The Soldier Brat (Man of Conflict Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  Mockford eased the section into extended order as they neared the woods, letting it seem as if they were straggling in relaxed fashion. The men had their instructions, to fire only after Dowdy and Barnes, not to reload but to fix bayonets and run into cover before converging on a lightning struck oak, easily visible just a few yards inside the treeline.

  Septimus, the only man wearing a sword and not carrying a long-arm, began to feel conspicuous, stood taller, easing his pistols, loaded as they left the burned manor at Cooper’s insistence, in their holsters. He spun on his heels to check the line, as he had done regularly since setting out, decided the time was right, raised a hand to Mockford.

  “Left wheel! Double!” Mockford shouted.

  Dowdy and Barnes dropped to one knee at the side of a large, isolated boulder, the first of the rock outcroppings, their musket slings around their left elbow and shoulder and forming a triangle to hold butt and muzzle the more steady. Ten seconds passed, the only sound the soldiers’ boots thudding on the turf, and then both fired. There was a scream, rooks burst out of the upper branches, cawing loudly, a pair of wood pigeons flapped and clattered out, swooping then rising.

  Five muskets sounded, more or less together, a single ball ricocheting from the boulder near Barnes. More shots came erratically and smoke showed in a bank in front of a section of heavier, leafy cover nearly a hundred yards from the lightning struck oak. Dowdy and Barnes reloaded, carefully and precisely, waited.

  Septimus gathered the men around him.

  “Skirmish line through the woods, Sergeant Mockford?”

  It was not quite an order but Mockford accepted it.

  “Cooper, hold the right, I’ll take the edge of the trees, sir, you in the middle, three or four paces apart, don’t spread out. Dressing from me: Carter, Rogers, Chitty, Burnett, Glasspool, Smith, Schmidt, Reilly.” The men knew their place in the line, but were used to being told what to do. “Point to a target, silently, before you fire if they ain’t aiming at you. They see you, shoot and fix your blade.”

  A series of mutters, lips licked, muskets held low. Mockford caught Septimus’ eye, glanced at his empty hands, grinned as he reddened before taking his pistols from his belt.

  The leaves of many years, fallen twigs and brambles made a silent advance impossible but they shifted as stealthily as they could from trunk to trunk. Dowdy and Barnes fired twice more and another man shouted in pain; hopefully the rebels would be watching the present threat, would be less alert on their flank. The rest of the half-company would be doubling towards them by now and that would also be pulling the eyes of the inexperienced away from the hidden danger.

  The afternoon was drawing in, the leaves not yet all fallen, visibility was patchy under the trees. Glasspool suddenly snapped his fingers, pointed from his waist, hardly moving. Fifteen or so yards away was a man in brown homespun trousers and unbleached woollen shirt; he was carrying a musket, very inexpertly, was looking to the coppice edge, at Mockford.

  The musket rose slowly to the man’s shoulder, came down again, as he cocked the lock, was brought up shakily to the firing position. Septimus cocked his right hand pistol, lifted it to the near vertical and then chopped down to the aim and squeezed the trigger. The heavy ball ploughed home, the man fell, his musket exploding as he dropped. Septimus changed pistols, ran forward. More Irishmen appeared, one, a huge-bellied six-footer, strong as an ox, lugging the five foot barrel of the duck gun, designed to be mounted in a punt and fire half a pound of birdshot. The massive man lifted the gun and Septimus shot him from ten feet, dropped the pistol and heaved out his hanger; he chopped down at the shocked man’s hands as he staggered, slicing into tendon and bone so that his fingers opened and the deadly weapon fell. The big man began to howl and Septimus passed him by, hearing more shots, not all from his men.

  Cooper appeared at his shoulder, handed him his pistol as he looked for another target.

  “They run, sir. Only about fifteen of ‘em. Left seven muskets and a fowling piece and the big gun behind ‘em. Chicken shit! Yellow bellies! Rogers copped one in the leg, sergeant’s lookin’ to ‘im, don’t reckon it’s too bad. Nobody else ‘urt. We killed six, caught two. Captain’s ‘ere, sir.”

