Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (28 page)

Skaithlocke’s eyes widened. ‘Pray God by your hand.’

Stryker nodded. ‘Autumn last. At Brentford Fight.’

‘But were you not on the same side? I heard he had joined the Cavaliers.’

‘Their debt to me was older than this war.’

‘
Ha
!’ Skaithlocke exclaimed happily. ‘You are still the man I knew!’

But perhaps you are not, thought Stryker, still considering his friend’s uncharacteristically partisan stance. His thought was severed by a deep jolt that rippled through the floorboards, accompanied by a series of disparate shouts and screams from somewhere out in the city. He waited until the vibrations had died before staring at Skellen. ‘Ordnance?’

The sergeant nodded. ‘It’s started, sir.’

Skaithlocke stood, held out his hand for Stryker to grasp. ‘Tell me, Stryker. Do you think you can walk?’

Perhaps, Stryker reflected as they made painfully slow progress down to the V-shaped wedge of wall that formed the southern tip of Gloucester’s defences, he had been a little optimistic about his ability to walk. The sleep had done him the world of good, that was certainly true, but he still felt as though he had been trampled by a whole troop of cavalry, and Skellen was forced to take his arm in order to support the captain’s weight.

But walk he did, and he was soon helped slowly on to the battlements, staring southwards, the two turncoats gazing in unconcealed awe at the sight below. It was a city in a field, a sprawling mass of grubby canvas islands in a sea of green and brown. White-shirted soldiers milled between the tents, bored witless, Stryker knew all too well, as they settled into life as a besieging army. Further off, a troop of cavalry performed their evolutions amid a frenetic cloud of dust, their plated torsos winking through the sandy pall like pearls in a silt-clogged seabed. A block of pikemen drilled in one corner of the camp, their long dark staves rising and falling like the spines of a gigantic hedgehog, while smoke slewed sideways across the front rank of a company of musketeers who were practising in the heat. Either side of the wedge of stone that formed the intersection of the south and east walls, he could see newly constructed artillery batteries. They were stark against the green landscape, dark rectangles of raised earth protected by a shallow ditch and a ring of wicker gabions filled with soil and stone debris. Smoke still wreathed one of the batteries. He looked at Skaithlocke. ‘No doubt where the blast came from.’

Skaithlocke nodded grimly. ‘They call this point Rignall Stile. The malignants mean to catch the exposed corner of the wall in a vicious crossfire.’ He pointed at another spot, this time closer to the defences. ‘And when they’ve made a breach—’

He let his words hang so that Stryker could follow his outstretched finger. Little more than a hundred paces from the defences, running along either side of the road and curving beyond the sharp angle of the city wall, he could see dark lines in the scrubland. They took the form of gigantic zigzags, which were running parallel with the defences in the main, but thrust inwards towards the city at intervals, like huge brown serpents basking in the sweltering afternoon.

‘Saps,’ Stryker said.

‘Aye.’

Stryker stared down at them. Once a breach had been made in the wall, the Royalists would need to bring their assault troops close enough to launch the attack. In order to cover that danger
ous ground between camp and wall, they were digging trenches –
saps – that would allow those troops to move up in relative safety. They were just over a yard wide, just under two yards deep, and would, in time, extend as far as Gloucester’s outer ditch. Once there, Stryker imagined, the Royalist troops would ferry material such as faggots and stout planks along the channels, all the way up to the foremost men, in order to fill the ditch well enough for a crossing to be attempted. They were still some distance from that goal, however, and he could just about discern the occasional helmeted head as a man bobbed up and down behind his timber screen. It was exceedingly dangerous work, for a sapper was a prime target for sharpshooters on Gloucester’s wall. Stryker wondered if the man had volunteered for digging duty for the extra pay, or whether he had been placed there as a punishment.

‘They’re within range,’ Skaithlocke said, evidently guessing at Stryker’s pattern of thought. ‘We line the walls and pelt them with shot, but they seem to draw closer by the hour.’ His gaze drifted westward. ‘You see the Severn?’

Stryker traced the wide glistening course of the river to the west of the entrenchments. ‘It protects the flank.’

