Stryker had watched the barn all night. The building, near a mile to the north and west, was obscured by the undulating terrain, the surrounding trees, and sheer distance, yet he had sat, perched on the very peak of a lone granite stack, and stared at it, guessing what terrors lay within. And then, just after dawn, he had noticed activity. It was impossible to tell what exactly was happening at first, but there were figures scuttling about the grey walls like so many ants at a rotten carcass, and his instincts told him the rising commotion meant trouble.
Now, two hours later, he still remained on his high vantage point, like a lookout in a ship’s crow’s nest, and watched the procession moving out on to the barren plain. There were twenty cavalrymen, or thereabouts. All plated in metal, all protected by shining helmets with articulated neck guards – the lobster tails – and decorated with flamboyant cormorant feathers. The small column were not bent on attack, he felt sure, for they walked their mounts with deliberate slowness, ambling from the tree line to the heath that would lead them south-eastward to the tor. Nevertheless, he had ordered his men to stand ready, taking up positions behind rock and gorse all the way down to the foot of the slope.
Once the Parliamentarians, snaking along a narrow track to avoid pot-holes, tangled brush, and treacherous bogs, were fully out in the open, Stryker was startled to realize that they were not alone. They were Wild’s men right enough, for, aside from the telltale feathers, the head of the serpent had sprouted a black pennant that left no doubt as to the identity of their commander. And yet there were three new figures, two dressed in black, one in a doublet of red and white, mounted at the rear of the column.
Skellen and Barkworth were standing immediately below Stryker’s stone platform. The tall sergeant spat a thick ball of phlegm between his boots. ‘What they playin’ at, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ Stryker replied cautiously, squinting at the oncoming force.
‘What you wouldn’t give for Dyott’s telescope now, eh, sir?’ Barkworth reflected.
Stryker nodded without looking down at the Scot. Sir Richard Dyott had been one of the Royalist notables trapped with Stryker and his men in Lichfield Cathedral Close during the siege the previous March. His telescope had been a true godsend, allowing them to foil a particularly dangerous ambush.
The red-coated ranks waited and watched for ten minutes more as the procession traipsed ever closer. Soon they were near enough for the whinnying and snorts of the horses to be audible from the very summit of the hill, and a little while later the Royalists could even hear the lead officer barking his orders. The horsemen eventually reached a crooked tree, wind-stripped and ancient, some hundred paces from the foremost of Stryker’s musketeers, at which point the rider at the very head of the serpent called for his men to wheel round and form a long line running across the face of the tor. By the voice, the physique, and the bearing, Stryker knew that the officer was Colonel Wild himself.
‘What the fuck are they about?’ the company’s shortest man, Simeon Barkworth, muttered in his croaking voice.
‘My thoughts precisely,’ Lieutenant Burton said as he came to stand beside the Scot.
‘Summink to do wi’ them cloaked buggers,’ Skellen grunted from Barkworth’s other side. ‘I don’t like the look of ’em.’
Nor did Stryker, his sense of unease building rapidly. ‘They’re not Wild’s men.’
Burton adjusted his arm strap. ‘Dragoons?’
Stryker glanced down at his lieutenant. ‘In heavy cowls?’
‘Does seem strange, but who else could they be?’
By way of an answer, one of the hooded riders lurched from the line. He walked his horse slowly across the flat ground, halting near the foot of the slope. He was well within range of Stryker’s outermost muskets, and matches were given encouraging breath by their eager owners, though none would shoot without an order. The rider seemed to be relying on this, for he did not appear intimidated by the proximity of the weapons as he lifted a gloved hand to draw back his voluminous hood.
From his high stack, Stryker felt a strange feeling of familiarity as the man’s face was finally exposed. It was not a particularly remarkable countenance; plain skin, dark eyes, hair falling straight to his shoulders. But that long nose, hooked like a beak, seemed oddly memorable.
‘My name,’ the cloaked rider shouted suddenly, addressing the tor, ‘is Osmyn Hogg.’
More peculiar resonance, thought Stryker. The name meant nothing to him, but the powerful voice, and those huge, jutting teeth, seemed as familiar as the nose. He shook his head to rid himself of the disquiet, and drew breath to return the introduction. ‘Stryker. Captain, Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot.’
