The first riders to the rope were two scouts. The
rope was in the deep shadows of twilight so they didn't see it
until they were almost upon it. By then it was too late to save
themselves. Four men leaped out on the far side of the rope and let
loose at them with arrows. One of the scouts went down with a lucky
shot, well unlucky for him for it hit him in the upper chest just
above his boiled hide armour. The arrows missed the other man, and
he immediately made the decision to desert his comrade and make a
run for it back to his own troop.
With a lurch up from kneeling, and a sprint forward, Daniel broke his own rule as he ducked under the rope and entered the killing road. He had dropped his carbine and picked up his battle axe and now it was a foot race between him and the horse. The first swing of his axe was a wild attempt to slice the horses rear leg, but it connected and the horse was immediately lame. He twisted his grip so the back swing from that first slice hit the rider's leg just above his cavalry boot. Blood spurted and the man cried out so it must have been a deep cut.
The horse had slowed almost to a stop and was twisting trying to see its injured leg, and by the look of its bared teeth it was mad with rage and ready to gnash at anything within reach, such as Daniel. Above him Daniel saw metal flash so he ignored the horse's teeth and raised his axe in a defensive arch above his head. Just in time, because a sabre hit the wide axe head. Wide because it was an axe blade on one side of the handle and a pointed hook on the other. The hook saved his life.
The horse was circling around him. This could end very badly for him. He had crouched to absorb the power of the sabre hit, and now he sprang up high as if his boots were springs. When he came down, so did his axe from on high, but he had twisted the head so the hook would snag, hopefully would snag, on the rider or his armour so he could pull him out of the saddle, or at least pull him off balance so he couldn't strike out again with his sabre.
The hook slid down the man's armour and hooked sod all. Now he really was in trouble because his axe was out of position and there was nothing between the sabre and his head but his thin helmet. And then one, two, three, four arrows struck the man in the boiled hide armour. At least one of them must have defeated the hide, because the man cried out and fell from his horse.
Daniel scrambled out of the way of the falling rider and the gnashing horse teeth and looked towards the bowmen. They were running towards him with their daggers drawn ready to finish the job. He held up his hand with his palm forward in the time honored signal to halt. As he trotted passed them back into deep cover he hissed to them, "Leave them. Get off the effing road and out of sight."
Not a moment after Daniel had picked his carbine up again, did a column of riders five wide come into sight. A few of them rode forward to investigate the loose horses, and only then did they see the dying men laying in the roadway. Their call back to the others in the column that it was a trap was redundant, because at least twenty guns went off with noise and smoke and killing balls. Everyman in close range had tried for a kill, for this would be their best chance at a still target.
Immediately men and horses were in motion, making a quick turn and racing back the way they had come. Daniel yelled out the redundant command, "Reload, reload, they will be back in minutes, and at full speed." As they all reloaded, they heard a full volley from the other end of the trap for Blake would want them to believe that Bedford's full army had caught up to them already. In truth, the army would be back in Yeovil by now, having a meal before it got too dark to see exactly what it was that was floating in the stew.
This time the column came at a run. All of them had sabres in their hands so they must have spent their pistol shots already. Those in the lead were on a mission. To leap the lowest point of the rope and then to swing back around to cut down the men who would be defending it. The lad who was loading for Daniel stood up and grabbed up two saplings he had ready. With them held over his shoulders he ran out into the road on the safe side of the rope and shook them in the path of the first two racing hunters. Both horses shied from the jump early, skidded to slow themselves and turned just before the rope. Luckily they turned away from each other, else they would have collided.
There was another hunter racing behind the first two, but the lad with the saplings had also shied and he was a tangle of leaves and twigs rolling away from the center of the road. Another lad leaped forward with a sapling, but he was too late to scare the horse so he flipped the sapling about and jabbed up into the belly of the jumping horse with the cut end as if it were a pike. It was an amazing horse to have cleared a rope fully four feet off the ground, but the jab at his belly ruined his landing and he went down hard in a tangle of six legs and two arms.
