‘Up you get,’ someone said and Mun was buffeted by another horse as a big hand thrust into the space between breastplate and buff-coat and gripped the iron, hauling Mun upright in the saddle. ‘Come on, Sir Edmund, you’re all right, laddie.’ Mun glanced at O’Brien and then towards the rebels. ‘Aye, they’re eager to make our acquaintance,’ the Irishman said, for the cuirassiers were charging towards them and with them the two troops of harquebusiers. The sound was like the denizens of Hell pummelling fists against the roof of their fiery prison, as Mun leant back, tugging a rein, and Hector stepped gracefully backwards despite the chaos. Those armoured riders were bearing down on them, roaring as they came, and Mun thought his troop must be overrun.
‘Heya!’ he yelled, his heels pressing Hector’s flanks, and drew his two long pistols, gloved wrists pulling both cocks back, and then he sensed a wave flowing with him, heard The Scot bawl at the troop to give fire, and he pulled the pistols’ triggers so that they roared like ferocious beasts. He saw armoured men punched backwards and gouts of blood flung from man and beast, and the smoke was everywhere, thick as fog.
‘Now back we go!’ O’Brien bellowed. ‘You too, Jonathan!’
Mun rammed his pistols back into their saddle holsters, pressed a knee against Hector’s heaving side and hauled the stallion round. ‘Away, Hector!’ he said as the stallion’s great muscles impelled him into a gallop. And those that could raced off as though a great black cloud of death were on their heels.
‘Five men down!’ John Cole said, wheeling his mare, letting the beast work out its excitement rather than trying to hold it still. ‘Maybe dead, maybe not.’
Mun looked back to where the rebels had stopped and were milling whilst their officers issued commands.
‘Seems they dare not stray far from their fellows,’ Jonathan said, bristling with the mad thrill of the skirmish, his eyes blazing in his handsome face.
‘Your father would kill me if he knew where you were,’ Mun gnarred, trying to read his enemy’s intentions. The rebels had made a chase of it and Mun had dared to hope they would follow them all the way to Oxford, but then after only some three hundred paces they had pulled up, the pursuit abandoned in favour of prudence.
‘That’s two more of my men dead, Sir Edmund,’ The Scot barked, walking his horse through the press towards Mun.
‘And two of mine, sir,’ Mun replied, like the ring of sword on sword. The other casualty was one of Prince Rupert’s men.
The Scot shook his head, undeterred. ‘This game is nae worth the price, lad. Nae for just a regiment o’ the bastards.’
‘Sir!’ a trooper called. ‘Sir!’ It was Trooper Banister and by his face Mun could not say whether the young man was jubilant or terrified. ‘More dragoons are coming up yonder plain. Lots of them and all out of Thame on Parliament’s shilling by the looks.’
Mun craned his neck, trying to see north past the great knot of enemy horse and their infantry beyond, but he could not spy Banister’s dragoons. Yet he had no reason to doubt the lad.
‘That’s the Devil’s own grin upon your face, sir,’ O’Brien said to Mun, slapping his big mare’s neck, teeth splitting the bristling bush of his beard.
Even The Scot, who was also tall in his saddle peering north, nodded before giving his men the order to form up once again facing the enemy. For dragoons coming south out of Thame, towards the unmistakable sound of battle, most likely presaged another regiment on the march. Another regiment they could lure onto Prince Rupert’s sword.
‘P’raps it’s Essex’s whole bloody army,’ O’Brien suggested, thick fingers busy cranking the spanner on his wheellock. ‘Never know our luck now, do we?’
‘Not so close this time, Sir Edmund,’ The Scot growled, turning his mount to get into position for another charge. ‘Let us keep a courteous distance and leave them wanting more.’
Mun ignored him. ‘Form up!’ he yelled, watching the enemy, his heart thumping with wild elation. With pride, too, that such men as these were his comrades in the fray.
Then his loyal black stallion, the finest horse in all the world, bore him forwards. To lure the rebels unto their destruction.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BY MIDDAY THEY had joined with Prince Rupert, who had ridden at the head of several troops of horse including his own Lifeguard, towards the distant crackle of gunfire. And neither had His Highness’s arrival come too soon, because it seemed that Essex must have emptied Thame of rebels and sent them all south with orders to give battle to the King’s men and score a victory in Parliament’s name. Mun and The Scot had drawn these men inexorably on, attacking and retreating over and over again, always stinging the rebels enough in pride and blood to keep them marching westwards lusting for vengeance.
