Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (35 page)

The line of thirteen men and one woman travelled at a steady pace. They could not see the hut from down in the water-cleaved channel, but Stryker had gauged roughly how many paces it would take to reach it. Moreover, he had sent a man ahead, slinking over the long grass to call out if trouble appeared. All Stryker’s charges were armed, the soldiers with glowing matches and primed muskets, while he, Skellen and Barkworth carried swords. Lisette was somewhere at the rear, unwilling, it seemed, to breathe the same air as Stryker, but he knew she would have at least one blade secreted about her person. They were a war party, the kind of group he had led in half the states of Europe, cloaked in darkness and fuelled by the prospect of danger and blood. He knew it was not the kind of work to be enjoyed, and yet it was a delight to him. The risk and the fear could be tasted on his tongue, and after days locked in a cell, beaten, half-starved and stuffed full of grimy, piss-stewed sea­water, to steal through the shadows to an uncertain fate was nothing short of bliss.

Stryker saw the body at the same time as the nearest men, and the entire column halted as one. It lay face down in the tangle of weeds and brambles at the foot of the bank, just above the trickling water, and even in the darkness the smear of blood could be seen at the side of its neck. Stryker clambered up to it, kicking a path through the undergrowth, and turned the corpse with the end of his boot. The face was beginning to bloat, the features exaggerated with the strain of skin stretched to bursting, but he identified it all the same. He looked down at Skellen. ‘Clay Cordell.’

Skellen frowned as the rest of the green-coated party gathered around. ‘How’d he go?’

Stryker let the body roll back on to its front. ‘Throat’s ripped up.’

‘Slit?’ asked Simeon Barkworth, the most strangely dressed of the group, given his oversized new coat.

‘Ripped,’ Stryker repeated the word, unable to think of another that told the tale so well. ‘Like Gibbons’s mastiff took a bite out of him.’

‘Least we know they’re here,’ Skellen said.

Lisette Gaillard stepped through the crowd to stare levelly at the mutilated cadaver. ‘And we know there are fewer of them.’

Stryker waved them back into line and stooped to check Cordell’s pockets as the greencoats moved off, rejoining near the back when he was satisfied there was nothing of value to be had. The moon was white, lending a silver edge to the clouds as they scudded over its ghostly face. The occasional gust of wind whistled along the surface of the water as it murmured its homely sound that, pace by pace, was shattered by thrashing boots. The Royalists did not know if their enemy was in the hut, but they would soon find out. It was cold, the air stinging their lungs, but these were men who had suffered imprisonment and shipwreck, whose friends had drowned for the sake of a treasure that they suspected was just yards away. They fingered triggers and blew on matches, licked lips parched dry by salty breeze and rattling nerves, and stole along the stream to the fight. And then the firing began.

Sterne Fassett emptied the first of his pistols into the face of the leading greencoat. He had been close, lying on the top of the bank, and he knew without looking that the man was dead. The stink of powder smoke filled his nostrils as he rolled away, snatching up the pistol he had taken from Cordell’s lifeless body. He cocked it, the click of the hammer lost in the screams from down in the brook, and crawled to the edge. Locke Squires resolved to his right and advanced a little way up the bank, a pistol in each of his bear-paw fists. They had agreed to stay on the eastern side of the stream to protect the hut and keep the creek from dividing them. They had four firearms between them, Tainton having relinquished his, and now the pair would do their best to stall the attackers while the former cavalryman got the gold into the woods. Things were desperate. Fassett had counted ten of the enemy before firing the first shot, and he suspected there were more further back. He had not known who these men were at first, but they were armed with muskets and dressed in green coats, which meant they were soldiers, and that was enough to make preparations for either flight or fight. Tainton had gone to the wagon, Fassett and Squires would be ready to meet fire with fire if necessary, and then they had waited. But out of the gloom came a woman. She too wore the green uniform, but her golden hair gave her away for the enemy that she was. Fassett knew in that instant that if the French slut was here, then so was Stryker. And if the one-eyed captain was on the mainland, so was death. It was a simple choice of kill or be killed. There would be no discussion.

