Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (59 page)

Lisette had seen the corpses. She stopped, a ghastly horror contorting her features. She looked at him, eyes bright with hate. ‘Murderer.’

Now it was Tainton’s turn to laugh. He made it scornful. ‘One more murder to commit,
mademoiselle
.’ As he hoped, she rushed at him, pouncing like a cat in the darkness. He pulled the solid gold crucifix from the wagon and tossed it at her as hard as he could. It caught Lisette on the side of the head, a glancing blow but enough to crack hard on her skull. She lost her footing, stumbled the last few yards, and sprawled in a mangled mess at his feet.

k

Kovac was in the front rank of the Westminster redcoats, and he levelled his twin pistols at the men rushing out of the ditch. The assault had stalled, the feeble Cripplegates scattered by a single cannon shot and a gaggle of harridans armed only with stones, and he hoped each of the pathetic cowards would see the end of a rope by nightfall, but his flanking unit had survived. The offi­cers at the front had held them firm, the sergeants and corporals on the sides and rear had issued the right threats, and the men, nervous as they were, had not capitulated. Their sister unit, on the west flank, had gone, it seemed, their carefully ordered rows dissolved and already mingled with the greens pushing back on the reserves. But Kovac’s unit was still strong, and it could obliterate this paltry sortie with a single, well-delivered volley.

He pulled the pistols to full cock, aimed at the men jeering the failed Cripplegates, and waited for the order to give fire. It was then that Captain Lancelot Forrester came into his sights, as if gifted by God Himself. He emerged from the tiny sally port, sword brandished and glinting, and scrambled down into the ditch. In moments he was back up, bellowing with the rest of the vile malignants, and Wagner Kovac laughed because he no longer cared about the faltering escalade. He would have his man after all.

Stryker caught Forrester’s eye. ‘There!’

Forrester looked to their left, to the half-dozen lines of red-coated musketeers still arrayed in good order on what had been the right flank of the enemy division. ‘At them!’ Forrester snarled. ‘Get at them!’

The sally party seemed to veer as one, coming off the half-moon and bolting straight towards the Parliamentarians. Stryker was there, Skellen too, Barkworth’s Gaelic war-cries hoarse and chilling somewhere behind. There was no use running away now, for their backs would be carved by lead, so they kept going forwards as the officer commanding the Roundheads held his blade high, pausing for the briefest moment. With a shout that was drowned by the screams of the oncoming Royalists, he swept it vertically towards his boots.

‘Down!’ Stryker bellowed. Johnson’s sally party dived forwards, sliding in the filth just as a furious volley roared out from the front rank of the redcoats. Dirty smoke slewed on the wind, forming a barrier between the two groups, but the Royalists were up, none hurt, and their bared teeth gleamed white against faces smeared in mud. Stryker knew that they must have seemed like demons rising from the depths of the earth, wild-eyed banshees that could not be killed, and he brought back his blade just as the second rank opened fire.

Wagner Kovac cried out. Not because his first pistol ball had missed Forrester, but because the man at his back had shot him in the shoulder. All along the line of Westminster Liberty musketeers, men fell. But they did not fall back, shot by the enemy. Instead they fell forwards, smashed in their heads and spines by a second rank in sheer disarray. The redcoats had panicked, Kovac realized as he dropped his pistols, one still cocked, and sank to his knees. After the front rank fired, the men behind should wait for their comrades to retire, then step forth to bring their own muskets to bear. But they had not waited. Frightened by the charging Royalists, they had discharged their weapons too soon, and now the bodies of their comrades dropped all along the line, slumping face-first in the sloppy morass.

