The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2) (25 page)

‘Observation and casualties, for us, Patrick,’ said Thomas. ‘Let’s hope the only casualties we observe are the enemy’s.’

The first shots were fired the moment it was light enough to see. Patrick had predicted this. He said it was the Africans’ way. They came from within the tree line on the north and east sides of the house. Calculating that the attackers were trying to gauge their strength before showing themselves, Adam shouted at the men to hold their fire and keep their heads down. Musket shot whistled all about, but behind the redoubts and the pile of furniture they were safe from anything other than an unlucky ricochet.

After several unproductive volleys, a dozen men, frustrated at having failed to tempt the defenders into a response, emerged cautiously from the woods to the north. Peeking through the window, Thomas saw that they were armed with muskets, axes and bill-hooks, and that unless there was an African people with white skin and red hair, they were not escaped slaves. These were convicts – Irish and Welsh probably.

As he watched, half of the attackers split off and circled around to the west. Assuming they planned to advance from all quarters, he looked to his right. There too a dozen men were creeping forward, bent double in the manner of hunters nearing their prey, but these were black men. They also split up, six of them edging around to their left in order to attack from the south. Twenty-four men with muskets and machetes and coming from all directions. Not too alarming unless there were many more in the trees, but time to act. He shouted his report to Adam.

Adam called for the first volley, stood and fired at a head. It was a red one and he might have hit it, but Thomas could not be sure. From behind each redoubt, two men rose, aimed and fired. When they ducked down to reload, two others stood and repeated the process. Three bodies lay on the ground, one squirming about holding his stomach, the other two motionless.

But the attackers had had time to find cover and were returning fire. A musket shot whipped past Adam’s left ear and he dropped hastily. Cupping his hands, he took a breath and shouted as loudly as he could. ‘Casualties? Red?’

‘One minor.’

‘Green?

‘One in the head.’

‘None here. Enemy down?’

‘Two.’

‘Uncertain. One perhaps.’

‘Two or three for us. Get the wounded into the house.’

At this order Thomas and Patrick darted out to the two wounded men. The first, from red platoon, walked unaided, holding one bloody hand in the other, but the second had to be carried. His eyes were closed and he was sobbing quietly. There was blood on his throat and face and Thomas feared he would be their second fatality. They took him into the house where Thomas left him to Patrick’s care and returned quickly to his post at the window.

From his hiding place in the parlour Charles had been watching impatiently. It would not do to unleash his swordsmen too soon, desperate as they were to get into the fray. He held his finger to his lips for silence and signalled for calm. They stayed under cover while the two wounded men were brought back into the house.

The second volley came immediately. Again the shots were fired from behind the tree line and again Adam shouted at his men to keep low and hold their fire. The enemy would have to cross thirty yards of open ground to reach the house and he fleetingly hoped they would think better of trying again. But the incoming musket fire this time was heavier and better directed. The barricades and the parlour where Charles and his swordsmen still hid were peppered with shots. Two screams of pain signalled two casualties, probably from ricochets or flying splinters.

At the window, Thomas was watching the trees. When the first of the attackers emerged flat on the ground, holding their muskets across their faces and using their elbows and knees to crawl forward, he shouted a warning to Adam. This was not a tactic Thomas had seen at Newbury. Musketeers and pikemen certainly did not use it. But he soon saw the sense of it. Hitting a man crawling on his stomach, even from under thirty yards, would be a much more difficult proposition than hitting him standing up. He suspected it was a tactic imported from Africa or America, where men with spears had learned ways of fighting men with muskets.

Behind the crawling front line – thankfully moving at a cautious pace – a second group emerged, took up kneeling positions and began to launch volleys over their heads. If the crawlers reached the redoubts under this covering fire, anything could happen. Again Thomas yelled a warning. Calling for another volley, Adam rose and took aim at a kneeling man. Red and green platoons did the same.

When they ducked down, Adam shouted for Charles. ‘Off you go, Charles. Start with the wriggling worms.’

Black platoon needed no prompting. An enemy lying invitingly on the ground, his back exposed to the point of a sword
or the blade of an axe, was the very enemy a man might wish to encounter. Even if he had wanted to, Charles could have held them back no longer. They leapt out of hiding and ran past the redoubts, screaming their battle cries and raising their weapons to strike.

