Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  Edberg slid down from the saddle, his arm staying rigidly out in front, the pistol’s dark barrel never wavering from its mark. At the top of the heath Northampton’s cavalry smashed into the men holding the ridge, and Edberg paused until the initial crescendo had melted to a background roar before opening his wide mouth to speak. ‘Because you killed two of his men.’

  Stryker shook his head. ‘They attacked me first, for God’s sake! It was self-defence. No, this is more than that. Why did you lie at the hearing?’

  Edberg casually inspected his front teeth with the tip of his tongue. ‘The colonel bade me testify against you. I do his bidding.’

  ‘The colonel—’ Stryker began, but his protestation was abruptly curtailed by the snap of flint on metal. He flinched, expecting death to come quickly on the heels of a bright flash, but neither came.

  Edberg looked down at the pistol as its pathetically fizzing cloud dissipated, his easy confidence evaporating as quickly as the spark.

  ‘A flash in the pan, Edberg?’ Stryker said. He held out his palms to catch the raindrops. ‘Don’t you know to keep your powder dry?’

  Edberg tossed the rain-corrupted pistol away and drew his sword. ‘If I must kill you up close, then so be it.’

  The big mercenary charged straight at Stryker, forcing the latter to raise his weapon in a fraught parry that jarred all the way up to his shoulder. Stryker swept his blade round, lancing at Edberg’s groin, but the major was equal to the riposte and countered it with a rapid block, letting his blade slide all the way up Stryker’s so that he might cut at the captain’s fingers. The razor edge ricocheted off the swirling bars of the hilt, and Stryker thanked God he no longer held the basic tuck, for his digits would surely have been shorn off.

  They were close now, no more than five feet apart, and Edberg crouched low, ready to launch another attack.

  When it came it was as fast as a viper’s strike, and Stryker reeled backwards, needing all his speed to evade the Scandinavian’s slashing advance. But he slipped on a slick patch of leaf mulch and sheep shit, taking a knee to regain his balance and dropping his sword. Edberg came on again, and Stryker had to abandon the blade, which the dragoon kicked away, and was forced to stumble rearward again, swaying out of the tip’s slicing arc.

  Stryker retreated – five, six, seven paces – and suddenly collided with the first of the copse’s trees, the thick trunk slamming between his shoulder blades. He had nowhere left to go.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ a voice called then, sharp and commanding, and Stryker noticed for the first time that a small crowd had begun to gather nearby. Stryker looked beyond his attacker to see that the speaker had a bandaged upper arm, and realized that the men unable to fight, those wounded in the previous charges, had gravitated here to watch this private duel.

  ‘This man is a wanted criminal!’ Edberg shouted across his shoulder. ‘He’s mine!’

  The man who had accosted them seemed to shrug. ‘So be it.’

  Edberg grinned, lunged at the Englishman in a powerful stab. The wickedly feathered edge cut through Stryker’s scalp as he ducked, sending a pulsing gush of blood down his forehead and across his face, but it was a flesh wound, and Stryker twisted away. He now realized, when no second attack came, that Edberg’s sword was stuck fast in the gnarled bark, a victim of its own huge force.

  He wiped blood from his eye with a tattered sleeve and ran at Edberg before the bigger man could wrench the blade free. Clattering into the Swede’s side, and eliciting a collective hiss from the crowd, he thrust the dragoon back with all the strength he could muster, sending them both on to the rain-soaked grass.

  Immediately they were up. Standing. Knees bent. Fists balled. Poised for a brawl.

  Captain Lancelot Forrester saw his old comrades as his dragoon company broke off from the melee. He had been ordered away from the hedgerows with the rest of the dragoons to bolster the Royalist numbers, had taken a new horse and stormed on as part of the cavalry now led by Colonel-General Sir Henry Hastings, and had harried a company of pikemen defending the ridge. But those pikemen were formed in square and charged for horse, and, like his comrades all along the bloody crest, he had been unable to break the enemy ranks.

  And now, cantering out of range of the defiant rebels’ crackling musketry, he spotted two horsemen among the rest. One tall and thin, competent in the saddle but not at home there, the other shorter, younger, with one arm cradled in a tight leather sling.

  ‘By God’s own fingernails!’ Forrester declared as he steered his horse diagonally across the heath to greet them. He leaned over to shake the proffered hands. ‘Where’s Stryker?’