The man named Hogg tilted his head up to stare directly at Stryker. ‘I know who you are, Satan’s servant!’
For a moment, Stryker was utterly taken aback. ‘A strange choice of words, sir,’ he called back, ‘for I know you not.’
‘Oh, but you do!’
Stryker leaned over the edge of his stack to look at his senior officers. ‘Have any of you met him before?’ The resounding response was in the negative, and he turned back to Hogg. ‘I think you have me mistook for another, sir.’
The beak-nosed man shook his head. ‘Nay, sir. There has been no mistake.’ Before Stryker could reply, he stood in his stirrups. ‘Now, I command all here, in the name of the Lord Jehovah, to bear witness to His judgement!’
With that, Hogg took to his saddle again, wrenched on his mount’s reins, and cantered back to the line. It was only then as Hogg rejoined his two companions that Stryker’s eye fell upon the third figure in the trio. He had first presumed that man to be dressed in a white doublet striped with scarlet thread, but now, shockingly, he saw the truth. The third rider, slumped across his horse’s neck, was not clothed from the waist up at all. The paleness was simply his own skin, showing white in the sunlight, and the red . . .
‘Shite on a pole,’ Sergeant Skellen droned suddenly. ‘That poor bastard’s been flayed alive.’
Stryker said nothing, for it needed no confirmation. They all saw the blood that had dried in long, vertical stripes all across the naked man’s torso. It was dark, caked, and crusty, but it was blood without doubt.
‘Well we know who did all that screaming,’ Simeon Barkworth said.
‘Aye,’ Burton agreed grimly. ‘I wonder who he is.’
The scream that went up then was almost as heart-shivering as the ones that had rent the previous night. High, shrill, agonized, grief-stricken. All eyes turned back to the tor’s flat summit to catch sight of a woman, red-eyed, ashen-cheeked, and utterly beside herself. She screamed again, slumped to her knees, and buried her weeping head in Burton’s chest when he ran to comfort her. The men waited, watched, no one daring to speak, until Burton turned back from her racking sobs and looked up at Stryker.
‘Cecily recognized him immediately.’
Stryker frowned. ‘Who?’
But the question needed no answer, for suddenly, gut-wrenchingly, he understood. The broken, tortured man down on the plain was Otilwell Broom.
‘You’re certain this will work?’ Colonel Gabriel Wild said gruffly.
‘Have faith, sir,’ Hogg replied, jerking his chin at José Ventura in an indication that he should follow. ‘After today, they will scuttle down from their hiding places like mice from a blazing thatch.’
Wild glowered, watching the corpulent Spaniard gather up the reins for both his horse and the one carrying Broom. ‘I am not comfortable with this.’ He leaned forward, saddle creaking beneath his rump. ‘There are rules.’
Hogg paused, and gave a short sniff of derision. ‘The rules,’ he sneered, ‘are that witches should be dealt with once confession is secured. Have we secured confession, señor?’
That last was addressed to Ventura, who nodded sagely. ‘Si.’
‘There you have it, Colonel. A confession is all I need for this to be legal. You have failed to prise this man from his hill, and Major-General
Collings requires your strength for the army’s push into Cornwall. To expedite the situation, you are therefore ordered to defer to my techniques.’
Wild straightened, plucked his gleaming helmet from his head, and ruffled the sweaty hair brushing his shoulders in sweaty clumps. The silver stripe shone in the sunlight. ‘What’s in this for you?’
Hogg frowned. ‘Colonel?’
‘You do not report to the Parliament. Ergo, you are no more obliged to obey Collings than those Christ-abandoned brigands up on the hill.’
‘Your point?’
Wild drew his carbine from its snug holster, inspected the firing mechanism, and thrust it home. ‘I understand why Collings would wish to employ your—expertise—to smoke the malignants from their nest, but why do you so readily acquiesce, when there are no witches here?’
Hogg turned away from Wild to stare with narrow eyes at the craggy, sun-dappled tor. ‘Oh, but there are, Colonel. There most certainly are. Broom named his accomplices.’
‘A man with one eye, his wench, and the halfling?’ Wild asked incredulously. ‘Easy targets for a man stabbed to near death.’