‘Sir Edmund, it would seem you have been busy without me,’ the Prince said, reining in on an enormous stallion whose chestnut coat gleamed against the red and gold embroidered saddle. Sniffing the grass near by, his faithful white hunting poodle, Boy, snapped its jaws at a butterfly that flickered up out of reach.
‘We’ve poked a shit with a sharp stick and raised a stink,’ O’Brien muttered beside Mun.
‘The devils are eager to make my lord’s acquaintance,’ Mun said, removing his helmet and wiping sweat-soaked hair from his forehead.
The Prince grinned. ‘I am the Devil, do not forget,’ he said, referring to the nickname Rupert the Devil, given to him by the rebels in the early days of the war.
‘As I am certain you will remind them, your highness,’ Mun replied with a tired grin that was mirrored in the young Prince’s face. A mile away the rebel infantry came on in full battalia, ensigns unfurled and rippling in the breeze of the now cloudy day. The monotonous beat of their drums and the sound of yelled commands carried to the Royalists now and then, though Mun knew there could be no pitched battle for the bulk of the Prince’s infantry was in Oxford.
‘Here they come again!’ The Scot, near by, roared, pointing north-east to the seething mass of Parliamentary horse and dragoons which they had been leading on since morning.
‘O’Brien,’ Rupert said, looking down his nose at the big Irishman, ‘Clancy, isn’t it?’
The Irishman’s face flushed, matching his beard.
‘Aye— Yes, your highness.’
The Prince nodded, pulling a rein because his stallion was trying to bite Hector who seemed unimpressed by the beast, his ears flat and his tail swishing. ‘Bring your sharp stick, Clancy O’Brien.’ And with that Prince Rupert turned his horse and began issuing commands to his officers in readiness to join the game and lure the rebels further still.
Now it was mid afternoon, and having engaged the rebels in a series of rolling skirmishes they were near Chiselhampton and tiring. Mun guessed that they numbered some thousand horse but now, fortunately, some of the Prince’s Oxford-based infantry had arrived. Only eight hundred men all counted, but their muskets had made for a welcome sight. He had heard that that morning those men had overrun Parliamentary outposts at Postcombe and Chinnor, but since they were then under pressure from roaming troops of rebel horse the Prince had ordered them to withdraw and hold Chiselhampton Bridge in case a full-on retreat should become necessary in the face of Essex’s army.
With his dragoons taking up positions in the surrounding hedges, the Prince was setting his ambush and Mun was reminded again of the brief, mad carnage of Powick Bridge and his stomach would have rolled over itself at that thought if he were not already thrumming with the battle thrill after the day’s action.
‘You think they’ll come this far?’ Jonathan asked now, raising the guard of his helmet and dragging an arm across his face, smearing filth and sweat. They were riding back east to face the oncoming rebel horse yet again, which would give the Prince’s infantry time to withdraw back to Oxford and the dragoons a chance to prepare themselves. Looking at the young man Mun was struck by how quickly he had become a soldier.
‘They might,’ Mun said, wincing because the pain in
his injured thigh was now too great to ignore. His breeches were stained where blood had begun seeping from the wound. ‘They know His Highness is here, almost within reach. Up close the prospect of getting the better of him is too shiny for them to ignore.’ A stab of frustration announced itself at the reminder of the treasure that had somehow slipped from their own grasp that dawn. ‘But first the Prince will want to bleed them properly. The fools likely think they are winning. Their commanders believe we retreat because we dare not engage.’ He lifted the leather flask to his mouth, pulled the stopper with his teeth and then drank. ‘Rupert will want to disabuse them of this belief,’ he said, ramming the stopper home.
‘O’Brien, you Irish arse-berry!’
They looked over and saw another troop of the Prince’s Lifeguard joining their right wing and amongst them a grinning Richard Downes, who was giving O’Brien a gesture that would make a whore blush. Beside him were Vincent Rowe, Humphrey Walton, Purefoy, Burke, and the raw-boned Corporal Bard who nodded a greeting at Mun.