  Howton appeared, listened, congratulated them on the prisoners. The fat man, hit in the upper chest, high on the right, and with his hands ruined, would likely survive the immediate effects of the wounds; the other was untouched, seemed to have surrendered out of fear.

  “Sergeant Stratton, take that one aside and talk to him, if you please. If he has any English then find out what he knows.”

  Stratton was big, brutal, ugly; the prisoner, little more than a boy, was frail-seeming and already terrified.

  “He’ll break,” Howton quietly commented. “We need to know where they are, what they intend to do.”

  He waited till Stratton was a few yards away, raised his voice.

  “Sergeant! Be careful not to kill him! Make sure he can talk.”

  “What if he won’t, sir?”

  “Oh, then finish him – we’ve still got the fat man.”

  Howton turned back to Septimus, grinned. “That should have helped soften him up!”

  The prisoner talked in a very few minutes, came back stumbling and crying, Stratton jeering at him and cuffing him along.

  “They’re up in the ‘ills, sir, where they comes down to the shore, the sea at their back, one of them loff things, in a small fishing village.”

  “Boats?”

  “No boats, sir, they was going to load them and send them up the coast to sell the ‘arvest in the markets.”

  “No escape, then. How many of them?”

  “Twenty muskets and thirty or forty pikes they got left, so ‘e reckons. Might be more if anybody else ‘as come in, but ‘e don’t think there will be. One of the leaders ‘e is, I thinks, good at talking up a fight for other blokes, not so ‘ot when it comes to doing it ‘imself.”

  “Did he tell you the route, Stratton?”

  “Yes, sir, I knows just where to go, sir. Told me everythink, so ‘e did, and I don’t reckon ‘e ‘ad any lies left in ‘im, sir.”

  “Well done! I can always rely on you, Stratton!”

  Stratton nodded, he had been Howton’s man for many years.

  “Hang the pair of them, I think, Stratton. They’ll only be in the way.”

  Stratton nodded again, called to his men.

  “Sergeant Mockford, sentries out, if you please, act as sergeant-major for me. None of your people on duty tonight, they’ve earned their sleep. Now, what’s that bloody noise about?”

  The two prisoners were making an awful fuss, screaming out most bitterly as nooses were placed about their necks.

  “What do they expect, Septimus? Damned traitors! Up they go, Sergeant Stratton!”

  “Two minutes, sir, just making all tidy.”

  The ropes were tossed over strong boughs on either side of an oak, half a dozen men tailed onto each and the rebels were hauled a couple of feet into the air and the ropes were tied off, the men left to kick, their hands bound behind them. The fat man, already much weakened, was gone within three minutes but the skinny, talkative fellow jerked and bounced for a good ten before bladder and bowels finally emptied as he stilled.

  “Excellent! Move out, back to the dead oak tree, Sergeant Mockford. Bivouac there. Wooding party to set up a big fire, get something cooking, sleep in sections.”

  Man of Conflict Series

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter Four

  Cooper laid out a groundsheet for Septimus, brought him his ration salt-beef sliced thin and spread on a slab of toasted bread, all hot and greasy. Septimus was amazed at just how hungry he was. Howton joined him, eating the same fare.

  “Always starving after a fight, Septimus! The men are very pleased with you.”

  “The men are, sir?” Septimus was amazed, was not at all sure it was right that the men should judge him.

  “Oh, yes! A brave officer ke
eps them alive, because he is in front and can see when they should push on and when further risk is senseless. A shy man lags behind, orders his people forward into the lion’s mouth while he himself takes no chances, and leads the retreat when he has pushed them too far. Besides that, they like having a leader to boast about. I have already been told by ‘your section’, Mockford and his men, how you pistolled a rebel who had Mockford in his sights and then shot the fat man with the punt gun, ‘stopped his farting in chapel’, so you did! Chopped his hands half off when he wouldn’t put the gun down. Very pleased they are!”

  “But… it wasn’t like that, at all, really, sir,” Septimus protested.