Lancelot Forrester hit the redcoats at speed, slamming into the first man and cleaving a glistening gash down the side of his neck. He could hardly believe what had happened. They had charged at this large body of men, only to see perhaps fourscore of the enemies killed by their own. The men at the back were already running, bolting like deer before so many hounds, the will to fight gone from them. Two mad-eyed soldiers leaped out of the broiling melee to cut off his advance. One, a thickly bearded sergeant toting a blood-wet halberd, jabbed at Forrester’s face with its razor point, while his comrade, a short fellow with pocked skin and a bulbous nose, swung a musket butt low, meaning to shatter his shins. Forrester vaulted the musket and parried the halberd aside. He turned like an acrobat inside the range of the staff and slammed his head into the sergeant’s nose. The sergeant recoiled, blood cascading over the bristles of his beard, but Forrester sensed his pock-ravaged confederate lunging from somewhere to the right. There was no time to respond, and he braced himself for the blow. It did not come. The man to his right screamed, a querulous, skull-splitting noise, and Forrester took the moment to hew open the belly of the sergeant with a horizontal slash of his sword. He turned to see that the second man had been skewered on a long blade, his jaw still working furiously like a landed fish. Forrester looked up to see Major Lawrence standing over the hapless rebel.

The major’s face was a mask of anguish, for his hunched spine evidently complained at this unnatural employment, but Lawrence shot Forrester a wolfish, blood-spattered grin and jerked his sword free of the red-coat’s neck. ‘I’ll be damned if I miss another battle.’

Forrester made to thank him, but Lawrence was gone, screeching like a hawk in a shrill battle-cry. Forrester stepped on, waded haphazardly over the new-made breastwork of bodies, and then an irresistible strength hauled at his ankle. He fell, plunging on his side in the mud, sword skittering away. He twisted on to his front, pushing up, but something still grasped his boot tight. He kicked hard, feeling a crack as he did so, and then he was free, sprawling away. He clambered to his feet, barely keeping his balance, and snatched up a discarded pistol. The man who had tackled him was caked in mud, his left shoulder and arm entirely soaked in blood, but in his right hand he held a filthy pistol that he now raised. He had a beard that was matted with yet more grime, and it might have been impossible to know his identity except for the eyes that peered out from the black mask like two nuggets of ice.

Forrester nodded at Kovac’s thigh. ‘How fares the leg, Captain?’

Wagner Kovac patted it gingerly. ‘It hurts, you dandy arse-licking Papist. And I’m major now.’

‘My apologies,
Major
Kovac,’ Forrester said. ‘They promote men for failure in your army, it appears.’

Kovac spat a gritty globule of phlegm at Forrester, jerked the pistol out with whip-crack speed, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He looked down at the spent short-arm in astonishment, and Forrester lifted the pistol he had grabbed and shot the Croat between the eyes.

k

What if the French whore had spoken truthfully? Tainton had made his pact with Wagner Kovac on the premise that Waller would reduce Basing to a steaming ruin. Never had the possibility occurred to him that the tenacious little general could fail against so meagre a stronghold. He still prayed for victory, but still the walls held, still the Parliamentarian colours were not hanging from the battlements. So Tainton had decided to find a horse. The whore, unconscious and bleeding in the chalky vault, had challenged him to take the gold to the gates and see what might come to pass. She evidently had considered him a fool. But Tainton was no fool. He would go to the gates, but he would not be stopped.

Tainton left Lisette in the darkness. Outside, the carts used to bring the wounded back from the walls were still gainfully employed. He waited as two, each drawn by a skinny mule, trundled off towards the south of the circular bailey, where the noise of battle remained loudest. As they disappeared a similar little vehicle came up. This one, drawn by a sturdy piebald horse and driven by a lad of perhaps eight or nine, carried three men on its rear platform. Tainton watched as the chirurgeon’s assistants emerged from the Great Hall, each smeared in the blood of other men, and hurriedly lifted two of the three men down. They conveyed them in turn to the wine cellars, while the third man, evidently only nursing a flesh wound to his forearm, was able to find his own way down for treatment.

As this group vanished, another team of stained and red-fingered attendants emerged. There were six men this time, working in pairs, and between each, lolling like a rolled carpet, was a corpse. They swung them on to the cart, gave the lad a wave, then went back inside. The boy clicked his tongue sharply and the horse was immediately compliant as it turned a circle, the cart jerking into life. Tainton ran to stop it, grasping the bridle, holding the piebald firm.

The boy, his wide, freckled face looking perplexed beneath a shock of red hair, frowned deeply. ‘Sir?’

