Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (23 page)

‘Then your son is a damned fool,’ Mun said, seeing now the face of the young man on the ground before him. ‘But he’s alive.’

‘You want me to restrain the lobster?’ O’Brien asked, nodding at the man whose armour clanked with every move.

Mun shook his head. ‘Let him see to his son.’

‘The others ran, Father, the damned cowards,’ the lad said, wincing as he pushed himself upright. Beneath his helmet blood was trickling from his forehead down the side of his aristocratic nose and his eyes were round with shock. He wore good back- and breastplates over an expensive-looking buff-coat.

‘But you didn’t run, son,’ his father said, crouching awkwardly in his armour to undo his son’s helmet strap and ease it off his head.

‘He’s but a cub,’ O’Brien remarked, seeing the young man’s face properly for the first time.

‘And he needs to learn to control a horse properly or he’ll get himself killed before he can grow a man’s beard,’ Mun said.

The cuirassier stood and marched over to Mun, whose men were watching, their pistols drawn. ‘Who are you, sir?’ the man demanded, removing his elaborate burgonet helmet which was gilded with patterns of swirling leaves. His short white hair was swept back and his white brows made a hawk’s wings above eyes that were rivet heads of cold indignation.

‘My name is not important,’ Mun said, cringing inwardly.
I sound like that clandestine bastard
, he thought, recalling the man who had somehow persuaded Mun to do his bidding.

‘Damn your insolence!’ the cuirassier spat, his short white beard trembling with rage. The silk ruff at his neck spoke of a fashion long gone, completing the image of a soldier from a different age. ‘Who is your master? Whom do you serve, your king or Parliament’s traitors?’

‘I am Sir Edmund Rivers and I serve His Majesty King
Charles,’ Mun said, unwilling to play the game of secrets any longer. The other man did not so much as blink, which led Mun to assume that he had not recognized his name.

‘Well, I have been soldiering, Sir Edmund Rivers,’ the white-haired man said, smacking his left hand in its iron gauntlet against his own beautifully incised breastplate. The other hand was gloved only in leather so as not to hamper the loading of pistols. ‘I have been soldiering in the Low Countries while this kingdom has been crumbling like bones in the grave. I have been in England but weeks, yet I see all too clearly that common folk have run amok and knights have become thieving thatch-gallows laying hands on whatever they come across.’ Behind him his son was gingerly climbing to his feet and using his lace falling band to wipe the blood off his face. ‘Where in God’s name, sir, do you think you are taking that gun and those beasts?’ He pointed up the track where no more than a mile away Goliath continued his slow lumbering progress west.

‘What has that to do with you, old man?’ Mun said, losing patience with this man who clearly did not appreciate how lucky he was that he and his son still lived and breathed.

‘What has that to do with me?’ the cuirassier blurted, eyes wide beneath his beetle-brows. ‘You insolent devil! That’s my damned gun!’

Mun heard an Irish snort escape then and nor was the perpetrator contrite when Lord Lidford spun and called them all thieves and scoundrels before turning his fiery gaze back on Mun. ‘You steal my gun and my cattle, then you try to kill my son. You are more of a villain than any of Parliament’s rebels!’

‘Your son tried to kill himself,’ Mun said, glancing at the young man whose cheeks flushed red with embarrassment for his reckless charge. A brave lad, though, Mun thought, for he could not have been a day older than seventeen and four other men had turned tail and fled for their lives. ‘Besides, I thought you were in Oxford with the King.’

Lord Lidford flinched. ‘You
knew
it was my gun?’

‘I’d heard a rumour,’ Mun said, glancing at O’Brien. The Irishman was leaning over his saddle’s cantle, clearly enjoying the exchange. For the first time Lord Lidford seemed lost for words. Mun shrugged and took hold of Hector’s bridle, rubbing the stallion’s muzzle affectionately. ‘You were supposed to be in Oxford and I was supposed to borrow your gun.’

‘I have not been to Oxford for more than five years and then only to conclude some business before I took ship back to the war.’ Lord Lidford swept an arm back towards his son who, now that he was on his feet, looked hardly the worse for his fall other than the cut where his helmet had gouged his head. ‘I was at my estate. I have just buried my wife, Sir Edmund,’ he said, all but sneering Mun’s title, ‘and my son just happened to be out riding, taking stock of my cattle, when he saw more than half my beasts gone, along with the lads I pay to look after them.’

‘That devious bastard,’ Mun murmured under his breath, recalling Rupert’s spy assuring him that Lord Lidford was with the King in Oxford.