  ‘Lost him in the charge,’ Burton said grimly.

  Sergeant William Skellen, afforded a higher vantage point than the others, pointed down the slope. ‘Think I’ve found ’im again, sir.’

  Beside the copse, Stryker was fighting for his life.

  Edberg threw a broadly sweeping punch at the Englishman’s narrow chin. It connected and, while only a glancing blow, sent Stryker sprawling. Stryker went for his boot, groped only at leather, and remembered with irritation the fact that his dagger was no longer there.

  Edberg, however, had managed to produce his own dirk; a long, evil-looking piece of steel that was no wider than his fore-finger. He waved it out in front, keeping it in line with Stryker’s single grey eye, beckoning the shorter man on to the impossibly fine point.

  For a second Stryker thought to reach for Lisette’s silver hairpin. But what good could it do against such a formidable blade?

  ‘Come, javla svin,’ Edberg growled.

  Stryker obliged. He jumped at Edberg, taking him by surprise, and twisted to the right as soon as his front foot was planted, letting the blade prick the air a reed’s breadth from his arm. He gripped the Swede’s wrist, pulling, keeping the arm stretched out, and jammed his spare fist into Edberg’s locked elbow.

  The major yelped as the joint cracked and his scarred fingers fell open. The dirk dropped, sticking hilt up in the soft earth, and Stryker kicked the dragoon in the balls. Edberg doubled over and vomited. Stryker hit him in the side of the face, hoping the punch hurt Edberg’s big-boned face more than it did his stinging knuckles, and the major stumbled, tripped, and ended on his backside.

  ‘Sir!’ a man shouted from somewhere behind.

  Stryker glanced around to see that the watching crowd had grown considerably, and absently noted that if so many men were congregating here, at the foot of the ridge, then the latest charge must have been aborted. At the front of the crowd he saw Simeon Barkworth. The little man, bloodied and bruised, was perched on his horse, and he held up a carbine. ‘Allow me, sir!’

  And then Stryker saw the others. Burton was there, sword drawn; Skellen too, his own carbine pointed at Edberg. With relief Stryker even noticed Lancelot Forrester, the captain’s face a mask of grim determination. They would cut Edberg down in a heartbeat if he gave the word.

  ‘No!’ Stryker bellowed. He knew it was folly to deny their protection, but this duel was personal. He feared Edberg, knew he could never match the Scandinavian for raw power, but knew too that he needed to best the dragoon alone. ‘He’s mine.’

  But when he turned back to Edberg the major was already on his feet. The Swedish warrior lowered his head, like a bull preparing to charge, and launched himself at Stryker. The Englishman reacted far too late and was taken at the midriff by the huge man’s bolting assault, and they both crashed down on to the sodden earth.

  Stryker thrashed wildly, desperate to extricate himself from the tangle of limbs before the stronger man could get a stable grip. A finger or thumb caught the Swede in the eye, making Edberg jerk back, and Stryker twisted away.

  And then they were both on their feet again. Edberg lurched forwards, left fist lashing out. Stryker ducked, only just managing to avoid the heavy blow. The big mercenary threw his other meaty fist and caught the Englishman this time, clipping his temple and knocking him back a
couple of paces.

  Stryker’s heel bumped against something hard, and he looked down to see Edberg’s spent pistol skittering away. He crouched as he recoiled, snatching up the weapon and lobbing it hard. Edberg swayed out of the way, letting the short-arm cartwheel past, and he grinned maliciously behind his thick hedge of a moustache.

  Stryker scanned the area quickly, this time spotting a fallen branch as long and broad as a man’s arm. He ran to it, thrusting a boot end beneath it and flicked it up, plucking it quickly out of the air.

  Edberg advanced, swung that big fist again. Stryker tried to block, but the branch was too heavy to lift in time, and the punch clattered his shoulder. It felt like a shot from Roaring Meg, and he had to jam the wood into the earth in front just to keep himself from toppling sideways. As Edberg came on again, Stryker heaved, propelling the branch sharply upwards, and the heavy club crunched into the dragoon’s groin. Edberg howled. Stryker instinctively lifted the weapon, clutching the branch in both hands, and rammed it downwards, punching its jagged end into the yellowcoat’s temple.

  This time Edberg went down. He slumped to his knees, chest heaving, a hand pressed against the side of his battered skull.