‘Rebel dead?’ he asked.

The boy nodded. ‘Givin’ them back, sir.’

Tainton smiled sweetly, released the bridle and clambered up to the driver’s bench. He hit the boy once, sharp and hard on the nose, and the brittle little body crumpled rearwards in a heap on the back of the cart.

k

Captain Innocent Stryker was back at the sally port. The Roundhead division had ruptured, imploded, and was now in full retreat back up to the plateau of Basing Park. He supposed they would come again, but not yet. All along the Old House curtain wall, men, women and children cheered. The Marchioness of Winchester was offering a regal wave to any who looked up at her tower, as if she alone had won the day, and Johnson was busily hauling his small detachment of heroes into the ditch and up to the wall. Stryker manned the port, watching warily for an enemy counter-attack as he ushered each man through until eventually all were accounted for. The last man in was the colonel, who ordered the hole closed and then stretched out his hand.

‘You came on horseback, Captain, yes?’ he asked as Stryker shook the proffered palm.

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Then I’d ask you to recover your steed and locate Colonel Rawdon and His Lordship. Convey my regards and impart detail of what has transpired here.’

‘Pleasure, sir,’ Stryker said, striding along the base of the wall to find the tethered gelding.

‘And Stryker?’

Stryker paused, turned. ‘Sir?’

Johnson slammed home his sword with a rakish grin. ‘Glad to have had you with me.’

The heavens opened as Stryker clambered up on to the skittish white. He guided the snorting beast up to the centre of the Old House, the Great Gatehouse looming immediately up ahead. He veered right at the imposing stone fountain, guessing Rawdon and the marquess might be inspecting the damage done to the huge Tudor mansion by Waller’s artillery. Already the rain was hard, the droplets huge and chill, and pools began to glisten in the ruts made by the wagons carrying dead and wounded back and forth from the infirmary.

His glance was only a fleeting one. So obscured was it by the rainfall that at first he ignored it for a trick of tiredness. But he looked again at one such vehicle. It was trundling towards the arched tunnel at the base of the Great Gatehouse. Somehow, its wheels seemed strange. Almost as though the bottom few inches had been cut away by some magic. He pulled the gelding to a slippery halt and stared more intently. The wheels, he saw, were cast abnormally low at the rear, sunk so far into the mud that it was a wonder they moved at all. It seemed strange that one wagon would be loaded with so many casualties, given the fleet the marquess had made available for the task. It made no sense.

The battle seemed to have waned. Exultant cheers replaced the cacophony of gunfire, cannonade, screams and drums. Tainton prayed yet. He beseeched the Lord to harden Waller’s resolve, give courage to his men, instil fear in the hearts of the Romish Paulet and his minions. Only when he coaxed the piebald, hitched now to the gold-laden wagon, to the far side of the Great Gatehouse, did the lone, mournful trumpet cry out from the direction of the village. Tainton had been a soldier, a good one, and he knew the call to retreat when he heard it. Waller had lost his nerve.

He pressed on. In the open, on the large, empty fan-shaped space that served as the Old House outer-yard, the rain hammered in chilling, diagonal sheets. The wagon slewed to the side, threatening to become mired, but the stolen piebald struggled stoically, maintaining enough momentum to plough through. He coaxed the animal to the left, making for the small gatehouse that guarded the bridge over the ringwork ditch. It would take him out to the grass-lined road between the house and the walled gardens, and from there he could move with relative ease on the better terrain, following the slope down to Garrison Gate.

‘Stiff ’uns!’ he called up to the pair of sentries at the window of the gatehouse, tugging his hat down over his shrivelled ears. ‘Expired on the chirurgeon’s slab!’

‘Theirs or ours?’ a man with heavy jowls shouted a reply. His whole face, thrust out into the rain, wobbled beneath a battered morion helmet.

‘Theirs!’ Tainton answered. ‘Givin’ ’em back! Colonel Rawdon says why use our pits when they can dig their own?’

The fat man in the ancient pot cackled a laugh that ended in a wet-sounding cough. ‘Right you are, cully!’ He waved Tainton through and ducked back from the driving storm.