The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  They followed the uneven path, heading in the general direction they wanted. It must take them to a farm, or to a wintering bothy, Sam thought. Either way, there was a good chance that the fuel for the fire lay at the end of the track. They made better time on the pathway, the shepherd having naturally avoided steep slopes and dangerous footing for his not very bright charges. Twenty minutes brought them within sight of a single large blaze.

  They eased off the track, uphill, sat under cover of an outcropping and inspected the scene below them. Sam counted four wagons and eight horses, could see no riding stock. There were sleeping figures wrapped up in blankets, a dozen or so at random and two tidy lines of ten. He could see four men standing by the fire, orderlies of some sort, he imagined.

  “Officers and their servants, Simon?”

  “Dunno, Sam. Can’t see no sentry nowhere.”

  “Nor me.”

  There had been a farmyard, they saw, but it was derelict now, burned out earlier in the year. The men were taking the fencing posts from the stockyard for their fire.

  They retraced their steps, found a sheltered spot a good half mile distant from the little camp and waited for the troop to join them.

  “Possible to make a charge on horseback, Corporal Heythorne?”

  “No, sir. That track ain’t wide enough for more than three or four troopers, sir. Tie the horses back in the gorse, sir, and work up close wi’ the carbines, sir.”

  “Half and half, Corporal Heythorne. Sergeant Wright, your section to dismount and attack from cover, carbines and then pistols; I shall lead a mounted attack to follow your volleys. You to close in and tidy up behind me.”

  Sergeant Wright supervised the picketing of the horses, tying them to a line which was firmly bound round the stems of the thickest gorse bushes he could quickly spot.

  “Daft bugger, like all they cavalry officers wants to charge rather then go on foot. Fire to my orders. Carbine then pistols, volleys together. Don’t reload. Run in with the sword. Don’t ‘ang about. Make good and sure any bugger what’s down ain’t shamming it.”

  The Jacobite camp was stirring, but very slowly, many of the men still under their blankets twenty minutes after first light.

  “Slack sods!”

  Lieutenant Wakerley put his whistle to his mouth, gave a final glance to see that Sergeant Wright’s men were ready. He sounded a single sharp blast.

  Sam had placed himself behind a waist-high boulder, leaning into the rock to steady his aim. There was a man by the fire, a cook perhaps, thirty yards distant; he made as good a target as any. He squeezed the trigger at the whistle, was pleasantly surprised to see his man twist and fall face forward into the flames. He drew a pistol, waited on Sergeant Wright’s shout, fired in the general direction of the sleepers. Ten seconds and he triggered the second heavy handgun and stood to pull the sword from over his shoulder. Sergeant Wright gave a shout and the ten ran forward, immediately behind the section on horseback.

  Sam watched as Lieutenant Wakerley rode in, sword at an angle across his left shoulder and then swinging down in a slashing back cut at a running man. The runner fell and the lieutenant angled his sword forward, an extension of his arm like a short lance and spiked into the back of another. Sam came to the line of sleepers, amazed they had not yet moved; he slashed at the nearest and then at a second before realising that they were wounded or sick, unable to rise. He shouted, but it was too late – the others had already finished them.

  A man came running, bellowing, from the direction of the wagons.

  “Ye bloody savages! This is a hospital…”

  He stopped short as Lieutenant Wakerley swung at his neck, almost severing his head.

  “No prisoners, Sergeant Wright!”

  Sergeant Wright turned around to his half-troop, waved them on.

  “Finish them, all of you. It warn’t deliberate, but we don’t want no witnesses shouting their mouths off to the General.”

  Sam swore, then turned to the nearest body and ran his sword through its chest.

  “Go on, Simon, Smithy and you, Henry! Do it!”

  The farm was deserted, the family and animals long gone; there was a good chance that when the dead were eventually discovered there would be no indication of who had killed them.

  “Check the wagons.”

  A few minutes disclosed them to be half-empty – a few blankets, some torn up sheeting for bandages, a thin day’s rations of more or less fresh beef and uncooked flour.