‘You will turn that train around and return my gun to me,’ Lord Lidford said flatly, then turned to walk back to his horse.

‘No, sir, I will not,’ Mun said. ‘The gun stays with me. It is going to Lichfield.’

‘How dare you?’ Lord Lidford exclaimed, his right hand falling on his sword’s hilt.

‘Don’t be an idiot … my lord,’ O’Brien growled, flapping his hand at the man, warning him to remove his own from his weapon or else face the consequences. Beneath his white beard and moustaches Lord Lidford’s face bloomed crimson with rage, though his hand came off the weapon’s hilt. His son stood statue-still, nonplussed, eyes riveted to his father as though he had never seen him in such a compromised position.

‘You will come with us, Lord Lidford,’ Mun said, ‘for I will not have you rounding up men to try to hamper our progress.’

‘I shouldn’t worry. His friends are halfway to bloody France
by now, their arses playing a merry old tune,’ John Cole said, raising a few chuckles from the others.

‘We go to fight,’ Mun said, stepping into his stirrup and hauling himself up onto Hector’s back, ‘and your gun will be more useful aimed at the rebels than it would be sitting in your damn barn. Fitch, Jones, disarm Lord Lidford and his fool son. Keep them on a short leash. If they give you any trouble, kill them.’

‘You heard Sir Edmund,’ Fitch barked, dismounting. ‘Your swords, gentlemen, if you please.’

‘The King will hear of this!’ Lord Lidford protested, unbuckling his belt and handing it with its scabbarded blade to the broad-shouldered, broad-grinned former stonemason’s apprentice.

‘I have no doubt he will, my lord,’ Mun said, turning Hector with his right knee and a click of his tongue and walking him westward after Goliath. ‘I dare say His Majesty would be cheered to hear that you have brought your cannon to aid his nephew in reclaiming Lichfield for the Crown.’

And with that Lord Lidford had the sense to hold his tongue.

The rest of the slog to Lichfield was arduous and ponderous and uneventful. Three miles east of the city one of Prince Rupert’s troops of dragoons came upon them and if Mun’s allegiance was not immediately obvious, one look at Goliath told the dragoons that the ragged men had come to help prosecute the siege. Their captain, a smartly attired young officer with impeccable breeding and a penchant for ostrich feathers, judging by the plumes – two blue, one white – trimming his wide-brimmed hat, appeared less than impressed by Mun’s troop. This Captain Assheton had ridden up, swept his hat from his head to unleash a mass of curls, and demanded to know to which regiment they belonged.

‘Looks like a damned owl in an ivy bush,’ O’Brien had muttered.

‘I command here,’ Mun had replied coarsely, choosing not to
mention his own title though he knew it would likely smooth his way, ‘and I answer to no man but His Highness the Prince.’ Captain Assheton had raised his eyebrows and eyeballed Mun, his dragoons bristling behind him. But then he had curled his lip and nodded, assuring Mun that he would provide safe escort to Lichfield, for the rebels, he said, were like toadstools and liable to spring up where none had been before, so that caution was advised. Mun knew that it was not his mention of the Prince that had blunted Assheton’s bellicosity but rather that the captain was enough of a soldier to recognize fighting men – dangerous men – when he saw them. He must have been awed by Goliath too and likely wondered how such a powerful gun was in the hands of so few.

It had not rained, thank God, for that would have made moving Goliath impossible, but the day had grown overcast and now the grey, rain-filled clouds were brewing a storm and blending into the dusk as they rode into the town.

‘It’ll be pissing on us before we can find warm billets, a wee drop and a fond welcome,’ O’Brien grumbled, ignoring the gawping faces of musketeers and artillerymen who had gathered thick as hounds on a bone around the cannon.

‘I’m sure Captain Boone will be overjoyed to see us,’ Mun said through a half smile, knowing full well that the Irishman’s idea of a fond welcome involved rather more assets than their captain boasted. He inhaled the myriad smells: some terrible, but all strangely comforting, of a camp full of soldiers. His mind bore him back to the last time he was with the King’s army, at Oxford, and that memory was closely followed by a pang deep in his chest which he tried to ignore. For being back with the army dredged up events much darker than the rain clouds which threatened them now. He could all but see his father in his neat buff-coat and high boots, adorned for a war he would have preferred no part in. He could almost reach out and grab Emmanuel, wrist to wrist in the warrior’s way: Emmanuel who had been braver than any man and
eager for the fight. Yet both of them were dead. And Mun fought on.

