Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (22 page)

The musketeer swung his weapon sideways to point directly at Quigg’s chest. ‘Shut it, you poxy nigit.’

Quigg looked at Lisette instead. ‘He has one shot, mademoiselle. One shot.’ And with that he strode forwards, chest pressing into the muzzle so that the blackcoat was forced to stagger backwards in shock.

The shot burst about the chamber like the eruption of a volcano. Smoke lurched out from the doorway, filling the room, roiling at the low ceiling, choking Lisette and the girl in a malevolent miasma of grit and sulphur. And from that smoke the body of Christopher Quigg tumbled, flung from his feet by the sheer force of the lead ball as it punched through his chest, flattening to a wide disc as it smashed flesh and ribs, and ripping out through his back.

Lisette did not stop to look. She gripped Cecily’s cold hand tightly, dragged her up from the bench and ran into the smoke. They collided with the musketeer somewhere beyond the threshold, and she pulled the dirk from her cloak, jabbing it into the smoke. On the third strike she was rewarded with a scream, followed quickly by the clatter of metal on stone as the musket hit the ground, and she pushed on until they were out in the corridor. She turned to find the blackcoat still there, trying to stand his ground, but his right hand clawed at his left shoulder as fresh blood pulsed between his bare fingers. Lisette did not even pause to think. She released the girl and ran at the guard, stabbing at him again and again. He held up both hands to defend his face, though the wounded arm would not rise above his sternum, and lost two fingers for his trouble. He screamed again, recoiling before his assailant’s startling ferocity, but she leaped at him, knowing more men would be here soon, and slashed at his throat and eyes. One of the blows broke though his lacerated palms, nicking his cheek, and he twisted away. She kicked him in the groin, his hands swept low, and she thrust the blade hard into his neck. He went down, not dead but immobile, gasping for air like a trout on a hook, blood pooling unstoppably about him in a crimson halo on the hard stone.

Lisette went back to where the pale-faced girl stood, mouth agape, eyes glistening with horror. She took her hand again, pulled hard so that Cecily stumbled forth, and coaxed her past the prone soldier, blood smearing their shoes to leave macabre footprints in their wake.

They rushed out into the open. Before them, two black-coated musketeers were running up from the main entrance, calling to one another in hoarse voices.

‘They’ll shoot us!’ Cecily’s voice was shrill with terror.

‘They are too far away, Miss Cade, and they cannot shoot while they’re running.’ Lisette ushered Cecily out on to the open grassland that divided the former hospital’s lands from the copse. ‘The horses are in the trees. Can you ride?’

‘Of course.’

‘Not
do you know how
to ride, Miss Cade.’ She cast an appraising gaze from Cecily’s shoes to the drawn features of her face. ‘
Can
you?’

Cecily set her jaw determinedly. ‘Aye.’

‘
C’est
bon
. Follow me, and do not look back.’

CHAPTER 9

The South Gate, Gloucester, 10 August 1643

Nikolas Robbens watched his companions shiver in the chill air. It was less than an hour after midnight, and though the days were sweaty and cloying, the darkness seemed to throw a marrow-numbing shroud over the land. He drew his cloak tighter, not willing to show that he too felt the bite. He wryly observed his new master, the man they called Slager, give a sudden violent shiver, his massive shoulders trembling beneath layers of wool and buff-hide. How a man of such size could feel the cold was a mystery.

The three of them – Robbens, Slager and the crookback, Nobbs – were standing on the bastion that protected the city’s southern port. From here they gazed out upon the fields that stretched beyond Gloucester’s ramshackle suburbs. Further south was the open land of Tredworth Field, while immediately to their left was the wide expanse of rough heathland known as Gaudy Green.

‘Nothing green about it this night,’ Slager grunted at Robbens’ left side.