  “Hitch ‘em up. The quartermasters won’t have enough wagons. Better to lose them in the baggage train.”

  A quick pat down of the bodies divulged a few coins and some oddments of personal jewellery, probably looted en route south.

  “Won’t make our bloody fortune out of this lot, young Simon!”

  “Sixpence is ‘alf a shilling more than I had in me pocket this time last month, Sergeant Wright.”

  Sam shrugged and set about reloading pistols and carbine.

  An hour after dawn they formed up around the wagons and pointed their noses west, down to the lowlands of the coast.

  The baggage train was short of wagons and horses, the carts all overloaded and axles breaking every day. Four more wagons were greeted with delight. The Quartermaster-General dipped his hand into his purse and paid gold coins on the spot, asking only that they guarantee they had not stolen them from a local owner who might be able to demand their return.

  “Eight dray horses as well – manna from heaven! I can, and shall, purchase them from you. Lieutenant Wakerley’s Derbyshire Horse, recipients of the prize-money for horses, so it shall be written, sir.”

  Sergeant Wright explained that the Army paid for horses taken from the enemy, putting the money into a Fund, to be shared out at the end of the campaign to those units that had actually taken beasts.

  “Might be that one company blocks a road one way, and another on the other side, while a third actually grabs the nags. Only fair that all three takes a share, and maybe as well the lads in the rearguard who stops them being taken back again.”

  Sam had not considered that aspect, agreed that it was an honest way of doing things.

  “How much do they pay, Sergeant Wright?”

  “Full price in the local market, Sam. The Army wants horses all the time, and taking them from the enemy means they ain’t got ‘em as well. Always pays full whack, so they do, so that men will take a bit of a risk to grab any nags that’s goin’.”

  “Makes sense, so it do. Could be a man might make money, buyin’ up osses down South and walkin’ them up thisaway to sell ‘em to the Army.”

  “So they do, Sam. And there’s dozens of horse copers doing just that already. Thing is, Sam, there just ain’t enough osses in the country, not for all that’s needed. Better to go to Ireland, so they say, and buy them in the fairs there and bring them across the sea, but that means money, what I ain’t got enough of.”

  “Nor me, Sergeant Wright acos of I ain’t got much meself.”

  “Best you do something about that, one day, Sam. You signed on for two years. What do you reckon to do after that, Sam?”

  “Buggered if I know, Sergeant Wright. Never thought.”

  “Keep thinking and keep your eyes open. Might be something you can work out while you’re travelling about the country this next twelvemonth.”

  “Twelvemonth? Not two years?”

  “Take six months, at the outside, to chop these bastards down, Sam. A few months more to burn ‘em out and learn ‘em not to do it no more, and then it’s back to Derbyshire, or wherever, for us. Garrisons will be foot soldiers, not Yeomanry. Might get sent to someplace else where there’s trouble, down South maybe, but likely not. Can’t send us overseas to the wars, for being under the Militia Act, what says we serve in the Kingdom, so it’s back home as like as not.”

  Lieutenant Wakerley gave the order to mount up and they walked the horses back up into the hills, carefully taking a line well north of their action of the
morning. Nightfall saw them ten miles north and up onto the moors of Cumberland.

  “Supposed to be coming up as General, the Duke of Cumberland. Maybe. One of the King’s sons. He won’t come unless they’re sure he’s going to win. Don’t risk Princes in chancy battles!”

  In the morning they found a drover’s track leading across the moorland, wide and well-trodden, and followed it for lack of a better route to take.

  “They put the young cattle up on the hillsides to graze, late spring and summer, then drive them down south, as far as Lancaster commonly, to market there. Some get slaughtered and some are kept for fattening for the next year – all depends on what the hay crop and lift of turnips was like for winter feeding. Been trading that way for years, Sam. Won’t be next year, for there being no bloody farmers left up here. They bloody Scottish men butchered the lot when they come through here, Sam.”

  Rightly or not, the Scottish invaders were seen as a plague on the land – thieves and murderers who had used the excuse given them by the Jacobites to loot and despoil their richer neighbours to the south. There was a general belief that the brigands of the north must be put down, sent back to their Highlands strongholds never to be seen again in the south country.