Four other riders, two on each side of the road were now at the tree ends of the ropes and hacking at it with their sabres. The bushes separating their horses from the anchor trees were thick enough and wide enough that they could not reach the windings or the knot on the trees, so they had no choice but to hack at the loosely draped rope. Their blades could not get purchase because they just bounced off or slid down the rope. Then those riders were obliterated from view by gunsmoke. They were shot at close range by carbine balls, and their armour wouldn't have saved them from injury.
Again the column turned and raced back along the killing road, anything to become a moving target again. Anything to try to regroup and find a way to escape this trap. Some of them leaped the brambles on the down hill side of the road, but no one followed them. Not after they saw those riders and their horses tumble on bad landings and saw the riders trapped under their rolling horses and crushed.
Now there was an increased frequency of shots from the other end of the trap. Blake was pushing his men towards this end and closing the trap. This time the riders had realized that they were safer off their horses than on, and they dismounted and used their horses to shield them. The volley's trickled to a stop. Blake had been explicit. Don't harm the horses. Leave them as a liability to their riders.
"We want to talk terms!" a voice yelled out from amongst the horses.
"You didn't give the men from Dorchester any terms!" Daniel yelled back. He didn't mind talking. With every phrase, Blakes men were closing in from the other end.
"That was Lunsford, not me!" was the reply.
"Then let Lunsford show himself and do the talking!" Daniel yelled back.
"He was leading the infantry. He should almost be to Sherborne Castle by now."
Daniel didn't reply for a moment. Lunsford had escaped him because they had spared the infantry from this trap. He focused on the situation in hand. The lad with the two saplings was on his feet again and was looking on from the safe side of the rope. He was about to yell at him to get off the effing road, when Ralph Hopton came out from behind his horse offering his sabre in front of him with one hand at each end.
Instead of Hopton walking towards Daniel he was walking towards the lad. "I surrender,” he told the lad. "Here, take my sword." Before Daniel could yell out a warning, the lad had dropped his saplings and had ducked under the rope to skip towards Hopton. He wore a big grin on his face at being so honored. The grin became a grimace as Hopton's sabre ran through his heart.
A lot of things then happened very quickly and there was confusion everywhere. Hopton threw his own body down onto the rope so he could hold it taught while he sawed through it with his sabre. That very action saved his life because a half dozen balls whizzed through the space where his chest had been but seconds before.
Hopton's men put one foot in their stirrups on the other side of the horse from the guns, and then half stepped along behind the cover of their horses in the direction of the cut rope. The horses picked up speed as they moved towards Daniel who had left his cover and was running across open road to hack at the gallant Hopton with his battle axe. The young Scot, Balfour, on the uphill side had also left the safety of cover and was running towards Hopton with his sabre outstretched.
The other lad in the road, the lad who had piked the hunter in the belly, was running too, but he was running away from Hopton because he could see the horses gathering speed on their way to cross the rope once it was cut. The lad dropped a shoulder into Daniel's stomach and physically lifted him off his feet and carried him back into the safety of the bushes. Captain Balfour had no such guardian angel, and he was slashed and slashed again as Hopton's cavalry rode over him and then over the cut rope.
By the time Daniel regained his wind, Hopton and his cavalry were gone and his own men were building a barricade out of saplings and bushes to block the road in case they decided to regroup and come back on the attack. Meanwhile Blake and his men were walking towards them from the other end of the trap gathering horses, weapons, and wounded prisoners as they came. "Are you hurt?" Blake asked him, with a tinge of guilt that his friend was here at all.
"Just bruised and winded, Rob,” he replied but didn't mention that this was all from being tackled by his own man.
Blake took a good look down the road towards Sherborne before he came back and told Daniel "So Hopton escaped, damn him. Oh well, we killed his second in command, one Captain Hussey and we captured his Sergeant Major, one Bampfield, though he is just a lad."