‘Though perhaps it is a little gaudier than before,’ Robbens replied, eliciting a snort of amusement from the huge man. It was a colourful sight, even in the darkness. The tents of thousands of soldiers had been pitched on the heath, clusters of off-white awnings staked to the soil around fires that now guttered manically, the orange glow licking hellishly against the banners of the great men of the land. And those standards, driven into the ground on long poles so that the rebels on Gloucester’s feeble walls could see, were harbingers of the terrible price to be paid for defying a king.

‘There’s more to come,’ Slager intoned grimly. ‘Many more.’ He was sucking a pipe, and he tapped the chewed clay stem against his front teeth before slowly blowing a fragrant funnel of smoke from his wide nostrils. ‘I hear the whole royal army’s set for this place. Look to the hills at dawn.’

Nobbs was leaning against the parapet and staring down at the Royalist encampment, which seemed to grow by the hour. He straightened suddenly, arching his back, and grimaced as the twisted shoulders clicked. ‘And we’ll be trapped ’ere.’

Slager looked down at him. ‘This is not our fight, Nobbs, remember that. When the city falls, we will surrender with the rest and look to put our plans into action.’ He paused to draw again on the pipe, closing his eyes as he breathed in the smoke. When he opened them again, he stared off at the horizon, his face taking on a serene glaze. ‘Our destiny lies elsewhere. And for that destiny to come to pass, we must be in Gloucester.’

Robbens watched Slager and marvelled. He had met many like him in the Low Countries, those who would travel to the ends of the earth for their cause, but few had hailed from England. Slager was different to the usual gentlemen adventurers who had sailed across the Channel to seek fame and fortune in the destruction of a continent. Something about him spoke of an inner resolve that would never waver. The name alone spoke volumes to a man like Robbens, who knew what it meant in the Dutch tongue: butcher. He did not wish to discover how Slager had garnered such a name, contenting himself simply with the knowledge that the man was formidably wealthy. And, more importantly, that should this mission succeed, he would pay Robbens’ family a lifetime’s worth of coin. ‘You are certain he will come?’

Slager nodded, jowls quivering. ‘Certain as I can be. There was talk the Cavaliers would come here after Bristol. We listened to the talk and travelled here first.’

Robbens nodded. They had vacated their base at Malmesbury as soon as word reached them of the Royalist advance. The king, it appeared, was going to take Gloucester before he looked to London, and that suited Slager just fine. The three had ridden direct to the city, where Slager’s reputation had seen them welcomed with open arms, much to Robbens’ surprise, and after that they had simply waited. The Dutchman moved his straw-coloured hair from his eyes with a spindly hand, before straightening the ear-string across his left shoulder. ‘And now the bastards have come.’

Slager pointed the pipe at the flame-bathed camp. ‘Now they have come. The first part of the rumour was right, so I must trust in the second part. He will come and you will kill him.’

‘I still can’t see—’ Nobbs began gingerly. Slager turned to him.

‘See what?’

Nobbs swallowed thickly. ‘How we’ll get close enough.’

Slager stepped up to the rampart, tapping his pipe against the stone. The black dregs fell away to sprinkle the ditch below. ‘You leave that to me, Nobbs.’

‘And the rest you must leave to me,’ Robbens said. This one death was all that was needed to complete his life’s dream. And it was hardly a challenge to a man like Nikolas Robbens. He killed without mercy. He was an assassin.

Stryker had hoped they would kill him quickly. He had looked into Port’s gleaming eyes, seen the vengeance within that dark gaze, and known for certain that the musketeer would not let him live. And perhaps he would still be right in that, at least. But quick it was not.

The pain seemed to smoulder. It was as though his body had been dusted with black powder and set alight – as his face had been all those years ago – for the feeling was sickeningly familiar. A relentless burn as muscles flexed and released in grotesque spasm, driven mad by their agonies, beaten to trembling jelly by fists and feet. He felt as though he was a mere shell, crippled and twisted, curled inwards on the stinking floor like a malformed foetus.

