He saw the coach first. A big-wheeled vehicle of dark timbers and covered roof, it squatted like a gigantic black toad in the centre of the bridleway. It pointed to his left, westward, and he found himself wondering what business it had travelling in the direction of Royalist territory.
Quickly he scanned the scene. The driver, sprawled over the traces, was clearly dead, the side of his skull an oozing mess of gore. Another man was hanging out of the open door, legs inside the coach, torso out, face turned up at the sky. No one else was clearly visible, but he could see at least three sets of hooves through the gap between the coach and the road, and, as he closed the distance, began to glimpse the heads of riders as they bobbed above the roof.
‘Three!’ Stryker called to Skellen.
Without reply, the sergeant drifted right, taking half the musketeers with him, and circled round the rear of the coach. Stryker took the rest of the men to the left, passing the moon-eyed stares of the two greys harnessed to the vehicle, and emerged on the far side.
Sure enough, there were three assailants. A trio of horsemen; two bearing swords, one with drawn pistol. At first Stryker wondered whether this was the vanguard of a larger force, perhaps the advancing Parliamentarian army Bailey had warned them about, but their true nature was soon apparent. The men wore scruffy cassocks and battered hats, which alone meant little, but it was unusual for cavalrymen – even dragoons – to wear calf-length boots on their feet. Start-ups, as they were commonly known, were the footwear of agriculture, rarely issued to soldiers, and never, as far as Stryker was aware, given to horsemen. Furthermore, the mounts they rode were small, ill-nourished ponies, not the swift, regal beasts one would expect of a scouting party or vanguard. These were no more than common bandits.
‘Ground arms, or you’re dead men!’ Stryker called.
To his surprise, the man with the pistol, a gaunt-faced fellow of middle age, swung his arm round and fired. Stryker instinctively ducked, shrank backwards, all the while aware that the gesture was futile if the ball flew true. But no pain came, no fire in his flesh, no darkness descending over his mind.
It all happened quickly after that. Before Stryker even had time to straighten up, the world exploded in a maelstrom of noise and smoke. Almost every redcoat had loosed their musket-balls at the man who would dare shoot their captain, and the singing lead minced him. The man’s torso shook violently in a series of juddering punches, the balls flattening on impact to form wide discs that left great canals of shredded flesh in their wake. The brigand toppled back from his saddle, his already lifeless body landing in a grotesque heap at his pony’s hind legs.
The dead man’s companions had seen enough. They were clearly on the road for rich pickings, and had neither the weapons nor the stomach for a fight with trained soldiers. They wrenched at their reins, forcing the ponies to wheel about, hoping to smash through the closing ring of scarlet-coated demons and flee with what loot they had taken. But the fight had come to them, whether they wished it or not, and two of the men with Skellen took aim. The first ball hit its mark, cracking through the back of the footpad’s head in a fountain of red spray. The man died instantly, slumping forward in the saddle to loll across the horse’s chestnut neck. The beast, enraged by the musket fire and terrified by the stench of his master’s blood, bolted into the trees, the corpse on its back thrown wildly about like a child’s doll.
The third rider, a man with heavy stubble and thick black hair cut into the shape of a bowl, had been hit too, but he had taken the bullet in the abdomen and, though such a shot would eventually prove fatal, it was not a wound that would kill outright. He screamed, snarled his fear and hatred and agony to the afternoon skies, and raked his start-ups across the pony’s flanks. The animal reared, shrieked in panic and burst forth, clods of earth and stone flinging up in its wake. It powered past the pair of shooters, still obscured by their own powder clouds, and made a break for freedom, but a tall, reed-thin man stepped casually into its path.
The only indication of Sergeant William Skellen’s rank was the weapon he carried. The halberd – a six-foot long shaft, reinforced with metal bands and topped by a spike, a hook and an axe blade – was an unwieldy brute in the hands of the inexperienced. But Skellen had hefted the pole-arm through countless campaigns and was an expert in its application. He swept it downwards at the last moment, avoiding the chestnut’s head, and pinioning the bandit’s thigh with the vicious billhook.
The horseman was dragged from his saddle before he had even drawn breath to cry out. But his feet became tangled in the stirrups, and, as Skellen tore him down with irresistible force, the pony could not run free. Instead it faltered, lost its own footing, flailed like a fawn on a frozen lake, and collapsed sideways, crashing down upon its rider in a cacophony of clanging metal, thudding flesh and screams.