  “You did it. They know he might never have hit Mockford, but you made sure for them. And the punt gun was a killer – that was important, and they saw you run straight at it and deal with it, very efficiently, too, knowing that you wouldn’t have had a hope if he had managed to fire it at you. They respect that. No need to blush, young man – you did very well, and Colonel Allington will read of it in my report.”

  Septimus muttered his thanks round a mouthful of beef, rather proud to have been praised by the man he respected so greatly and not displeased to be brought to the colonel’s attention. A few minutes later he enquired how Stratton had extracted his information so quickly, the prisoner unmarked.

  “Fear, Septimus. The man went in terror, knowing he was to be tortured almost to death, hearing me warn Stratton to stop short of killing him, unless it became inconvenient. Stratton is not the most sensitive of souls, and looks like an animal, and he hates traitors since his time in America with the battalion and makes no attempt to hide it. Once out of sight he pulled the man’s trousers off, exposed him shamefully and then hogtied him, face down, knees apart, close to a hot fire. He probably threatened to use him sexually as well, knowing how much that would horrify a village boy; then he took the ramrod from that small-bore French fusil we captured and shoved it about six inches up the boy’s arse and stuck the other end in the fire. The flames are close enough to be singeing the boy’s legs anyway and Stratton tells him how the rod is going to heat up and what it will do to his insides over the next couple of hours and how he’s going to slowly push it higher and higher. Ten minutes and he imagines he can feel the rod getting hotter, and the shame of it, too, working on his mind; fifteen and he’s begging to talk.”

  Septimus debated whether he was going to keep his dinner, swallowed it back.

  “How long would it take, sir?”

  “No idea, my boy! Stratton says he has never had a man last half an hour, nor actually take any damage in reality, and it’s not the sort of thing to compare notes about, ask for other people’s experience. That’s why I had them hang – we don’t really want them shouting that out to a judge, do we?”

  Septimus certainly did not; even for a traitor it was rather revolting.

  “Are we allowed to do that, sir? Hang them?”

  “Who is to stop us, Septimus? The soldier has the gun, and that is all the law he needs; but, mostly, no, we are not expected to hang prisoners, not even traitors. There are times when it is the better course – but always think first, and never, ever, hang men taken in England itself – the judges are most unforgiving on Home soil. In India, Ireland, America – the primitive places – it is different.”

  Septimus took it all in – the ‘primitives’ were different, not the same as the English. One point puzzled him, though. “Sir, you sometimes seem almost sympathetic to the Irish, yet you hanged those two without compunction – quite rightly, I believe.”

  “No misery can justify treason, Septimus. Our loyalty is to our King, and so is that of every honest man. The Irish peasant has many grievances, and, yes, I have some sympathy for the poor men and women – but rebellion is no answer and must be crushed without hesitation!”

  They destroyed the clumsy punt gun rather than lug its weight with them, overloading it with taken powder, jamming its barrel full of stones and attaching a long, long string to its trigger and pulling from cover. A lovely big bang it made. The captured muskets and fowling pieces were needed as exhibits for the Court in Cork, proof that the rebels they expected to capture had been taken under arms, and were distributed around the company to be carried in turn. Before dawn they built their fire up into an enormous blaze with dead wood from the lightning struck oak and surrounded the flames with more timber they hoped might catch in turn and then piled green, leafy branches on top to send up a huge smoke. Smith, hopefully, should be no more than five or six miles away, should be able to home in on them by mid-morning.

  They marched slowly, cautiously into the hills, half-expecting to be ambushed, took three hours to reach the cove the dead youth had described. There was only the one track leading in and the hills formed an impassable sea-cliff to the north, but to the south and east the hillsides were easily traversable, left a perimeter of at least half a mile where men could run and escape.

  “Hold here. Cooper, Barnes, Dowdy, to the hilltop, please, give me word of Mr Smith.”

  They saw Smith at two miles, the scarlet clear showing against the green of the uplands, lit another smoke for him, watched him slowly advance, taking a long hour to cover the distance, Sergeant Hatchett at point and trying to push the pace, Smith at the rear and urging caution.