  Stryker hefted the branch, ready to swing, and loomed over the dragoon.

  The crowd began to mutter, like the rustle of autumn leaves, a hundred voices all speaking at once, clamouring for ascendancy. And Stryker realized that some of those voices wanted to intervene on the side of the dragoon. Those, he supposed, who had heard Edberg declare him to be an outlaw. He thanked God that his own men were amongst that disquieted crowd, for it must have been their arguments that were keeping the mob at bay.

  ‘You lied, Edberg!’ he said quickly. ‘To the Prince. You were never at the stable. Admit it!’

  Edberg lifted his head a fraction, blue eyes fixing Stryker with a stare of sheer malevolence. ‘No.’

  Stryker lowered his voice. ‘Admit it, Edberg, and I will spare your life.’

  Edberg stared at him for a moment. ‘I did as I was ordered,’ he said eventually, evidently deciding that Stryker spoke the truth.

  ‘Why?’ Stryker said, loudly enough for the crowd to hear. ‘Why did Colonel Crow give you such an order?’

  Edberg’s golden-haired head began to shiver then, and a low, coarse sound emanated from his mouth. Stryker realized that he was laughing. ‘You do not know?’

  ‘Know? Know what? Know what, damn you?’

  Edberg’s expression was withering. ‘You have only to look at the colonel.’

  Then a picture came into Stryker’s mind. A picture of Colonel Artemas Crow. His short, squat body, and bushy hair and eyebrows. The fat, wet lips and huge, juglike ears. And next to that image came two more; of Saul and Caleb Potts. They were more youthful, more muscular, with darker hair and skin less ravaged by the passage of time. And yet …

  ‘They were his kin,’ Stryker said in sudden, mind-whirling understanding.

  ‘Sons,’ Edberg replied, dabbing fingers at the bloody wound on his temple. ‘Did you not wonder how two such vile little turds as Saul and Caleb Potts were able to enlist with a troop such as Crow’s?’ He hawked up a globule of saliva and mucus, spitting it on to the mud a few feet away. ‘Or how Saul was handed a goddamned commission?’

  ‘His sons,’ Stryker said absently.

  ‘His bastards,’ corrected Edberg, his voice full of scorn. ‘But his sow of a goodwife is barren as a fucking desert. So Crow loves his bastards as though they were as legitimate as you or I. Well,’ he added with a malicious grin, ‘as I, certainly.’

  ‘Jesu.’

  ‘And you will die,’ Edberg went on, ‘because Crow will not rest until he can dance a jig on your grave! You will be hunted down like a dog. If not by me, then by Prince Rupert. Crow is powerful. Rupert will not cross him when there is proof you are a murderer.’

  Stryker gritted his teeth in rage. ‘But it is all lies, damn you!’

  And Henning Edberg brayed. ‘Who will believe you, Stryker?’ He jerked his head towards the onlookers. ‘This gaggle of clapperdudgeons?’

  Edberg sprang up from the ground like a cat, pouncing at Stryker through the pulsating rain, and Stryker only realized the major had retrieved his dirk when its long, thin blade had already punctured his chest.

  He crashed to the wet ground, impulse making him reach for the wound, and saw blood on his fingers. Thankfully the blow was not deep, for the buff leather of his coat had borne the brunt of the thrust, but now he was on his back, staring up at the darkening sky. And a huge man with triumphal grin and malevolent eyes came to stand over him.

  ‘So tell me,’ Edberg said. ‘Who will believe you?’ He did not look at the crowd, but gestured towards them with the blade, which was dripping with the captain’s blood. ‘Do they have the ear of Prince fucking Rupert?’

  Edberg stepped forward.

  The pistol crack startled everyone. Its high, ear-splitting report making men duck, some ready to run, others twisting to look back at the ridge, suddenly terrified of a Roundhead counter-attack.

  Except one by one, people saw the small hole just below Edberg’s right eye. It seemed like nothing more than a pimple. A red welt on the wide face. But then a trickle of blood seeped from it, welling like a teardrop, and tumbled down his cheek.

  Stryker watched, dumbstruck, as his conqueror dropped the dirk and began to sway like a great oak in a storm.

  A man limped out of the crowd; a tall man with clean-shaven face, dark eyes, long black hair and a bandaged leg. In his right hand was a pistol, its barrel still smoking.