‘Thank God I’m on their side,’ Thomas said out loud. The nearest of the crawlers did not even have time to roll over and face them before being skewered and sliced, and the ones who did simply had a better view of their own ends. Black platoon, Charles Carrington at its head, moved so fast that it sped right around the house killing worms before any could escape. If the first strike did not kill, the second did. In no time, the ground had turned red. Butchered bodies lay everywhere; some lacked limbs or heads, others had been filleted.

But kneeling musketeers were still firing from the tree line and two swordsmen went down. Mary and Thomas ran out of the house towards one of them. Musket fire whistled around them and Adam shouted at them to get back. They ignored him and dragged the man by his arms to the safety of a redoubt.

They returned for the second man. Again they took an arm each, but this man was bigger and heavier and Mary was struggling. Musket fire rang out and she went down. Thomas immediately dropped the wounded man’s arm, picked her up and staggered back to the house. Blood from her right thigh was soaking her dress and Thomas feared an artery wound.

‘Thank you, Thomas,’ she whispered, ‘my brother might have helped but I daresay he’s busy.’

‘Ssh, Mary. You’re losing blood. Lie there and Patrick will see to you.’ Thomas left her to Patrick and went back outside. This time, the enemy were waiting for him and he was met by another
volley of musket fire. Crouching low, he turned himself into as small a target as he could, made it to the wounded man, grabbed his legs and tried to pull him back to the parlour. Until then, Thomas’s raw hands had stood up well. But this man was too heavy, and Thomas could not move him. He was a sitting duck. He was about to abandon the attempt when Patrick appeared beside him and took hold of the man’s leg. Together, they managed to drag him to the safety of the house, made him comfortable and went over to Mary who was lying in a corner.

‘If you will permit it, Miss Lyte, I’ll take a look at your wound,’ said Patrick. Mary said nothing, but reached down and pulled up her skirt and petticoat. Patrick wiped away blood from her thigh and peered closely at the injury. They were in a battle and there was no embarrassment.

‘A musket ball has gone straight through, Miss Lyte. There’s cloth from your skirt around the wound. I’ll have to make sure there’s none inside before I clean it.’

‘Is there any sign of bone?’

Patrick peered again at the wound. ‘No, but this will hurt.’

Mary sighed with relief. A shattered bone or a pierced artery could kill her. ‘Then thank God it’s you, Patrick. Sprot would have had my leg off as soon as look at it. Take my hand, Thomas, if you please. I’m ready. Now do it quickly.’

With a silver salt spoon Patrick probed the wound and extracted two small pieces of cloth. Her face ashen and her teeth clamped around her knuckles, Mary uttered no sound but low groans of pain. She squeezed Thomas’s hand until it hurt.

‘It’s done,’ said Patrick at last. ‘Lie still please and I will clean and bandage it.’ Mary opened her eyes and nodded. Then her grip slackened and she passed out. Patrick wiped the sweat from her
face and bound the wound. They would soon know if it was poisoned.

Thomas returned to the window and watched the trees. Having despatched the wriggling worms, Charles and his platoon had launched themselves at the rest. The rest, however, were rather more numerous than expected. When Thomas saw a dozen men, again a mixture of white and black, emerge, he shouted an alarm.

These men were led by a flame-haired giant wielding a long-handled axe. Good God, he thought, Africans and Irishmen and now Vikings. The devil alone knows where he came from. Then he remembered the huge Irishman from the ship, the one whom the guards had pulled off Thomas. Not only had he survived, he was intent on revenge.

While black platoon, now reinforced by red and green armed with swords or using their muskets as clubs, cut, stabbed and swung at the enemy, Charles had decided to make the Viking’s acquaintance. He spotted a sword impaled in the stomach of a dead slave, tugged it out and advanced upon the Viking with a blade in each hand.

Truth to tell, the Viking had not done much so far. He had merely kept an eye on the ebb and flow and looked as terrifying as he could. He had yet to swing the long axe in anger. But seeing a tall dark-haired man with two swords closing at speed, the Viking raised his weapon and let out a blood-curdling battle cry.