Skellen wrenched the halberd free and stepped back as Stryker came to stand over the felled horseman.
‘Who are you?’ Stryker snapped.
‘Who?’ the wounded man, trapped under his horse’s thrashing bulk, hissed through teeth stained brown by tobacco. ‘No one! A needy man’s all!’ The pony made a move to stand, but, between its still tangled burden and a damaged ankle, it faltered, falling back on to its master, who renewed his pain-wracked bellowing.
Stryker signalled to one of his musketeers. The redcoat stepped up to the horse, hefted his firearm, and put a ball between the injured beast’s eyes. When the shot’s echo had drifted away on the breeze, the road was suddenly, eerily silent, save for the low keening of the gut-shot robber.
‘Check the coach,’ Stryker ordered to no one in particular, and several men immediately converged on the vehicle.
‘You’ve killed me, you fuckin’ whoreson,’ the wounded man suddenly wailed. ‘Killed me proper!’ The dead horse twitched, causing its trapped owner to scream again.
Stryker didn’t doubt it. The man had a lump of lead lodged somewhere in his pulped midriff, a cavernous hole in his thigh, and in all likelihood a pair of legs crushed beyond repair. He glanced back at the coach, at the corpses of its driver and passenger. ‘Repaid in kind, sir.’
The brigand howled again as a new surge of pain went through him. ‘You blind, hog-swiving bastard!’
‘Half blind.’
Stryker turned away. The looming figure of his sergeant had appeared at his right shoulder. Except for the heat of battle, it was always the right shoulder, for to approach from the other side would keep a man invisible to the captain. In battle, Skellen would switch sides, becoming a shield against his perennial weakness. Stryker reminded himself how fortunate he was to have a sergeant who knew him so well.
‘Think you’d better ’ave a gander at this, sir,’ Skellen said, his leathery face dour as ever, though Stryker detected a hint of something like amusement in the droning voice.
‘Oh?’
Skellen’s long stride took him back to the inert coach, Stryker walking briskly in his wake. They were on the north side of the road now, the opposite side to where Stryker had led the initial assault, and immediately he realized there had been more than one passenger in the vehicle’s plush inner sanctum. A man, seemingly unhurt, was gingerly climbing down from the open doorway. He was of a similar height to Stryker, with long, tightly curled black hair, a thin black moustache, and a beard that was no more than a sharp triangle of hair jutting forth from his bottom lip. He was dressed in a fine blue doublet, slashed at sleeve and chest to reveal the bright red lining beneath, and wore an ostentatiously wide-brimmed hat, topped with a single blue feather to match, Stryker presumed, the rest of the suit. A scabbard clanged at his thigh.
‘I thank you, sir,’ the man said when his expensive-looking bucket-top boots touched the ground. He offered his hand. ‘Otilwell Broom at your service.’
‘Captain Stryker, sir,’ Stryker replied, noting the firmness in the handshake. ‘Mowbray’s Foot.’
‘King’s men,’ Broom said.
‘You know the regiment, sir?’
Broom shook his head, curled locks flapping about his shoulders like the ears of a spaniel. ‘Heard you invoke the blessed king’s name when you told these vile knaves to surrender.’
Stryker eyed Broom warily. The man might be dressed as the archetypal Cavalier peacock, but he had long since learned that looks could be deceiving. ‘You are Royalist, sir?’
‘Aye, sir, I am.’ Broom patted the hilt of his sword. ‘Though I am not in His Gracious Majesty’s service, so to speak.’ He looked away, suddenly crestfallen. ‘After today I am in no one’s service, truth be known.’
‘Sir?’
With that, Broom cast a miserable gaze back at the coach. ‘I am—I was, Sir Alfred’s bodyguard. His protector. Much good that did him.’
For the first time, Stryker peered into the interior of the carriage. What he saw surprised him, for it appeared that the fellow seated inside was taking a nap. He looked to be a man of perhaps fifty, with thinning, grey hair and gigantic red nose. He was dressed in a silver doublet that made even Broom appear dowdy. His eyes were closed, and he seemed utterly peaceful, slumped back against the cushions at his shoulders. But almost immediately Stryker knew that the gentleman was not asleep, for the fuggy air in the coach still wreaked with the stench of fresh blood.