‘Downes, you seed, breed and spawn of an English whore! May the cat eat you and the Devil eat the cat!’ the Irishman called back, earning no few black looks and mumbled curses from the Englishmen around him. ‘Now we’re all in the shite,’ O’Brien grumbled to Jonathan.
‘Hey, lad! Your father is looking for you,’ Humphrey Walton called across to Lord Lidford’s son. Jonathan shot Mun a guilty look. ‘He’s looking for you too, Sir Edmund.’ Walton was clearly amusing himself, but Mun merely raised a hand and flapped it lazily as though he had heard it all before.
‘Do me a favour and stay alive,’ Mun growled at Jonathan, eyes ranging along the newly arrived troop, preoccupied in searching for the object of his hatred. There he was: Captain Nehemiah Boone, his own hate-filled eyes glaring at Mun as Mun somehow knew they had been since the troops had joined. Given their previous dealings Mun would not put it past Boone to shoot him in the back if the opportunity presented itself.
‘No matter how many times I pray that bastard might catch the pox –’ O’Brien put the edge of a flat hand against his throat, ‘or a halberd in his damn neck, come to that – the good Lord turns a deaf ear.’ He shook his head. ‘The black-hearted bastard,’ he muttered, then quickly turned his face to the sky and thumbed towards the captain. ‘Him, Lord, not you,’ he clarified.
Then the Prince, having taken a report from a scout who had galloped up with the look of a man who has narrowly escaped ruin, gave the command to halt and form up, for the enemy was almost upon them.
‘Where are we?’ Mun asked.
‘Buggered if I know,’ O’Brien answered, the others around them shrugging and shaking their heads.
‘About ten miles south-east of Oxford, sir, between the hamlet of Warpsgrove and Chalgrove village,’ one of The Scot’s troopers answered, and Mun nodded his thanks as he surveyed what was to be the battlefield. Before them a field of corn bristled in the breeze. Elsewhere was pastureland upon which rabbits sat cropping the grass, undeterred by the proximity of men and horses. To the north-east lay hedged fields full of crops and to the south-west a fallow open field of long grass that seemed to roll like gentle waves. At the end of the cornfield, separating the King’s men from Parliament’s, was a great hedge towards which the Prince was pointing his gleaming sword.
‘The insolent dogs are beyond that hedge!’ he yelled, ‘and as you can see they grow bold.’ Mun and his companions watched as several bodies of Parliamentarian horse and dragoons rode down a hill flecked with yellow St John’s wort, on their right beyond the hedge, to join their comrades in the enclosed pastureland. ‘There are three more troops held in reserve amongst the trees beside Warpsgrove House in yonder close,’ he went on, pointing his sword north-east. ‘It is possible that we face eleven troops, perhaps six hundred men, and what with their foot being a way off and we being above a thousand, we should make a rout of it.’
‘Do you think there’s more of us, because I bloody doubt it,’ O’Brien said in a low voice, scratching his bird’s-nest beard. ‘Maybe if the foot hadn’t buggered off.’
‘I think His Highness would want to charge them even if they had three times our number,’ Mun answered, walking Hector into the front line just a few places along from the Prince himself. In recognition of their tireless work throughout the morning, Rupert had honoured him and The Scot by inviting their troopers to ride with him in the centre of the Royalist line. To their north the Prince of Wales’s regiment made up the left wing and General Percy’s regiment had come up on the right. They were arrayed three deep, five foot between each man, so that given their number and the gaps between troops they presented a formidable front some eight hundred yards long.
We are the scythe, Mun thought, looking left and right and then across the field whose already tall crop swayed gently and brushed against their horses’ chests. We are the blade that will cut the rebels down. He had heard young Trooper Godfrey ask O’Brien why they were not leading the rebels back towards Chiselhampton Bridge and the ambush that awaited them. For had that not been the Prince’s own plan? ‘The rebels are too bloody close now,’ the Irishman had replied, ‘and might yet fall on the infantry’s rear and baffle the whole bloody lot. Bastards might even bring our own horse into confusion before we could recover to our cosy hides. Better to look a nasty dog in the eye than show it your arse, eh, Sir Edmund! Besides which,’ he added, getting to the nub of it, ‘His Highness loves nothing better than a fight. You see, young Godfrey, every man, even a lanky, long-nosed German, has some redeeming part in his character. Even you, lad.’ He grinned. ‘Though not even your ma can say what the part is.’