  The sections joined and spread out on either side of the track, advancing two and two as they formed a perimeter around the fishing village.

  “Eighteen ‘ouses, sir,” Mockford reported. “One big sort of barn or ware’ouse place – I expects it’s where they makes up their sails and things for the boats. There’s wagons and carts in the sort of square, but I can’t see no ‘orses or donkeys or oxen, sir.”

  Wild shots were fired as they closed the village, hopelessly out of range, amateurs panicking; they stopped and dropped into token cover. Howton stood disdainfully exposed, assessing the situation, mostly for Septimus’ benefit.

  “Four small, stone-built cottages on either side of the track leading in, twenty or so yards apart, big gardens with low dry-stone walls round them. Ten houses, four of them with two floors, set round three sides of a square, the hard for the boats making the fourth side. No boats. Hills rising north and south, more like cliffs to the north. So, Mr Smith, to the left, the south, one section to the rear of the village, preventing escape or any sudden rush, the other to take the cottages on the left, one by one. Volley at the windows and run in, half the section covering; leapfrog down the track, hold at the edge of the square. Kill the men, throw back any women and children, although I don’t expect there will be any in these places. I’ll take part of the rest on the right, the north, because I’ll only need a few men at the rear – they won’t escape down the cliffs. Mr Pearce, with Sergeant Mockford and his people, hold to the track and follow us down, sweeping up prisoners, if any, covering either side as necessary.”

  They pushed forward, the regular volleys answered by a few shots that tailed off as the windows became untenable. The first of the cottages evidently had no back door – six men came running out, trying to flee down the track, holding muskets; they died in the garden, never made it out of the gate. The soldiers piled into the others, jumping through door and windows, shouting and screeching, bayonets in hand; a few shrieks and they ran out again, bloody-handed, laughing. They cleared the first eight cottages in minutes, without loss, were held by wild firing at the square.

  “Thatch roofs, Sergeant Stratton. A torch, please.”

  A broom handle from one of the cottages, thatch rough-tied onto it, flint and steel sparking, whirled round Stratton’s head. Section volleys in succession covered him as he ran out of cover and tossed the torch onto the nearest roof, dived back out of sight.

  The old thatch caught rapidly and a screaming confusion of women and children erupted from the burning building; a man ran out, hands over his head, shouting surrender.

  “Don’t burn any more, for the love of God, sir!”

  “Come out into th
e square, all of you, from every house, put your weapons down and stand back from them. Women and children to go to the waterside. Every man surrenders or I burn every house.”

  They came out from each of the buildings, grown boys, young and middle-aged men – few grew old here – laid down muskets, pikes, knives and wood hatchets, thirty six men in total. Allowing for the dead of night and morning it seemed a reasonable number. Nearly two hundreds of women and children stood on the other side, weeping and keening their menfolk and sons, knowing they were dead.

  “Rope, sergeant. There’s a couple of nets hanging over there.”

  Ten minutes with bayonets and they had lengths of cord sufficient to tie every man’s hands and put a short hobble on his ankles.

  They found the draught animals in the barn, harnessed them to the carts, dumped their prisoners into three tumbrels, their packs into another pair, readied themselves to move out, quietly looting the houses of the makings of a couple of good meals. They expected a two day march back to Cork, so did not bother to find rations for the prisoners, they would come to no great harm in that time.

  “What are we to do with the women and children, sir?” Smith asked.

  “Nothing, Mr Smith. Nothing at all. We leave them here, quite untouched. Warn the men of that, if you please. We march in thirty minutes – I do not want the men here overnight.”

  Smith passed the message to the sergeants, seemed rather upset, suggested that perhaps the men deserved a rest after their morning’s exertions – they were under no pressure of time, after all, could stay the night. Howton overruled him, an eyebrow raised thoughtfully.

  They took it in turns to ride in the empty carts, made their way back to Cork rather pleased with themselves – an uprising put down at the cost of one man wounded, and him sure to recover – it would set them in good odour with the authorities, who would in turn pass the word back to Horse Guards. It never did a regiment harm to be known as efficient, especially with a war coming and the opportunities that could represent.