Stryker looked back at Broom. ‘Sir Alfred?’
‘Cade,’ Broom replied. ‘Sir Alfred Cade. The ball went under his armpit.’
Hence the lack of obvious wound, thought Stryker. ‘And you were his bodyguard?’
Broom patted the wrinkles in his blue doublet. ‘Me and McCubbin there.’
Stryker peered into the gloomy interior again, seeing the upturned boots of the dead man he had first spotted as they had reached the coach. ‘And who was he?’ he asked, nodding at the body, the upper part of which remained slumped face up on the road.
‘Sir Alfred’s other retainer,’ Broom replied gloomily. ‘They shot him first.’
‘What were they after?’
Broom shrugged. ‘Money. Jewels. How would I know?’
‘You were a bit lucky,’ William Skellen, still beside Stryker, muttered sardonically. ‘Seeing as your mate, your master, and your driver all got snuffed. What was you doin’? Cowerin’ on the floor?’
A rush of blood rose like a water fountain from Broom’s lace collar, up his slim neck and across his face. ‘How dare you!’ he spluttered, a hand dropping to his sword. ‘How dare you address me in such a manner, you insolent swine!’ He glared at Stryker, fingers slipping around his sword-hilt. ‘Will you not place this man on a charge?’
Stryker shook his head. ‘And if you draw that,’ he flicked his grey eye down at Broom’s scabbard, ‘I’ll run you through myself. Answer the question.’
Before Broom could reply the coach began to rock slightly, and, over the incensed bodyguard’s shoulder, Stryker caught sight of movement within. It seemed there had been a fourth person in the carriage; a person who, until now, had been concealed by the great bulk of Cade’s corpse. Apparently the venerable Sir Alfred had had a maid, or mistress, for the face that peered back at him was fresh, pale-skinned and bright-eyed.
‘Christ, I could light a match in them peepers,’ Sergeant William Skellen muttered.
Stryker wondered if Skellen had acquired a talent for mind-reading, for he was thinking the same thing. Those eyes – huge green ovals, mottled with swirling specks of auburn – seemed bright as gems, though he read real sadness in their depths and wondered if the glint was the sheen of tears. Either way, she was a rare beauty. He simply stared in astonishment as the woman, who, he guessed, was in her early twenties, carefully climbed down to stand beside Broom. She briefly smoothed the folds of her saffron dress, swept a ringlet of ink-black hair from her temple, and offered a tiny curtsy. ‘Otilwell was not cowering, sir. He was protecting me.’
The White Hart, Okehampton, Devon, 29 April 1643
Osmyn Hogg watched the candles gutter in their placings and wondered what foul spirits had come to torment him this evening. It was prime territory for them. A dark night, made darker still by the swollen thunder clouds scudding through Okehampton’s skies. He could well imagine the grinning, cackling imps that circled the town, closing in to prevent him from doing the Lord’s work. Perhaps they were already here, shrouded by the shadows dancing along the room’s walls and the food-piled platters. He stared hard at the tablecloth, muttered a short, protective prayer.
‘The war has turned, gentlemen,’ Major-General Erasmus Collings declared, raising his glass of claret in a delicate hand. ‘We bloodied Hopton’s nose at Sourton, and now we’ll strike him down for good.’ He smiled at the growled cheers that his words had elicited, but pursed his lips inquisitively when his little eyes fell on Hogg. ‘You do not share the assertion, sir?’
Hogg looked up from his meditation. He had been invited to take supper in the major-general’s quarters – the rooms directly above his own – that evening, sharing the impressive spread of victuals with some of the most senior staff to be found across Okehampton’s transient martial population. Most of the army, Collings had earlier explained, had ridden or marched north, to Torrington, where the Earl of Stamford was mustering Parliament’s western forces. Tonight the major-general’s big rectangular slab of polished chestnut was surrounded by an eclectic group. In addition to Collings and Hogg, there were two colonels of foot, a cavalry major and a quartermaster, all attired in their most gallant garb, and each as obsequious as the next. Hogg had also insisted that his assistant, José Ventura, join them, and, though the distaste for sharing a meal with a Spaniard was far from subtle, the assembled officers were polite enough.