‘Aye. The Welsh are camped out at the old palace on the far bank. The Vineyard, the locals call it. The river keeps the bastards at bay, thanks be to God.’

Stryker’s eye fell upon a group of stone buildings on the near side of the river, some four hundred yards to the south-west of where they stood. More tents, carts, men, horses and oxen could be seen milling about the area and its surrounding fields, which were set within the neat lines of trees. ‘An orchard?’

‘Llanthony Priory, Stryker. General Ruthven is based there, his troops billeted amongst the apple blossom. There was a tower there until recently, but fortunately the governor had the good sense to pull it down before the buggers could use it to spot their damned ordnance.’

‘What is the situation to the north?’

‘They are camped up there too, have no doubt. But it is boggy terrain, Stryker, not good for artillery, mine-works or saps. From here, though, Gaudy Green and the Priory, they intend to smash this part of the wall from both sides. If they make a breach, they will crawl up their damned trenches and sweep down through the city with impunity.’ He offered a shrug that set his jowls rippling. ‘Would you not do the same?’

‘I would.’

‘Now we should be away from here, for it is not safe,’ Skaithlocke said, but even as Stryker registered his warning, the battery on Gaudy Green thundered into life. Bright tongues of orange licked out over the gabions, belching dark smoke as they recoiled on their big wheels, and a dreadful howl shrieked about the blue sky.

‘
Jesu
,’ Stryker heard Skellen hiss, and all three ducked by sheer instinct.

The iron balls soared past them somewhere to their left, careening into one of the taller houses that were tucked within the tight streets just beyond the wall. A vast smash echoed about the other roofs, swiftly followed by the chaotic din of tumbling tile and masonry. But when he straightened, Stryker saw to his surprise that the cannonade had not served to cow the citizens. Indeed, far from hiding away, the people of Gloucester, alongside Stamford’s bluecoats, a smattering of dragoons that had escaped from Bristol, and volunteers from the Town Regiment, had emerged in groups from their temporary places of shelter. They now hurriedly gathered up the splintered rubble, loading it on to wagons or into baskets on their backs, and brought it to the foot of the wall.

‘The common folk work alongside the soldiers,’ Skaithlocke said proudly. ‘They pile the debris into gabions, and place the baskets against the wall. We are also bolstering it with turf to absorb the shock of the guns.’

Stryker looked at Skaithlocke in amazement. ‘Turf from where?’

‘The north-west. Little Mead.’

Stryker had heard Massie mention Little Mead, and remembered that it was a boggy water meadow. But that would surely now be within range of Vavasour’s Welsh marksmen. ‘Are they not shot to pieces?’

‘No. The women—’

‘Women?’

Skaithlocke nodded. ‘It is the women in the main. They work in gangs out on the wet soil, cutting and piling the clods, and they bring it to wherever it is needed. Often-times to replace a small breach, but usually to add to the walls hereabouts, where the enemy seem to keep their focus. I wonder if it is the very fact that they are women that stays the malignants in the trenches, for they could take a terrible toll if they so wished.’

Stryker blew out his cheeks, unable – and unwilling – to hide his astonishment at the sheer bravery of the people of this beleaguered city.

Skaithlocke smiled. ‘Little Charlie may pound the walls, but we shall plug each gap as it opens, mark my words.’

Stryker thought about that. It was a surprise that the Royalists had chosen this route, given his message to Killigrew. ‘If I am honest,’ he said, ‘I had expected the enemy to storm the place.’

‘And that might have worked, I’ll admit, for we do not have the manpower to defend every inch of the city against such overwhelming numbers.’

‘Then why does Rupert not storm?’

‘Because it is not Rupert’s decision to make,’ Skaithlocke replied with a wry smile. ‘We understand the King would not countenance another escalade so soon after Bristol. Rupert and he quarrelled, and the Prince skulked off to be with his villainous horsemen. Overall command is with Ruthven, who now plots the siege.’