‘Pricking is a legitimate device, Colonel,’ Hogg retorted acidly. ‘Besides, Stryker is evil. The others are irrelevant. If the rest must be sacrificed to expose the true devil amongst them, so be it. He is the one we want.’ He shot Ventura a quick glance. ‘Bring Mister Broom, José.’
Stryker watched with impotent rage as Hogg and the second cloaked figure led Broom’s horse across the face of the assembled cavalrymen. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. Every fibre of his body yearned to bolt down the slope and prise the forlorn prisoner from his captors. But the Parliamentarian procession remained just out of musket range, and the harquebusiers would cut his redcoats down the moment they ventured away from the tor’s protection. They could but watch.
Otilwell Broom did not look up as his mount was led to the ancient tree. His broken body simply lurched from left to right with the horse’s loping stride, head lolling like a broken-necked sparrow. He did not respond when the mount was halted and held beneath the biggest of the tree’s gnarled boughs, nor when Hogg’s companion, a hugely fat, dark-skinned fellow, produced a thick length of rope and slung it across the branch. The end dangling above Broom’s bare head had been fashioned into a noose. The fat man dropped to the ground, tying the opposite end to the base of the trunk, before clambering awkwardly back into his saddle.
On the turf below Stryker, Cecily Cade wept. Burton was still with her, his single good arm braced about her trembling shoulders. Stryker lent over the side of the stack. ‘Take her back to the avenue, Andrew.’
To his astonishment, the words, intended for comfort, seemed to have the opposite effect. She shrugged Burton’s arm away violently, glaring up at Stryker, big eyes wide and bright with fury. ‘How dare you, sir!’
‘Miss Cade?’ Stryker spluttered.
‘How dare you presume to remove me,’ she thrust an accusatory finger up at Stryker, ‘when it was you who sent Otilwell to his death!’
Stryker drew breath to argue, but the words would not form, for he knew she was right. It had been his order that sent Broom from the tor. Sir Alfred Cade’s bodyguard had been reluctant to leave, but Stryker had insisted it should be he who took the message. He sagged, letting his chin rest on the cold granite, wondering what to say next.
‘This man!’ The hard tones of Osmyn Hogg jarred across his thoughts suddenly. ‘This evil-doer has entered into solemn league with the Devil!’
Stryker lifted himself up again, peering down at the cloaked man who now sat in his saddle some twenty or so paces in front of the twisted tree. ‘What is this game, Hogg?’
Hogg stared up at him. ‘No game, Stryker. I am a witch-finder. Charged by God and by His blessed Parliament to seek out and eliminate witchcraft and sorcery where I discover it.’
Stryker’s eye flicked along the line of cavalry to the man – now without a helmet – he knew to be Gabriel Wild. ‘What is this madness, Colonel? You want the wagon, I understand that, but who is this antick?’
Wild did not flinch.
‘This warlock has confessed!’ Osmyn Hogg bellowed up at the tor. He rummaged briefly in his saddlebag, eventually producing a small sheet of paper and holding it up like a trophy. ‘See here, the man’s confession. Signed in his own hand, and witnessed by the honourable Colonel Wild and his men.’
‘Confessed?’ Cecily squawked. ‘He has confessed to nothing!’ She bolted down the slope then, stopping only when her toes clipped a large stone, sending her tumbling in a heap. When she sat upright, her head twisted back to stare up at the tor’s summit, eyes fixed upon Stryker, pleading. ‘He is no witch, Captain!’
‘Ah, the woman!’ Hogg’s mocking voice rose up from the lower ground. ‘The second in our coven of devilry!’
Cecily’s green eyes became huge, and she turned immediately back to Hogg. ‘Devilry?’
Hogg kicked his mount forward another few yards to be certain his voice would carry. ‘The condemned spoke much of you, harridan. Names you as his vile confederate!’
He waved the confession again, raking his gaze from the men at the very foot of the tor all the way up to those guarding its summit.
‘I implore all you God-fearing men; hear this! The warlock known to you as Otilwell Broom has given up his secrets. Three others among you have suckled Satan’s imps!’ With his free hand Hogg pointed directly at Cecily Cade. ‘The girl you harbour. She is a witch of the foulest kind!’
