious flight from the field. And Gell’s chance had dissolved.

  ‘I’ll kill him myself,’ Gell hissed, as he stared across the ridge at the breach opened with so much carnage by just two shots from the Royalist artillery.

  ‘Sir?’

  Gell looked across at his aide. ‘Sir William Brereton. I will kill that cowardly shaveling myself.’

  Captain Mason winced at the coarse language, but nodded sombrely. ‘If you can find him, sir. He’ll be half way back to Nantwich by now.’

  Gell nodded, hawked up a wad of phlegm and churned it with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It was gritty with gunpowder and mud, and he spat it on to a patch of dark gorse, watching it break up on the sharp barbs and drip to the grass in sticky strands. ‘We must step in, Captain,’ he said eventually.

  Mason’s brow jumped. ‘Sir?’

  For an answer, Gell lashed at his horse with leather reins and metal spurs and the beast launched into a gallop that took him westwards along the ridge, across the back of his pikemen and musketeers. He lifted his backside off the saddle, straining to get a clear picture of the conflict. He could
see Northampton’s cavalry engaging his foremost ranks all the way along the great line. Too many had made it safely across the rabbit warren, and that fact, compounded by his severe miscalculation of their skill and bravery, was a painful truth to bear. For the most part, his Derbyshire men offered resolute resistance, but at the very centre of his line things were appallingly different. There, in the place where the demi-cannon had wrought its butchery and where the majority of enemy cavalry now concentrated their efforts, his beloved greycoats were dying and the line was beginning to buckle. That place, the eye of the storm, had become a hell on earth. A charnel house in the open air where the bodies of men and horses were grotesquely entangled; twisted and blood-drenched. Worse was to come. As Gell drew ever closer, he could see that his officers and sergeants were losing their collective nerve, allowing the infantry to back away from the slashing torrent, breaking ranks, making themselves easy targets for the exultant Royalist cavalrymen.

  He looked right, to the northern slope of the ridge where the land plummeted down to a deep valley cut by the Trent. His reserves, the Staffordshire men, were supposed to be there, but now that land was empty. He drew his horse to a halt. ‘Where are the bloody Moorlanders!’ he bellowed towards the rearmost ranks of greycoats, those so far untouched by the cavalry.

  A sergeant twisted back to see him. ‘Gone, sir!’

  Gell ground his teeth together until his gums stung. ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  The sergeant looked reticent. ‘Just gone, sir,’ he said gingerly. ‘Turned tail and marched off.’

  ‘God damn them! God damn the craven bastards!’ Gell turned to Captain Mason, who had galloped up behind him. ‘Our flanks are gone, the Horse have been routed and we have no reserve! We are on the very brink of annihilation!’

  ‘Sound the retreat, sir?’

  Gell glared. ‘We will all die before that happens!’ All at once he leapt down from the saddle and handed Mason the stallion’s reins. ‘Take him, Captain!’