It was fully dark now. Stryker wondered what the time was, not that it mattered, and he strained his neck to look up at the window. It told him nothing, though he saw a cluster of tiny pricks of light that he supposed were stars. He peered around the room, suffocated by the oppressive blackness. Where was Skellen? He had been taken hours ago; dragged out backwards after one blow from the man named Bones. The scrape of his boot heels still rung in Stryker’s ears. But where had they taken him? Stryker let his head slump. No Skellen. No friends at all. No way out.

Richard Port had not gone running to Massie. Nor did he have any reason to. For it increasingly became clear to Stryker that the musketeer had not seen the Royalist agents make their clandestine signal. He had simply been patrolling the streets, reached the foot of the rampart, and looked up.

‘And there you were, like a gift from God Almighty Himself,’ Port had said. ‘And I knew I had to take my chance. By Christ, I knew it.’

Port, it transpired, had spent a whole day seeking his green-coated comrades after the calamitous ambush outside Bristol, but had found none of them. And so he had walked to Gloucester, flinching at the call of every owl and the bark of every fox in the night, clutching his shattered wrist, praying he would not run into soldiers – or worse – and cursing the one-eyed captain of foot whose boot heel had inflicted such unremitting and unwarranted torture.

‘And you’ve turned your coat,
sir
?’ Port had sneered as he paced in front of Stryker. The captain and Skellen had moved back against the far wall, immediately beneath the low window, and stared up at their triumphal captor as he revelled in his small victory. ‘You’re a proper soldier now, are you? A man of the Parliament?’

‘Aye, that I am,’ Stryker had answered, forcing his trepidation deep down into his guts, lest Port sense it.

‘Well that is just grand,’ Port had replied jauntily, turning to the pair of bluecoats who had been with him on the rampart, ‘ain’t that right, Bones?’

The bear-like man who had felled Stryker with the butt end of his musket offered a grin that showed off a set of bizarrely tiny teeth. ‘Right you are, Dicky.’

And then the beatings had started. Slow at first. A moment of calm, for Port to posture and crow, before a heavy fist to the midriff from the gargantuan Bones. But as the green-coated ringleader’s reserve of self-congratulatory statements began to run dry, he had cut his eager henchmen loose.

‘Cut him up, Dicky,’ the second bluecoat had said, ‘can’t we? Chop off his stones, or—’

‘All in good time,’ had been Port’s reply. And then he had gazed down at Stryker with a startling malevolence. ‘I do not care what you’re doing here, Captain. All I know is that a one-eyed bastard broke my arm. And now he’s here. You tortured me, you swaggering goddamned bravo. Out in that forest, when the battle was over and you had me at your mercy, you crushed my fucking arm like it was a twig.’

Even now, in the silence of the night-shrouded room, Stryker could not defend his actions. He had seen Port’s injury, had crushed his bones beneath his boot and, though it was painful to admit, he had revelled in the agony it caused. It had been grief, he knew. The loss of Burton had been his fault. Stryker had carried the guilt with him for weeks, finally letting go of his restraint as he inflicted suffering on the prone Richard Port.

A stab of pain pulsed through his guts with sudden venom, and he curled himself more tightly around his knees, spitting a savage oath through the bile that bubbled in his mouth. For a moment he wondered whether Massie would step in to help a fellow gentleman. But he remembered Port’s words as Bones’ battering-ram fists thumped into his guts.

‘Governor Massie is not aware of your current predicament,’ the greencoat had said. ‘Oh, he thinks you’ve absconded, sir, aye. For I slipped a groat or three to my old feodary, Mister Dodd, and it appears he spied you leaping over the lowest part of the wall. Another man was beaten up on the rampart, I hear. They’ve assumed that was you as well.’ Port had grinned broadly, as though meeting an old friend for the first time in years. ‘So here we are, Captain—Stryker, was it? I’m sure I heard them call you by that name.’