Daniel told Blake about the other lad, the one that Hopton had murdered by shame faced trickery, and then about the loss of Captain Balfour who had tried to avenge him.
"Bloody hell," was Blake's reply. "Balfour was the son of Sir William, the true commander of this brigade. What are we to tell him? That his son played the fool and got himself killed." Blake shrugged and reminded Daniel of the Dutch Pistoleer saying, "Fools rush in where Pistoleers fear to tread." Daniel decided not to tell him that he also had been one of the fools.
"So we have your two dead,” Blake said, taking a butcher's toll, "and my four injured. But Hopton had the worst of it by far. Twenty dead or near dead and fifteen who will survive to be prisoners."
With a shaking finger Daniel pointed to the lad's corpse lying in the bloody dust and the captain's corpse just beyond him. "I'd gladly trade all the prisoners to have those lads beside me again. Some day I'm going to take great pleasure in doing for Mr. Ralph Hopton."
"You mean Sir Ralph Hopton, for anyone with that much of a demon in him is certain to have been knighted. You do realize that since it was you who saw him die, you will have to break the news to Balfour's father."
It was dark by the time they had stripped corpses and prisoners of anything valuable, especially their armour. In truth, the armour was stunning in quality, for most of the dead and prisoners were of the manor born. With Yeovil so close, Blake's men had come without the gear needed to make a camp, and now that they controlled Babylon Hill Road, they were just a short ride from the now-safe-bridge into Yeovil. They bound the wounds of their prisoners, mostly thigh and buttock wounds, and tied them to their saddles and led them down the hill and to Bedford's headquarters.
That night the two flying squads and their prisoners were the last to eat before the army's camp kitchens closed for the night. On hearing that there were a half dozen dead horses up the hill, the cooks dispatched a squad of men with a cart to go and butcher them. The corpses of Hopton’s men weren't collected until the next morning, to give Hopton a chance to collect them himself. Thus was the reality of battle that a dead horse was valued more than a dead man.
Blake took Daniel along when he went to make his report to the Earl of Bedford, and to the man who really ran things, Colonel Balfour. For the sake of the grieving father, Daniel swapped the roles of the two lads who had died trying to keep the rope across Babylon Hill road. Balfour was enraged that Hopton had used a false truce and false surrender to murder his son, but at least his rage softened his deep despair at such a personal loss.
The defeat and humiliation of Hopton gave the young Earl of Bedford some good news to report to London, finally. He was so overjoyed by being able to make such a report that he hosted a dinner party for his officers. Neither Robert nor Daniel were invited. Bedford's glory lasted only two days, for then the news came that Goring, the king's governor of Portsmouth, had surrendered the town and the castle to General William Waller and Admiral Robert Rich.
Bedford's army were jubilant at the news for that meant that their mission of stopping Hertford's army from relieving Goring in Portsmouth was now done. Bedford left for London to make the most of 'his' victory on Babylon Hill and left his brigade to his second in command, Balfour.
With Bedford gone, reason and logic became the rule because Colonel William Balfour was a wily Scot with long experience in the Dutch wars.. He was planning a proper siege of Sherborne, one that would keep the Earl of Hertford's army surrounded and cut off until they had no choice but to surrender. Daniel could not afford to wait for such a siege so he said his farewells to his friend Blake.
"This may be the last time we meet before I move my folk to Bermuda,” Daniel told him.
"I also must move my folk,” Blake told him. "With the Wyndham family and their royalists in control of Bridgwater it is no longer safe for them there. I'll likely move them to Lyme."
"Come with us to Bermuda,” Daniel offered.
Blake smiled. "Perhaps, someday. But not yet. I refuse to be pushed off my father's land by the bloody Wyndhams."
Daniel mounted up and pointed Femke east towards the market town of Beaminster on the other side of Blackmoor Vale. He had to return a costly carbine and pistol to a father who did not yet know that he had lost a cherished son. He was not looking forward to that duty for a second time. Not at all.
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The Pistoleer - Edgehill by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14