Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (49 page)

‘Fifty men!’ Rawdon bawled, singling out groups of defenders with an outstretched finger and a snarl. ‘Fifty! You! You! You there, Corporal!’

The sally party began to form at the open rear door, where Stryker waited with sword held high. It comprised about half the defending force, the rest being needed to keep up the covering fire, and Stryker nodded his thanks to the colonel before stepping out into morning air. It stank of sulphur.

The group – Stryker in the lead, followed by Skellen, twoscore of yellowcoats and a smattering of men in civilian clothes – charged with a great, ear-splitting roar. They ran round the corner of the Barn, muskets levelled or turned about to use as clubs and swords brandished. Some had pistols cocked ready to empty into the faces of their foes, and then they were at the north doors, where the most advanced rebels had reached to beat on the timbers and fire directly through the Royalist loopholes.

Smoke had turned dawn to dusk, and it was difficult to see exactly what they faced, but men were there sure enough, with their own muskets and hangers, dirks and partisans, and Stryker slammed headlong into the first, flattening him with just his shoulder, kicking him in the face as he stepped into the next opponent. The Cavaliers howled like blood-scenting wolves, and tore into the clustered rebels, hacking and slashing like men possessed. A rebel sergeant, waist swathed in a wide blue scarf, twirled like a circus tumbler, swinging his huge halberd at chest height in an irresistible arc that would cleave a man in two. He came at Stryker, his war-cry unintelligible, and the long staff with its triple blade of axe, hook and point sliced the air as Stryker ducked low, only just out of its murderous range. Skellen appeared as his captain stumbled back in the face of the rebel’s rage, and in his huge grip he clutched his own halberd. He whipped the pole-arm up, jabbing it into the face of the screaming Roundhead. It took little toll, simply nicking the man’s chin, but the move had made the rebel catch his stride, lose his balance just a fraction, and Skellen’s boot was up in his crotch before he knew what had hit him. The enemy sergeant brayed and kept coming, but he was winded and his swing had lost its momentum, and Stryker stabbed low, cutting a deep gully just above his knee. The halberd clattered out of his grip and he collapsed over the compromised leg, and then Skellen’s halberd was racing down from on high, butchering the side of the blue-scarfed sergeant’s shoulder, a spray of dark blood speckling his own face and that of his enemy. And then he was down, face buried in the mud, and the Royalists were over him, beyond him, looking for more men to cut down.

Stryker ploughed on, ramming one man on to his back with a dropped and driven shoulder, kicking another hard and low so that he could feel the testicles mash against the bridge of his foot. There was always the chance that he would be stabbed from below, lanced by a blade wielded by one of those he had felled but not killed, yet he cared nothing. He felt the battle-rage in his veins, the gut-twisting, heart-pounding, muscle-tightening excitement and the stink of sweat and vomit and blood and powder smoke, ripe and heady in his nostrils. A concoction loathsome and enticing all at once.

An enemy officer, dressed elegantly and cutting in precise diagonal lines with a long, single-edged sword, seemed to be snapping orders as he fought, and Stryker made for him. The man, a young fellow with a fair, wispy beard and slender nose below a wide hat that was tilted back away from his eyes, jabbed with snake-like speed at a Royalist throat, missing by fractions, and brought the hilt round for a punch to the face. He kicked the dazed man out of his way, dancing past in the graceful manner of a trained fencer, and caught Stryker’s eye. Stryker pulled back his cracking lips in the most hideous grimace he could manage, brandishing the teeth broken by Locke Squires and feeling the ugly scar tissue around his left eye twist and contort. He lunged ferociously, hacking at the stylish officer without pause for thought. The young man parried the first and second blows easily, gritted his teeth as he offered a half-hearted riposte, then jumped back nimbly, bringing himself out of range. He issued a flurry of orders that Stryker could not discern in the melee, and then he was gone, vanished amongst the bodies and the smoke.