  Lieutenant Wakerley spoke to the troop that night, briefly addressing them as they ate their stew.

  “General Hawley passed the order that the army will lay up for the winter as soon as the snow comes. We can’t march north into blizzards. So, any day now, we return to camp for two or three months. The word is that the Jacobites are pushing across to the east coast. Probably that’s because they have French troops with them and want to pick up supplies sent across the German Ocean. So we must leave the drover’s road now and turn to the east as we can.”

  The dawn saw them riding out along a narrow track, into sleet, cold and miserable and with no visibility – they could barely see a hundred yards.

  “Sergeant Wright – two men to the front, as far out as they can be seen, just. Relieve each pair after an hour.”

  Sam was riding next to Simon, as always, was sent out with him in mid-morning.

  The sleet was blowing across from the west, freezing their ears, the horses trying to turn their heads away from the cold. Sam was riding in his greatcoat, hat jammed firmly down and an illegal length of woollen cloth around his neck; uniform was not a great concern to the sergeant in this weather. He spotted movement in the distance.

  “Summat comin’, Simon.”

  Simon turned in his saddle, waved his musket high from side to side, the warning to the column. Both men pulled across and further into the gorse, less visible.

  “Foot soldiers, Simon. They ain’t got red coats.”

  The scarlet would not be on display in this weather, covered by the frieze greatcoats; they might still be King’s soldiers.

  They stared for another few seconds.

  “Some of they ain’t wearing proper trousers. They got cloth wrapped round. Scottish.”

  They pulled their carbines out of the saddle boots, unwrapping the rags that protected flint, pan and priming from the sleet and cocking the short-barrel muskets. They did not expect to hit any of the Jacobites, but the shots would serve as warnings to their own troop. At thirty yards Sam gave the word.

  “Ready, Simon?”

  The two muskets rose to their shoulders.

  “Shoot.”

  Both muskets fired, to their surprise – muskets were unreliable in wet weather.

  “Pistols ready, Simon.”

  The Jacobites were coming forward at the run, possibly thinking there were only the two scouts to their front. Sam guessed a score at least of men running at him.

  “Where’s the troop?”

  Simon glanced behind him.

  “Comin’ up hard, Sam. Lieutenant Wakerley’s got ‘is sword out. So ‘ave they all.”

  They would, in Sam’s opinion, have done better with their pistols first – but he was not going to argue with an officer.

  “Shoot, Simon.”

  Four shots, the Scottish men just twenty yards distant; one of them fell.

  “Sword, mate. Behind Lieutenant Wakerley.”

  The Jacobites saw the horsemen charging and dived towards the cover of the gorse, some of them making it, a dozen at least going down under the swords.

  The troop continued the charge, rounded a bend in the track as it followed the slope of the moor, came up to a full company, forty or so of men trying to form into three lines, bayonets advanced, a dozen with broadswords only to the rear.

  “Into them!”

  Lieutenant Wakerley yelled and spurred his charger, hitting the line before it was fully set, before they could commence volley fire, breaking through and into the second rank, scattering them. The troop followed, splitting up to pursue the running men. Sergeant Wright bellowed at the half a dozen still at his back to draw pistols and then to fire at the few with broadswords who were standing their ground. Henry and Smithy, both with smaller, slower horses, stopped a little short and lifted their carbines, fired aimed rounds at the swordsmen. Two minutes and the troop had lost one man to their long blades, but the twelve were all down.

  “Sergeant Wright, clear up on the track. Troop to fall back on me!”

  Lieutenant Wakerley blew repeatedly on his whistle, recalling the men.

  They came back, eventually, blades of their straight swords dripping blood, laughing and shouting, the bloodlust of the horseman breaking infantry still strong on them.

  Sam and Simon dismounted, tied their horses and began to turn over the bodies, checking for any playing dead.

  “Needs a trumpet, Simon. Can’t hear that whistle clear enough, specially like if you don’t want to.”