‘What?’ It was Cecily, glancing uneasily at the men all around her. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘I—I am a Godly woman.’
‘She and Broom are known witches, cavorting with demons, suckling the Dark One’s imps, working magic upon those who would pray to the Holiest of Holies. And the third and fourth spokes in this wheel of hell are none other than your leader, Captain Stryker, and his familiar, the dwarf, Barkworth!’
The tor erupted in laughter. Stryker was glad of it. ‘I have known Broom not six days!’
‘But Broom has confessed,’ Hogg went on, unperturbed. ‘He claims, as God is his witness, that he and the witch travelled to Dartmoor in order to commune with you.’
He urged his horse on again, slid down from its muscular back, and drew a long stick of polished, dark timber from a loop in his saddle. Planting it firmly in the soft earth, Hogg lent heavily against it, limping several more paces towards the looming hill. He raised his voice further, beseeching the red-coated garrison.
‘Witchcraft, sorcery, contrived by the power of Beelzebub against the Church and the law of Almighty God, shall cease to thrive. The Lord most high has charged His people, His most righteous witch-catchers, with the Godliness and zeal to ensure that foul devilry is done only in vain.’
Hogg twisted the upper part of his torso back to stare at the tree, pointing his crutch at Broom. ‘Today you will see justice done to one part of this coven. Señor Ventura!’
With that, the dark-skinned man, waiting patiently beside the still silent Broom, stretched across to grasp the noose, slipping it quickly over his captive’s head.
Stryker watched in stunned silence. He knew he should say something – do something – but he was frozen as solid as his granite perch. Because he had remembered Osmyn Hogg. The name and face had meant nothing to him, but the maniacal voice and blazing eyes had stabbed at him from a time long since past.
Down at the tree the man called Ventura dropped Broom’s horse’s reins and slapped the beast’s rump sharply. The horse skittered forwards. Broom, pinioned by the noose, stayed in position, the saddle sliding away beneath him. And then his booted feet slipped from the stirrups, and, for a second, it seemed as though his body hovered in mid air, almost horizontal. But the rope snapped taut, jerked him backwards, snatching him violently in the opposite direction as if it would smash his bloody body into the tree.
And that, Stryker thought, would have been a mercy, for it might have crushed
the life out of him quickly. The reality, of course, was painfully different. Broom simply swung there, dangling from the end of the rope, feet tantalizingly close to the ground, but not close enough to make a connection. And his body, so inert and lifeless until now, seemed to lurch sickeningly, abruptly awakened like a puppet having its strings roughly jangled. He could not cry out, for the air was being steadily strangled from his throat by the tightening noose, but there had been no drop, no snapping fall to break his neck and spare his struggles. This was to be a hanging the hard way.
Broom danced. His arms, bound at the wrists behind his back, jolted left and right in a desperate struggle to become free, the muscles of the shoulders rippling, flexing, and tearing as they fought uselessly against secure bonds. His legs, though, were free to kick, and kick they did. They jerked and flung and writhed, knees thrusting high as they might, toes clawing at an invisible ledge out in front. Broom’s eyes bulged, his tongue gradually poked through swollen lips like a small snake venturing out of its cave. Even from this distance, Stryker could see the piss drip in a steady flow from the dying man’s boot heels.
And then, finally, the thrashing began to slow to a series of sporadic jerks as the life finally eased out of Otilwell Broom’s body. Stryker wanted to look away, but he could not. Instead he let a heavy, juddering sigh escape, realizing as he did that he had been holding his own breath.
‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’ witch-finder Osmyn Hogg suddenly boomed from below the tree. ‘Exodus, chapter 22, verse 18. Praise the Lord that His righteous work is now done!’
Stryker hauled himself to stand on the stack’s high crest. ‘I remember you, Hogg! I remember your cowardly face and your screams! That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Not witchcraft, but vengeance!’
Hogg ignored him, limping back to his horse and clambering into the saddle.
It was then that Colonel Wild spurred forth, coming within range of the foremost muskets but aware that the distance would render any shot feeble against his robust plate. ‘You have two nights!’ he bellowed, addressing the entire Royalist contingent. ‘Give up Stryker, his half-man and his witch, and you will walk from here unhindered! If you refuse, all will swing!’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 22