‘The lad loves his ’orse,’ Goffe had put in, ‘almost every night he does.’ And this had raised laughter from the men of Mun’s troop, men who knew they were about to ride into battle and might meet their deaths in that cornfield.
Now the crackle of firelocks punctured the day as Parliament men sniped through the hedge at the Royalist lines. O’Brien pointed ahead and Mun could make out a cluster of rebel dragoons hacking into the briars with swords, trying to carve a gap through which Essex’s horse could pour to give battle.
‘We’ll be here the rest of the damned day,’ O’Brien said, rubbing his mare’s ears which were twitching at flies. The hedge was quite an obstacle but not so thick that Mun could not see that a large body of horse had come up to support the dragoons and now faced General Percy’s regiment.
But the Prince had grown tired of waiting. ‘Yea!’ he yelled, his stallion rearing and screeching defiance. ‘This insolence is not to be ignored!’ Then the beast’s forelegs thumped down and the Prince whipped the flat of his sword against its rump and in a heartbeat was galloping towards the hedge.
‘Go on, Hector! Go on!’ Mun yelled, and gave his spurs so that Hector exploded like a bolt of lightning, his great muscles bunching and smoothing, his hooves pounding their four-beat rhythm like a war drum. Mun did not know who was with him and nor did he care, for he would follow the King’s nephew into the flames of Hell and slay Satan himself, such was his fury.
A bullet hissed past his ear and he heard the meaty thunk of it hitting flesh and then, in front of him, the Prince leapt the hedge and Hector, being the finest horse that ever lived, gave no pause but surged up and Mun threw himself flat against the stallion’s neck. In that held breath Mun saw the enemy below, saw the terror in their faces, then his bones rattled as Hector landed with a gruff snort and barely broke stride, neighing madly. Mun swung his sword, missing a dragoon’s face by a hand’s span, then he wheeled the blade back round and slashed it at a man’s raised arm, lopping the limb off from the elbow, so that the rebel fell away screaming, his raw stump spurting blood ten feet into the air.
‘With me!’ the Prince roared, wheeling his stallion as terrified rebels fled from him like rings from a stone dropped in a pool. ‘With me, King’s men!’ A bullet plucked the hem of Mun’s buff-coat and another whizzed so close that he felt its breath on his chee
k as he glanced back to see a handful more men leaping the hedge into the enemy’s maw. Through the hedge he could see the vast bulk of his own men thundering off north to find a way round the hedge and he hoped O’Brien and Jonathan were amongst them for he could not see them on this side of the barrier, though there were already dead men in that field.
‘My lord, we are too few,’ a corporal of the Prince’s Lifeguard said, wide-eyed, fighting to get his mount under control, and Mun suspected the man was right for there were but fifteen of them now on the enemy’s field. And yet the rebel dragoons had not stood. They were running like rabbits, bits of kit falling from them as they sought the protection of their mounted comrades, some of whom were firing carbines or wheellocks from the backs of their horses. A ball clanked against the Prince’s breastplate and his head flew back with the force of it. ‘Insolence!’ he shouted at the enemy horse across the field. ‘You offend the laws of God and man!’
Lead shot shredding the air around him, Mun sat tall in the saddle and trotted over to join those clustering around their prince.
‘Like field mice before the owl, hey!’ Rupert said, flashing Mun a handsome grin, and just then came the battle-cry of ‘For God and the King!’ and Mun twisted to see those they had left behind – those who had not risked jumping the hedge – now cantering across the field towards them from the north.
‘With me!’ the Prince yelled to these men, thrusting his bloodied sword into the air, his stallion gnashing its teeth like some wild monster from a child’s nightmare. A dog’s barking cut through the thunder of hooves, the cries of men and beasts and the percussive crack of firearms, and Mun looked back to the hedge and a flash of white amongst the brambles. The Prince’s hunting poodle, Boy, scrambled through and came bounding across the field towards them.
‘Here, Boy!’ the Prince called as his men readied themselves for the inevitable charge and the enemy horse across the flower-strewn meadow bristled in their ranks, their commanders unsure whether to attack or flee. Here and there horses whose saddles had been emptied by the rebel dragoons stood cropping the grass as though they had not a care, whilst their fellow creatures, as yet slaves to their masters, shrieked and tossed their heads in fear and excitement.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 27