‘I share your optimism, General, naturally,’ Hogg replied, feeling the eyes of the guests bore into him. ‘But, alas, I do not partake of strong drink.’
The cavalry officer, a squash-nosed man named Matheson, furrowed his bushy, grey-specked brow. ‘Puritan, sir? Can’t say I hold with it, m’self.’
It was Hogg’s turn to frown. ‘Hold with it, Major? I was told the Puritan persuasion carries great sway in the rebellion.’
‘It does, sir,’ Matheson replied, scratching gnarled fingers at the armpit of his russet doublet. ‘There are a great many Puritans in our ranks. Pym, of course, and Hampden, Cromwell, Holles, the list seems endless. But not I, sir. Not on your life. I am a man of tradition. The High Church of Queen Bess, and proud to declare it. But Charles Stuart is a tyrant. Must be stopped at all costs.’
‘Men join our cause for divers reasons, Master Hogg,’ Collings interjected smoothly, spindly fingers still wrapped around the glass. ‘I, for instance, would have Parliament all the stronger.’ He leaned back, taking another small sip of his wine. ‘Give power to those who would govern with intelligence. Reason. I am not opposed to monarchy but, by God, if one should rule with a corrupt heart – paying heed to the viperous whispers of his favourites – then let’s be rid of him.’
‘I see,’ Hogg responded, wondering to what kind of England he had returned.
‘Master Hogg,’ Collings went on, looking at each of his officers as he spoke, ‘has been in the New World these past years.’ Finally his hard gaze came back to Hogg. ‘Is that not right, sir?’
Hogg nodded. ‘Right enough, General. Señor Ventura and I have dedicated our lives to fighting mankind’s greatest foe.’
‘The Papacy?’ growled another of the guests through a mouth crammed full of cheese and bread. He had been introduced as Quartermaster Timothy Ayres, and Hogg was certain he had never set eyes upon a more grossly fat man in all his life. The chair holding Ayres’s immense backside groaned even as he spoke, and bits of food sprayed out across his purple doublet. ‘That is surely our most fearsome enemy,’ he said, his vastly layered neck bunching as he looked down to unfasten the buttons at his midriff in order to allow for expansion of his girth with the prodigious intake of food.
Hogg dearly wanted to berate the quartermaster for the sin of gluttony, but managed to bite his tongue. ‘Greater still than t
hat, sir,’ he said levelly.
‘None other than Satan himself, gentlemen!’
It was Major-General Collings who had spoken, and the amusement in his voice was not lost on Hogg. Not for the first time he found himself wondering why the clearly sceptical Parliamentarian had asked him to come to Devon. He tore his gaze away from Collings, meeting some of the other faces at the table as he spoke. ‘I am a witch-hunter, as you are no doubt aware. Therefore my enemy is not the natural, but the supernatural.’
‘Are the dark arts prevalent in the Americas, sir?’ one of the infantry colonels asked. He was a slim man with hollow, deeply pock-pitted cheeks and bulbous eyes that looked as though they might pop out of his skull at any moment.
Hogg stabbed a small piece of venison with his knife. ‘It is the red man, Colonel Stockley. The native. He worships all manner of false idols, every one of them a demon, of course.’ With his long teeth he picked the meat from the point of the knife and chewed it for a few moments before continuing. ‘The God-fearing folk of Europe fled persecution at home, only to find themselves in a land veritably flooded with evil. It is only natural those of a weaker disposition are ultimately seduced by it.’
‘Tell me, sir,’ Major Matheson said in his seemingly permanent gruff tone, ‘which part of the New World were you at work?’
‘We travelled extensively around New England, Major,’ Hogg responded. ‘Boston and all along the Mystic River, Salem, Charlestown, Plymouth.’
‘Later Providence Plantation,’ José Ventura spoke for the first time.
Hogg met the Spaniard’s brown eyes, buried in two deep pits of flesh, noting wryly that, for once, Ventura was not the fattest man in the room. ‘Aye, there too. And Saybrook.’ A thought struck him, and he looked to Collings. ‘You will know that last settlement was founded by the Lord Brooke. I hear he is one of the rebellion’s foremost leaders now.’
Collings shook his head and quaffed the rest of his wine. ‘Alas, no. My Lord Brooke was killed at Lichfield, near two months back. Shot through the eye, so says the story.’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 8