Squires fired his short-arm, vanishing amongst the white tongues that licked the air behind a bright flash of red and orange. Someone bellowed down in the creek. The water raged as though a pod of whales had been thrown up from the sea, but the thrashing was caused by the feet of those ambushed below, uncertain as to the whereabouts of their attackers or even how many there might be. Fassett nodded quick approval to Squires and discharged his second pistol, moving immediately back as a desultory crackle of musketry began to sound in response. He took a knee, screaming at Squires to fire as he hurriedly reloaded. Squires emptied his second barrel into the writhing mass of greencoats, bellowing like a whipped bullock as he stumbled back over the long grass.

Fassett was up now, and he swatted the giant’s bulky forearm to catch his attention. ‘Fall back!’ he growled, noting the crazed look in Squires’s eyes. ‘With me, Locke! Nothing stupid!’

Stryker was pressed into the chaotic bank, brambles digging into his shoulders and head, powerless with just his blade. The greencoats, his musketeers, were in utter disarray. The scout had vanished along with the advantage of surprise and now they were trapped like rats in a barrel.

‘Get to the sides!’ he snarled. ‘Spread out!’

The riverbed was already filling with the smoke of roaring muskets. It smothered the Royalists as sure as if a thick fog had descended, but it also obscured their view of what was up at ground level. They reloaded their weapons, but darkness and fear made them fumble, and it felt as if an age ticked by between shots.

Skellen splashed along the brook to Stryker’s position. ‘Three down,’ he said, panting. Even in the dark, the blood spatters were visible on his face.

‘Jesu,’ Stryker hissed, instinctively looking down the chaotic line.

‘Not her, sir.’

Stryker nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘Mad, though,’ Skellen said. ‘Angry as a sackful o’ wasps.’

‘I’m going up there,’ Stryker said.

The sergeant stole a glance at the top of the bank. ‘Don’t know what we’re facing, sir.’

‘If it is Tainton, then he has just two other men.’

‘Might have recruited some locals,’ argued Skellen, but he drew his sword anyway. ‘He can afford it.’

‘He might have,’ Stryker said, ‘but I am not staying here all night.’

Skellen propped the long blade against his shoulder. ‘Let us take a stroll, then, sir.’

The two men turned on to their fronts and sprang up. Barkworth was somewhere nearby, for Stryker could hear the shrill Gaelic war-cry of the Scots Brigader, and he knew Lisette would follow too. To his relief, the rest poured on to the open ground at his heels, a green swarm, scrambling up the bank and over the edge of the ditch, some charging straight over the rough grass, others pausing to fire, some stumbling pell-mell in the anarchic assault. High-pitched pistol shots came in reply, the small bullets whining their way past to vanish in the darkness. Stryker saw the men who had ambushed them, and for the first time he was certain that they had found their quarry, for he could see the large frame of Locke Squires lumbering at the edge of the modest building. Another man was with him, either Fassett or Tainton, he could not tell.

‘
On
!’ he screamed. The battle-rage had overtaken him, intoxi­cated him. All the frustration and regret of recent weeks, the sorrow and the fear, pent up like a stoppered bottle, now smashed into oblivion. His senses were keen like the blade in his hand, his single eye straining against the night and his blood thundering through every vein. ‘Kill them!
Kill them
!’

Sterne Fassett knew he was beaten. He loaded and fired one of his pistols as the greencoats came on, and he suspected he might have clipped one, but there were simply too many, at least eight, he reckoned, and they were led by a snarling, one-eyed fiend with long, flowing hair and a face that was hard like granite and fit for the worst kind of nightmares. He could not stem the tide, so he fell quickly back on the hut, hoping to get inside its meagre shelter to reload. ‘Get behind the walls!’ he ordered Squires. ‘Shoot through the windows!’

Squires nodded and went in, and Fassett followed, slamming the half-rotted door behind them. Tainton was nowhere to be seen, and Fassett wondered if the sanctimonious bastard had managed to hide the wagon in the time they had bought him. He understood that he and Squires had ultimately failed. Stryker’s party would overwhelm them eventually. Revenge, after all, was a sharp spur, and the Royalists would never give up. Fassett would not see his cut of the reward, and he suddenly liked the idea of Tainton’s plans ending in failure.