‘Ours must be bigger than anything they’ve got here,’ young Godfrey suggested, thumbing at the artillery sergeant who was thrusting his halberd this way and that, barking at his men to get Goliath moved to the main battery further west. Godfrey was sitting his dappled grey mare as proudly as if he had brought the five loaves and two fish to feed the multitude, as were several other of his men, Mun noticed, albeit they gladly relinquished responsibility for the cannon to those who had been prosecuting the siege.

The oxen began lowing again, complaining at being made to pull the encumbrance further still when they had already hauled it twenty miles and thought their labour done for the day. ‘Fresh beef, lads! Dinner on the hoof compliments of Lord Lidford!’ O’Brien called out, earning a look from Lord Lidford that would have taken the skin off a rabbit.

‘These cattle and this gun are mine!’ Lord Lidford countered from his saddle, his voice cutting through the din of cattle and men and musketry near by, ‘and if any man mistreats either, if any man so much as salivates in front of one of my animals I shall have his hands cut off. Do you hear?’ Some of the seasoned musketeers grumbled obscenities and Lord Lidford’s son, whose name Mun had learned was Jonathan, had the decency to look embarrassed, for all his puffed-up chest and defensive posture.

‘What did I tell you?’ O’Brien grumbled, catching the first spits of rain in an upturned palm as he and Mun, relieved of the cannon, led their column towards the immense imposing pile that dominated all before it. To Mun’s eyes the cathedral resembled more of a challenge to God’s authority than a grand demonstration of His glory. Its three great spires proclaimed a martial power more than a hopeful, spiritual endeavour; looked for all the world like spear points thrusting for Heaven’s belly. Which was fitting, he thought, knowing the blood that had
been spilled within the cathedral’s shadow over the last weeks. For having neither walls nor a castle, the Earl of Chesterfield had established his garrison in the Cathedral Close which was encircled by a high wall, and there he had held out against Lord Brooke’s Parliament for several days before his inevitable surrender. Now, the rebels held the Close. The besiegers had become the besieged.

‘Looks as if our lot took a battering,’ O’Brien said as they drew nearer. Even in the dark Mun could see the damage Parliament’s cannon had wreaked amongst the towers and spires.

‘They still shouldn’t have given it up,’ Mun said, taking in the sight of Prince Rupert’s forces gathered behind their siege lines, sheltering behind ruined walls and in the shells of houses, milling behind earth-filled gabions, keeping their match dry, smoking their pipes and resigning themselves to another night out in the open. ‘Because now we’ve got to take it back again.’

‘O’Brien, you red Irish devil, is that you?’

O’Brien grimaced. ‘If we turn round now, Sir Edmund, we can ride out of here before it’s too late.’

‘I fear it’s already too late,’ Mun said, feeling a smile tug at his lips at the sight of Richard Downes and Vincent Rowe threading their way through the soldiers, the rain and the gloom towards them.

‘No, it’s not me, Downes,’ O’Brien replied, showing a palm, ‘I’m just a Heaven-blessed handsome Irishman who happens to look like your old friend O’Brien, though I’ll confess ’tis a strange thing that two men should share such good looks.’ He reached down and gripped Downes’s wrist and then Rowe’s, the four of them grinning like fiends, and as they greeted Mun in turn he felt warmth bloom in his chest, vanquishing dark thoughts. For it was a fine thing to be reunited with his brothers-in-arms, men with whom he had shared the fear and the frenzy and the madness of battle.

‘You tosspots are still giving the rebels cause to piss in their
boots and regret taking up arms against their king?’ Mun asked, noting that young Vincent Rowe had a more steely look in his eyes nowadays. Perhaps they all did, he thought.

‘I’m not so sure we’ve been keeping those traitorous bastards from their sleep,’ Downes said, gesturing back towards the Cathedral Close, ‘but I’ll wager we’ve got the men of Lichfield keeping a close eye on their women.’ He gripped Rowe’s shoulder with a filthy, powder-burnt hand. ‘Even the whelp here has been swinging his nutmegs around the town. As fortune would have it we’ve been knee-deep in quim since you two buggered off and left us in Oxford.’

‘Now I know you’re lying,’ O’Brien said, nodding at Rowe, ‘for youngen’s got a face like someone set it on fire and put the flames out with a spade,’ at which they all laughed, for Vincent Rowe’s high cheekbones, full lips and dark eyes made him handsome enough to turn many a girl’s head and cause husbands to tighten their grip on their wives.