  Simon shrugged, it seemed unimportant to him as he checked for pockets and purses and little bags on the dead.

  Sam joined in the looting – it was the right of the soldier. He pulled his knife from its sheath, the better to open coats and knapsacks, and to slit the throat of the uncooperative.

  “Must ‘ave killed thirty of the sods, Simon. They was three to one on us, damned near, as well.”

  “Foot soldiers, Sam. They don’t stand up to the likes of us.”

  “Bullshit!” Sergeant Wright had overheard Simon’s comment. “If they gets together into a square, or three anchored lines with bayonets presented, they kill us every time. If they ain’t under command, in open order or on the march, then we butcher them. You ever go charging into a formed square and you’ll find out just what foot can do. Lieutenant Wakerley hit these before they made their square – that’s why half’s dead and the rest are running, apart from those what got cut up and are going to die slow in the cold. Give those blokes with the swords a good going over, Sam. Sometimes they’re the guard platoon for one of them laird blokes, what they call colonels and suchlike.”

  Sam took extra care, found them well worthwhile, most of them having silver shillings and crowns, even two gold coins, and carrying valuables on their backs, generally in the form of silver plate looted from the prosperous people of the towns they had sacked. Two of them carried ornamental knives with some sort of brownish gemstone fixed to the hilt and one, the senior officer, he thought, wore a gold ring and had another of the jewels fixed to a pin at his throat.

  Lieutenant Wakerley inspected the spoils.

  “Signet ring, makes him some sort of clan chief, I suspect. I’ll take that back and show it to General Hawley – we will be able to discover which clan, so as to fine them as disloyal when this business is over. They’ll lose half of their lands and cattle and sheep for their treason. The jewels are Cairngorm stones – not real gems, but worth a guinea or two because there ain’t many about. They can go into the pot – we sell off all we get and split it up between us for the silver and daggers and whatever. Coins stay in the pocket of the finder – not worth the argument of who found what. Might be three guineas apiece from this lot. Pick up their swords and any decent muskets, Sergeant Wright. Bundle
them up on the back of Jonas’ horse – he doesn’t need it any more. Put his body under the rocks over there.”

  They buried their sole casualty under a cairn – the soil was too thin to put him underground, and they had no shovels to dig with in any case.

  “No horses lost – that’s the important thing, Sergeant Wright. Never replace a horse in this wild country. Whose turn is it to take the front position? Tell them to keep an eye out for fugitives – mostly they’ll still be running, but there will be wounded who are slow. Finish them if they see them.”

  Two hours saw them back on the track, their packs heavier by a very little of oatmeal taken from the Scottish soldiers.

  Simon was surprised they had so little by way of food.

  “Poor country, Sergeant Wright said, Simon. That’s why they were comin’ this way, most likely, out scouring the fells for the odd sheep or anything they could eat. Most of they are goin’ to be close to starvin’, out in the cold weather and far from towns or any harbour where they can get food from France, so he told me.”

  “Bloody good thing too – the more of they buggers starves, the fewer to fight us.”

  Sam laughed and agreed, quietly walking his horse towards the rear of the short column and looking about him, just in case the men in front had missed anything. They had crossed the highest moorland, he thought, were now dropping slowly down to the east, still cold and wet but the wind not so very raw. There was a sniff of snow in the air, he suspected, looking out to the east where, he had been told, the sea lay. His eye passed over a different colour in the gorse, earth brown rather than dead leaf and stalk.

  “Over there, Simon, see where there’s a bit of rock sticking up? To the side of it.” He looked at his hands, remembering Sergeant Wright’s patient training. “On the left, maybe forty paces.”

  Simon looked on both sides rather than admit that he couldn’t remember which was left.

  “Got it, Sam. Bit of brown. Wrong, ain’t it. Homespun, Sam, what’s been dyed with bark, like Mum does at ‘ome.”

  Simon’s mother was handy at the weaving and cutting of cloth, helped all of the local women out with their work, in exchange for the odd piece of meat or a cabbage or two from the gardens.