It was with shock that Stryker saw the Roundheads retreat. He had thought perhaps twoscore had reached the doors, and that they would be a challenge to clear away, but the sally, unexpected as it had evidently been, had served to stun Waller’s vanguard, and many had fallen back to the fish ponds and the smaller shacks and pens that dotted the eastern half of the Grange. He swung his sword above his head, crowing as loud as his parched throat would allow, and the others followed suit, their challenge carrying up to Waller on Cowdrey’s Down and to Paulet in the Old House. Somewhere more artillery was raging, rolling like thunder to the north and east, and Stryker guessed that the Roundhead ordnance had shifted its attention to the New House. Perhaps, he dared dream, it was a move of desperation on Waller’s part, for the general had seen his great attack fail, his best men unable even to take the Grange, let alone Basing House itself, and Stryker grinned at the men who gathered around, cheering one another and spitting curses at the cowering rebels.

The wind was up, and it caught the man-made fog, gathering it up in an instant and whisked it away from the farm to reveal the north wall. Stryker saw the enemy properly. There were hundreds of them, maybe as many as a thousand, pouring over the wall and amongst the outbuildings, marching forwards in an inexorable wave. They had not saved the Grange, after all. They had merely stalled the tide. The Roundheads were coming again.

Captain-Lieutenant Jedidiah Clinson had seen a demon. A living, breathing, screaming devil in a green coat with half his face missing and the other half lit by a silver eye that seemed to look right into Clinson’s soul. They had been doing well, his unit, scaling the wall in the face of spiteful return fire, and he had sensed glory when a group of his best men had followed him all the way to the heavy double doors, their axes going to furious work. Even when the enemy had sallied from what he now guessed had been an unknown rear entrance, Clinson had seen enough vigour in his stoic charges to feel confident of sweeping the stubborn malignants away. But into the melee the demon had cut a path the like of which he had never before seen. Clinson was a gentleman, the son of a minor aristocrat, a confident, intelligent individual, Waller’s rising star, a man born to lead. But in a heartbeat, peering into the demon’s dread gaze, he was a child again, and he had simply not known what to do.

Muskets still fired from the Royalist positions as Jedidiah Clinson rallied his men. His party were largely untouched, miraculous though it was, and he yet had a force strong enough to take the Grange and everything in it. He looked to his left, to the eastern section of the farm complex where the smaller buildings dotted the mud. Over those walls and amongst the pigsties and chicken coops, the pens and the carts, came more blue-scarfed fighters, more detachments sent down by Sir William when he had seen the initial attack beaten back. Yet he felt no succour, no joy and no relief. It was as though he had been punched square in the stomach, such was his shame.

Clinson levelled his sword at the Barn. ‘I return to that hellish place.’ The demon had frightened him, and he could not deny it, but the fear of the one-eyed man was as nothing compared with the disgrace of this failure. The reinforcements still streamed over the Grange’s low perimeter, and already they were pushing from the buildings in the eastern end to threaten the Barn’s right flank, and then, once the defenders had fled, all would know that Captain-Lieutenant Clinson had finally proven his naysayers right.

Clinson shook his head. ‘Not this day,’ he whispered as he walked. And then he was running, feet sliding and slopping in the filth. Nothing would prevent him reaching the Barn this time. He did not look back, though his heart soared as the sound of hundreds of mud-slapping footsteps filled his ears, and he knew his men were with him. The Barn erupted in response, flashes of flame and white clouds pulsing in bilious gouts from the rough-hewn holes through which the black muzzles of muskets pointed, but Clinson would not be cowed this time. He gripped his sword tight as he ran and screamed to God for the victory he so craved.

After the briefest council of war Stryker could remember, he and Rawdon had agreed to abandon the Great Barn. The fighting front was now all the way along the outer margin of the Grange, with soldiers flooding in waves from Parliamentary positions beside the Loddon and out towards the village, so that Rawdon’s beleaguered defenders were in very real danger of becoming isolated from the house. No man would be driven out of the Barn without a fight, and they lined the wall, some crouching low, others high on scaffolds constructed out of provisions. Colonel Rawdon paced at their backs, barking commands and steeling their resolve.