So the message did not reach Killigrew, Stryker thought, or it was ignored. He could well imagine Rupert’s chagrin at hearing of his uncle’s adopted strategy. His eye caught a sudden flurry of movement over towards the huge bastion of the South Gate, and he squinted to see what was happening. Men were gathering at a point below the wall, blue-coated and armed. He indicated the party with a nod. ‘A sortie?’

‘As I say,’ Skaithlocke replied, following Stryker’s gaze as he removed a leather-bound perspective glass from a snapsack across his shoulder, ‘we plug the holes.’ He handed the glass to Stryker. ‘But we do not sit back and wait for them to be made.’

Stryker lifted the glass to his solitary eye, and trained it on the bluecoats. They were indeed armed; some with swords, others with muskets, and many more with dirks, carbines, pistols and even hefty wooden staves. ‘Who is the officer? A yellow-haired man, by the looks of it.’

‘Lieutenant Harcus. Young, brave and mad as a Frenchman. See there, he leads them out.’

Sure enough, Stryker watched as the officer led his squad of bluecoats out through a little sallyport in the wall. They had long, mud-caked siege ladders that, though he could not see from his position on the wall, he guessed would be used to span the defensive ditch on the outer face. He waited, glass fixed on the far side of the ditch, breath held, anticipating the emergence of the courageous sally party. The first man crossed, followed by another, then another, all the men leaping wildly on to the far side of the dry moat. Then the flaxen-haired Harcus was with them, blade glinting as he whirled it above his head.

Muskets fired immediately, blazing forth from the Royalists in the foremost saps. One bluecoat fell, the rest screamed in battle-crazed fury, and Stryker felt his heart batter his ribs as he watched them race like hunted deer across the tattered no-man’s-land beyond the ditch, ducking and weaving against the unseen leaden balls that whistled past their ears. They were now at the first brown, zigzagging trench, Harcus still screaming unintelligible oaths, and they launched themselves into the complex labyrinth that the king’s men had constructed.

‘Fuck me,’ Skellen whispered. The sergeant did not have the benefit of the perspective glass, but he could see the smoke rising from the saps well enough, and could hear the gunfire. Louder blasts could be heard now, rocking the rampart at their feet, and they could all see the spray of black mud shoot into the air like an inky fountain. ‘Grenadoes.’

Stryker made to speak but found he could not, and merely offered a mute nod. The scrap would be terrible in those stinking trenches, he knew. Mud-calked, bloody and fierce. The bluecoats were there to destroy the saps and kill the sappers, and the Royalists would do whatever it took to rid their hard-dug works of the gnashing, snarling Roundheads. They would be clawing at one another down in that cloying maze, biting and spitting and killing.

A score of people had joined them on the wall. Massie was there, some twenty yards along the rickety walkway, surrounded by his ever-present entourage of soldiers and bureaucrats, while many of the turf-lugging townsfolk had made the climb too. Save the governor, who coolly followed proceedings through his own leather-bound lens, they cheered Harcus and his squad, bellowing abuse at the sappers and calling down God’s punishment on the men who would dig too close to their beloved city. It was terrible yet infectiously exhilarating, and Stryker felt a pang of guilt, for part of him wished Harcus’ brave bluecoats success. It was reckless, battle-lusting valour at its most desperate, and he could identify with it wholeheartedly, despite his secret allegiance to the men who would strive to bring down Gloucester’s patchwork walls.

Stryker bit his lip hard lest he add his own voice to the cheers, flinching as another grenadoe blasted a trench to a fuming morass. But suddenly he saw Skellen, who was braying with the rest, and realized that now was the time to show that their coats truly had been turned, and he took up the shout, bellowing for the king’s men to slink back to their masters if they did not wish for more of their blood spilt. Along the wall, he noticed Edward Massie was eyeing him, and he offered a nod that was immediately returned.

‘He knows all,’ Skaithlocke’s stentorian voice broke through the din. ‘You are welcome in our ranks.’

‘Again, I thank you,’ Stryker acknowledged.

‘No matter, old friend,’ came the reply. ‘Now let us see to your recovery, for the governor wants you out leading our sallies as soon as possible.’

Stryker froze. He peered up at Skaithlocke. ‘Sir?’