Unimpressed, Charles did not check his stride but advanced to duelling distance, shot out his right hand and drew blood from the Viking’s neck. The man let out a howl and brought down his axe with savage force. Charles had stepped deftly back and the axe passed harmlessly by. Before the Viking could recover his balance, he moved in again and this time sliced the man’s right arm with the
sword in his left hand. Another howl of pain and fury and another fruitless swing of the axe.

Thomas knew that Charles could finish his man off with ease. Rather than move in for the
coup de grâce
, however, Charles stepped back to admire his handiwork. Then, to Thomas’s horror, he stumbled on a stone and was down on one knee, knuckles and swords on the ground. He would surely have been up again in an instant but the Viking saw his chance and leapt forward to strike with the axe. One well-timed blow would remove an arm or a leg but he aimed instead for Charles’s neck. That was his mistake. A side-swipe at an arm could not have been deflected, but in raising the axe above his head the Viking allowed Charles just enough time to hop forward like a rabbit and thrust a sword up between his legs. Such was the shock that the Irishman uttered no sound, just fell face forward into the dirt, the sword sticking out grotesquely behind him. Charles scrambled to his feet and, as if to atone for his earlier indiscretion, plunged the other sword into the man’s back.

Absorbed as he had been in Charles’s duel with the Viking, Thomas had not observed progress elsewhere. By the time he looked about, the ground was strewn with the bodies of their attackers mingled with a few of their own, and the battle was over. Any who had escaped the swinging swords and hacking machetes had run for their lives. It was time to count the cost and tend to the wounded, who were already being carried into the house by their colleagues.

‘Well, that presented no great difficulty,’ observed Charles, wiping his sword on his leg. ‘A poorly trained lot, although with an interesting new tactic of advancing along the ground. Might have worked against muskets, but not sharp blades.’

Adam looked about. ‘Irish and slaves, I’d say,’ and seeing Charles’s victim, as large in death as in life and still holding his long-handled axe, ‘and a Viking or two, it seems. What an unholy trinity.’

‘A stupid Viking fortunately,’ replied Charles, ‘or I might have been his dinner. The Vikings did eat their victims, didn’t they? Or was it the Huns? Damned if I can remember.’

‘Neither, I think,’ said Adam. ‘Now we’d better deal with this mess before the dogs arrive.’ He threw up his hands. ‘My God. Mary. She was hit.’

Followed by Charles, he ran to the house. There they found the women and children on their feet, milling about wondering what to do next, and a very pale Mary sitting in a chair in the corner, guarded by Thomas and Patrick who would not let anyone near their patient.

‘My, my. Two more gentlemen to see me. I must be wounded more often.’

Adam turned to Patrick. ‘Patrick, how bad is Miss Lyte’s wound?’

‘A musket ball passed through her thigh, sir. I’ve cleaned and dressed it and Miss Lyte has taken a little brandy.’

‘Her thigh, eh? Wish I’d been here to do the cleaning and dressing.’

‘That would have been a comfort, Charles, but I gather you were otherwise engaged.’

Adam needed reassurance. ‘Are you sure it didn’t touch the bone, Patrick? And the shot has gone right through?’

‘Quite sure, sir. I removed two pieces of her skirt from the wound. There was no sign of bone but we must watch for poison. Now she should rest. I will clear everyone out.’

‘Good. And please make sure the wounded are taken care of. I’ll come and help in a moment.’

When he had left, Charles said, ‘I do hope Patrick was discreet in his attentions. It must have been embarrassing for you, my dear.’

‘Tush, Charles Carrington. It had to be done and that’s that. Don’t be such an old woman.’

Charles smiled broadly. ‘I know. Merely jealous.’

‘Good,’ said Mary, the brandy bringing colour back to her cheeks. ‘Now, gentlemen, before I go to lie down please give me an account of the affair. I’m sorry that Thomas and I were unable to put our excellent training to good use but I suppose that’s the way of soldiering. You may start from the point at which I was hit. I observed the earlier exchanges.’

Adam described what he called ‘the worms’ advance’ and the swift work of black platoon, and praised red and green platoons for their steadiness under fire.

‘And you, Charles?’ asked Mary. ‘What did you make of it?’

‘Our troops, as Adam said, gave a good account of themselves and I doubt we need worry ourselves about any more attacks from that quarter. And if there is another, we have plenty of provisions.’