Squires was back near the cold smear of ash that had been their fire. His thick jaw worked frantically, spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth, a mangled stream of syllables spewing over his lips.

‘They’ll not offer quarter,’ Fassett replied, guessing his comrade was entertaining the same thoughts. ‘Stryker will murder us.’ He darted to the window, fired one of the pistols, tossed it aside and primed the second. When it was ready, he took a huge, lung-scouring breath, and went to the door. ‘Unless we murder him first.’

Stryker was twenty paces from the front of the hut, his men fanning out in an arc around him, when the door burst open. Sterne Fassett stepped out, a cocked pistol in hand, and he pulled the trigger, flame and smoke exploding in a great gout around his head. Stryker heard the ball whistle past, felt the punch of sliced air near his ear, and raised his sword. Fassett cursed viciously, then seemed to move away, vanishing behind his smoke cloud like a wraith, half spinning, half flying, movements fluid and viper-fast.

Stryker went after him, even as Locke Squires charged out of the hut like an enraged bear. Squires brayed to the waxing moon, words lost upon the stump of his tongue, and threw his pistols at the nearest greencoats, advancing on one with hands brandished like vast claws. Stryker did not look back, but he heard three or four muskets cough, and then the bear howled, a lingering, despairing sound that tailed off as the soldiers closed in, hammering down with the butt-ends of muskets and slashing with swords.

Fassett was at the back of the building when Stryker caught up with him. He already had a dagger in one hand. It was a long thing, as long as a man’s forearm, with a decorated pommel and forward-facing quillons above the hilt that were designed to ensnare an opponent’s blade. Fassett’s face creased in a grimace as he beckoned Stryker on, and he delved into his waistband, producing an identical weapon in his opposite hand.

Stryker attacked, careful of the speed he knew the professional ravilliac possessed. He flicked his sword out, meaning to batter one of the blades from the mulatto’s hand, but Fassett was lightning quick, quicker even than Stryker had feared, and he managed to step out with the agility of an acrobat. The thrust avoided, he danced back in, letting one of his daggers slide down Stryker’s extended blade until their hilts met. He twisted savagely, intending to wrench the sword from Stryker’s grip, but it was the Royalist’s turn to spring out of range, and they faced one another again, turning a wide circle in poised stalemate.

Some of the greencoats appeared round the corner of the hut. Their muskets were spent, reversed like clubs to batter and bludgeon. ‘Get into the trees, damn you!’ Stryker snarled. ‘Find that wagon!’

They knew not to interfere, and spread out, plunging into the copse.

‘I’m going to cut you up, you ugly bastard,’ Fassett said, his tone calm, considered. ‘Rip out your guts and chuck ’em in the river.’

‘That so?’ Stryker answered, careful not to let his guard down for a moment.

Fassett’s dark eyes flickered away for the briefest second. ‘Then I’ll have your slattern. My cock’s hard as a dagger for you, lass.’

‘Easier for me to slice it off, then,’ Lisette Gaillard said. She was concealed in the black abyss that was the left-hand side of Stryker’s vision, but he sensed she was close.

That made Fassett chuckle coldly. ‘I shall hale up those britches and swive you till you moan.’

‘A tired threat, I must confess,’ Lisette retorted witheringly. ‘But kill Stryker, by all means, it will save me the task.’

‘Jesu, Lisette,’ Stryker rasped.

Fassett cackled. To Stryker, he said: ‘Do not test me, Captain. You’ll get pricked, and she’ll get my prick. Unless you let me go now. It isn’t me you want, it’s that treasure.’

Stryker shook his head, dipping the tip of his sword so that the cool moonlight drifted up its length, the large garnet set into the pommel winking blood-red. ‘You first, Mister Fassett. Then the treasure.’

Fassett rushed him. Again, Stryker was stunned at the speed of the man, and he found himself wondering who could pos­sibly have got close enough to lop off the tip of his nose. He stumbled backwards, parrying slash after slash, astounded that Fassett could outmanoeuvre his long blade so easily with just the twin daggers. They reeled out into the field, careening across the grass. Stryker could feel his strength ebbing as he went, muscles still not as they had been the month before. He was barely able to keep from stumbling as he twisted and blocked, hoping against hope that Fassett would make a mistake.