Stryker sent a dozen yellowcoats out of the rear doors, half of them to go round to the western gable of the Barn, and half to the east, so that their fire would prevent the enemy from flanking them. He had his own men cluster beneath the apex of that open arch, facing the barred north doors with muskets primed and matches hot. He left them to dart over the narrow causeway of the threshing floor and leaned into the timbers, now pocked by lead, of the closed doorway, pushing his eye into one of the splinter-edged holes. He saw the rebels gather in a dense pack; then, behind their leader – a man he recognized as the elegant officer from the melee – they began to surge forwards. Soon they were at a run, some faltering in the sapping mire but most keeping pace with the foremost men. A few had loaded muskets, which they held horizontally so that they might blow on their coals as they moved, but most had swung the long-arms about to present the solid wooden stocks as clubs. The officers had pistols and swords, and they used them as if they were colourful ensigns, holding them aloft as rallying points for the howling rebel tide.

‘
Fire
!’ Marmaduke Rawdon’s authoritative tone bellowed out from the far end of the Barn, his single word crashing like a cannon shot and echoing in the beams. In the time it took to blink, the world was shattered as the Royalist muskets juddered back, kicking like disgruntled mules at shoulders and spitting fire and fury out into the Grange.

Stryker watched through his spy-hole, its frayed edges grinding at his skin, and when he saw the oncoming horde sheer instinctively towards the doors he fell back to join his greencoats.

‘
Get out
!’ Rawdon brayed. He was waving frantically at any man who thought to tarry. ‘Fall back to the house, damn your hides!’

The yellowcoats did not need telling twice, and they ran to the rear doorway, filtering between Stryker’s group, who remained gathered beneath the arch with muskets poised. The barred doors at the northern face of the building shook and groaned as men slammed into them from outside. Axes split the timbers in frantic flurries, and this time they worked with frightening efficacy now that the Royalist guns were no longer jutting from their loopholes. The crackle of musketry was steady outside, and Stryker hoped the units at either end of the Barn yet prevented the enemy from striving round to encircle them, but the continued battering at the closed doors told him the rebels were content to keep their losses low. Holes gaped suddenly in the timbers, and light burst through in blinding shafts. Stryker’s men braced themselves. He heard Simeon Barkworth mutter something behind his carbine – he preferred the shortened cavalry weapon to a musket that was as long as he was tall – and knew the Scot was daring his enemy to come forth. Arms groped through the tattered axe breaches, hands clawed at the bar, and then it was off, clattering on the flint path, and the door was opening, its great hinges creaking above the exultant shouts.

Stryker’s men fired their muskets as the Roundheads piled into the Barn, flinging them back as if plucked by the fingers of invisible Titans. The wave seemed to break against an immovable cliff, and they faltered, bunching on the threshing floor, spilling sideways on to the rammed chalk. Stryker backed away, the last defiant blow delivered, and his men went too, calmly but quickly, pulling shut the rear doors and gathering the teams at the gable ends.

‘To the house!’ Stryker ordered. Everyone sprinted for their lives across the smoking yard, over the wall and into the road that divided Basing House from its farm. Behind them the rebels were flowing out, a few taking pot-shots that fell well short and wide, and all, save one, crowing to the gathering clouds. The Grange had fallen.

CHAPTER 24

Jedidiah Clinson had survived. He did not rightly know how, for the demon had appeared again, the last out of the Great Barn, and with him had come a small but compact volley of musket shots that had taken a searing toll. But Clinson had been to the side, squashed with the massed bodies against the wooden frame, and now, as the light slowly began to dim outside and the air was filled with delicate, persistent raindrops, he sat down to enjoy his success.

The Barn was a massive victory. Much more than the first line of Basing’s defences, it was a foothold, a bridgehead from which to launch the next wave of attacks that would now focus on the fortress itself. Moreover, the huge stone edifice and its smaller outbuildings provided much-needed shelter from the increasingly foul weather, and from Royalist sharpshooters. But best of all, the Barn was full. It was crammed with provisions. Food and drink, bedding, linen, enticing palliasses and feather beds. The end bays were stacked with straw and the walls buttressed by countless boxes and barrels and cases and chests, all waiting to be explored. It was a wonder, a treasure trove, and, as Jedidiah Clinson delved into a case of salted pork, he considered it the most marvellous reward he could imagine.