  ‘I believe him,’ said Sir James Compton, Third Earl of Northampton. ‘But, alas, I do not have the ear of Prince Rupert.’

  Edberg stared at the young earl, his lips opening and closing, but no air or sound passed between them. His right eye widened, rolled so that it showed only white, and filled suddenly with blood.

  ‘I do, however,’ Northampton went on, ‘have the ear of the King.’

  Major Henning Edberg groaned, a deep, creaking sound that seemed to emanate from his very soul, and toppled forward, landing face down next to Stryker. It was over.

  Darkness seeped across Hopton Heath like an unsanded ink stain blotting on parchment. Bodies were strewn across the reddened grass, tangled, contorted, stiffening. The stink of blood lingered, mingling with the sulphurous odour of black powder. The wounded men moaned, injured horses whinnied, looters rummaged and thieved.

  Still Parliament held the ridge. Still the king held the town.

  Captain Stryker left Edberg’s body where it lay and made his way down to Hopton village. Now, as the armies faced each other in silent stand-off, he was bathed in the shards of a myriad refracted candle flames, the chandelier in the ceiling entirely at odds with the carnage of the floor.

  Doctor Gregory Chambers, spectacles carefully balanced across the bridge of his nose, grimaced as he cast sad eyes across the rows of dead and dying. ‘I commandeered this home to use as a hospital,’ he said, voice oppressed by a desperate sorrow. ‘It has become a charnel house.’

  ‘Battle,’ Stryker said simply.

  Chambers looked at him. ‘I pray I never become as accustomed to this horror as you, Captain.’ Finally his gaze rested on one particular patient. ‘He died just before you came in.’

  Stryker looked at the still form of Jonathan Blaze. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever met a braver man.’

  Captain Lancelot Forrester came to stand beside Stryker. ‘Without those two cannon shots, we might have lost the battle. Lord knows, we only really penetrated their line when they were too frightened to stand in the face of Meg’s ire.’

  ‘He should have let Porter pound them more,’ said the exotically accented voice of a woman.

  Stryker turned to look at Lisette, who stood with Burton, Skellen and Barkworth. They had all come to pay their respects to the fire-worker. ‘Blaze had swooned,’ he said.

  ‘But he’d found the range,’ Lisette replied indignan
tly. ‘All Porter need do was fire the thing.’

  ‘Sir James—the Earl,’ Stryker corrected himself, ‘was too consumed by grief. He wanted to break Gell’s line himself.’

  Lisette’s nose wrinkled. ‘Well, he got himself stabbed for his folly.’

  ‘Least he didn’t snuff it,’ Forrester said to Stryker. ‘He’s your ticket to exoneration.’

  Sir James Compton, Third Earl of Northampton, had vowed to repeat Edberg’s confession to the prince. ‘I saw you go to my father’s aid,’ he had said as the Swedish mercenary’s corpse was stripped of its valuables. ‘My family is in your debt. I will see this charge dropped, ’pon my honour, sir.’

  Ordinarily Stryker might have thought such a promise farfetched, for Colonel Artemas Crow was a powerful courtier, but Sir James’s father had been one of King Charles’s dearest friends. Stryker could not have wished for loftier patronage.

  He knelt suddenly, grasping one of the coats that lay strewn between the battle’s casualties. There were many such garments, all torn and blood-sodden, hurriedly removed by Chambers’s assistants as he had tried to cauterize wounds and dig out lead. Stryker opened the coat out and cast it across Blaze’s upper body and face. ‘And now all three brothers are dead.’

  ‘Where now for us, sir?’ Barkworth asked.

  Stryker twisted to look at him. ‘We’ll go to Oxford. Rejoin our regiment.’ Barkworth nodded, and Stryker read the gloom on the little man’s weathered features. ‘But the regiment is under strength after Cirencester, is it not, Captain Forrester?’

  Forrester winked. ‘That it is, Captain Stryker, that it is.’

  ‘Sergeant Skellen,’ Stryker said, prompting the tall man to step forward a pace. ‘Might there be room in our ranks for a former Scots Brigader, with a foul mouth and a quick temper?’

  Skellen sniffed. ‘Might be, sir. If we can find a coat to fit ’im.’

  Stryker looked at Barkworth, single brow raised.

  ‘Be an honour, sir,’ Barkworth said with a gap-toothed grin.